UK short-term rentals

• December 2025 saw seasonal patterns specific to the festive season, with all key metrics increasing month on month, a larger proportion of European travellers staying in short-term rental properties, and average length of stay temporarily shortening.
• In December 2025, the supply of short-term rental properties saw improved growth vs. 2024, at 4%, however nights reserved, occupancy rates, ADR, and average revenue all declined year on year.
• Year-on-year growth in supply was seen across all UK destinations, but all destinations also saw year-on-year declines in reserved nights, with the largest dip seen from London.
• Between November and December, Liverpool and Brighton both gained ranks among all UK cities for the volume of nights reserved, and Norwich maintained 10th rank as a new entrant since November.

Lighthouse (formerly Transparent Intelligence) tracks over 35 million vacation rental listings worldwide and maintains a proprietary database of hundreds of thousands of reservations tracked by month. Listings on the four major short-term rental platforms are tracked: Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo and Tripadvisor. Listings data is deduplicated when the same property is advertised on more than one platform. 

The UK Government defines a short-term rental property as ‘a dwelling, or part of a dwelling, provided by a host to a guest, for use as accommodation other than the guest’s only or principal residence, in return for payment, in the course of a trade or business carried on by the host’. 

Historical data is available back to 2019, with future performance also available for up to one year in the future. We have limited future performance data shown in reports to three months in the future in order to ensure reliability, based on guidance from Lighthouse.

For further insights into accommodation in England, explore the results of the England Occupancy Survey (EOS) which measures bedroom and bedspace occupancy across the accommodation sector.