Vacation rental statistics

The US had about 1.75 million available short-term rental listings in July 2026, up 2.6% from a year earlier.

Caveat: Monthly figure; listing counts are seasonal.

US short-term rental occupancy averaged 56.9% for full-year 2025, essentially flat versus 56.7% in 2024.

US short-term rental average daily rates grew 1.8% in 2025, which was below the 2.7% average inflation rate.

US short-term rental supply growth bottomed at 1.8% in July 2025, the slowest rate AirDNA has ever recorded.

In peak-season July 2026 the average US short-term rental charged $317.55 a night at 68.4% occupancy.

Caveat: Peak-month figure, not an annual average.

AirDNA's mid-year forecast expects US short-term rental occupancy to average 57.4% in 2026, slightly above the pre-pandemic norm.

Caveat: A forecast, not an actual.

AirDNA's mid-2026 forecast has US listings and demand both growing 2.7% in 2026, with RevPAR up 2.9%.

Caveat: Supersedes AirDNA's December 2025 outlook, which projected listings +4.6%. Many pages still quote the older number.

Phocuswright sizes global short-term rental gross bookings at $219.9 billion in 2025, growing about 5.3% a year to $270.6 billion by 2029.

Caveat: Other research firms publish very different global totals using different definitions.

North American short-term rental gross bookings grew 4% in 2025 to $78 billion, outpacing US hotels at 1%.

Caveat: Phocuswright counts Mexico in Latin America.

The share of US leisure travelers who stayed in a short-term rental on their latest trip jumped from 24% to 30% in a year.

Caveat: Sample size isn't given on the public summary.

Among professionally managed US rentals, one-night stays rose about 10% in 2025 while week-long stays fell about 7%.

Caveat: Professionally managed properties only.

Since late 2025 most Airbnb hosts pay a single 15.5% service fee deducted from their payout, replacing the old 3% host / separate guest fee split.

Airbnb's help center lists a 15.5% single host fee for most hosts, or under the split model a 3% host fee plus a 14.1%-16.5% guest fee.

Caveat: Undated page; platforms change fees without notice.

Vrbo's pay-per-booking model charges hosts a 5% commission plus a 3% payment processing fee, roughly 8% in total.

Caveat: The 3% processing fee also applies to taxes and refundable deposits, so the effective rate on rent is slightly above 8%.

Airbnb ended 2025 with more than 9 million active listings worldwide after removing over 550,000 low-quality listings since 2023.

Caveat: Global. Airbnb doesn't publish a US-only listing count.

Airbnb says it has more than 5.5 million hosts who have welcomed over 2.5 billion guest arrivals.

Caveat: Airbnb's previous letter said 'over 5 million hosts'; many pages still quote that.

Guests booked 533 million nights and seats on Airbnb in 2025, worth $91.3 billion in gross booking value.

Caveat: Figures taken from the letter's key-metrics table.

Airbnb says the typical US host earned about $15,600 in supplemental income in 2025.

Caveat: Airbnb's own figure; includes part-time and occasional hosts.

Airbnb reports that 63% of US Census tracts have active Airbnb listings but no hotels, and those areas produce nearly 40% of US host earnings.

In Key Data's professionally managed US dataset, direct bookings fell to 23% of reservations and 35% of revenue in early 2026, while Airbnb reached half of all reservations.

Caveat: Professionally managed US properties. The full report is gated, so these figures were read in The Host Report's coverage of it.

Two-thirds of US property managers surveyed by Key Data expect to rely on OTAs as much as before, while 19% plan to cut back.

Caveat: 244 professionals managing 43,000+ properties: managers, not individual owners.

Among hosts using Lodgify's software, direct booking websites produced nearly 34% of 2024 bookings, second only to Airbnb at 46%.

Caveat: Lodgify sells direct booking websites, so its customers are far more direct-heavy than the market.

Hostaway's 2026 report found 70% of operators have a direct booking site, but nearly two-thirds get less than a quarter of bookings through it and 18% get none.

Caveat: Hostaway customers. The 70% and 18% figures were read in PhocusWire's coverage; sample size not confirmed.

A Hospitable report found that 38% of hosts got no direct bookings at all in 2025 and another 48% got only 1-10% of their bookings direct.

Caveat: Hospitable skews to small hosts. The report is gated; figures were read in PhocusWire's coverage.

More than a third (37.5%) of operators surveyed by Hostaway said they generated more direct bookings in summer 2025 than a year earlier.

Caveat: 320 self-selected respondents in 51 countries. Sits awkwardly beside Key Data's measured decline in direct share.

Nearly two-thirds (64%) of Airbnb nights were booked through its mobile app in Q2 2026, up from 59% a year earlier.

Caveat: App only; excludes mobile web, so total mobile share is higher.

Expedia Group's path-to-purchase study found vacation rental guests spend 511 minutes consuming travel content before they book.

Caveat: 2023 data, from before AI trip planning went mainstream.

Expedia Group's 2026 'Built to Stay' research found 86% of rental travelers would pay more for a higher-quality listing.

Caveat: 1,700+ respondents who stayed in a rental in the past year.

Phocuswright found nearly four in ten US travelers used generative AI to research trips in the past 12 months, an 11-point jump in one year.

Caveat: Public summary of a paid report; exact percentage and sample size aren't published.

Deloitte found 24% of US holiday travelers planned to use generative AI for trip planning in 2025, up from 16% in 2024 and 8% in 2023.

Caveat: 3,896 Americans, 2,099 of them holiday travellers. Measures intent for one season, which is why it's lower than Phocuswright's past-12-months figure.

YouGov found 30% of US travelers are comfortable using AI to plan trips and 40% are not, with comfort slipping from 32% a year earlier.

Caveat: n=880. A useful counterweight: comfort fell slightly year on year.

The most common way US travelers use AI in trip planning is analyzing reviews and ratings, chosen by 28%.

Caveat: n=880.

Booking.com's 33-market survey found two in three respondents have already used AI in some part of their travel.

Caveat: n=37,325 across 33 markets. Counts any AI use in travel, including translation, so it runs far higher than US-only measures.

Pew Research found 44% of US adults report using ChatGPT as of February 2026, and about half use AI chatbots of any kind.

Caveat: n=5,119. General usage, not travel-specific.

Adobe measured traffic from AI sources to US travel sites up 194% year over year in May 2026, and up more than 2,200% since October 2024.

Caveat: Growth from a very small base; Adobe doesn't disclose AI's share of total traffic.

Adobe found visitors arriving at US travel sites from AI tools stay 70% longer and bounce 41% less, but still convert 28% less often than other traffic.

Caveat: Engagement is higher but conversion is still lower.

Rent Responsibly's 2024 industry survey found that two-thirds of short-term rental owners have only one property.

Caveat: 3,535 owners, opt-in sample from an advocacy network; skews to engaged individual owners. April 2024.

Nine in ten short-term rental owners manage their property themselves, and most earn 20% or less of their income from it.

Caveat: Same 2024 survey and caveat.

In Lodgify's 2024 host survey, 56% of respondents used channel management software and 46% used a website builder.

Caveat: About 800 respondents who are largely software users, so this overstates adoption among all owners.

In Key Data's outlook survey, 42% of US property managers expected regulations to limit their 2026 goals and 47% already operate under strict permitting or licensing.

Caveat: Professional managers, not individual owners.