UK short-term rentals

This report provides monthly insights on the overall supply of short-term rental properties across the UK, as well as a selection of performance metrics. We are also able to share some learnings about the type of trips taking place.

Released in:

March 2026

Next release:

April 2026

For further information, please get in touch.

Methodology note

Please note that from September 2025 onwards, Lighthouse has made two changes to their methodology, in response to changes in how major short-term rental platforms display listings on their sites. Please see slide 4 of this month’s report for details. 

Report highlights

  • January 2026 saw supply grow by 4% compared with the same month in 2025, with nights reserved falling and occupancy remaining level year-on-year.
  • In January, average daily rates continued to see steep declines year-on-year, however average revenues saw a new peak; exceeding 2025 and 2024 levels for the same month.
  • Complying with seasonal patterns, average length of stay increased significantly in January compared to the previous month of December, at 13.6 nights. In contrast, the share of origin by global region stayed fairly level, with Europe holding majority share.
  • Between December and January, Birmingham, Brighton, and Norwich gained ranks among all UK cities for the volume of nights reserved, with Saudi Arabia and Brazil seeing the largest growth in reviews for short-term rental properties in the most recent month.

View the latest report

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Short-Term Rentals - January 2026

Explore trends in the short-term rentals market from the latest month.

Explore the short-term rentals data

Use the visualisation to explore trends in the UK short-term rentals industry.

About the report

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.