UK short-term rentals

• In May 2025 we saw shifts across all key metrics compared to May 2024. There was a 7% increase in supply of short-term rentals properties, but a 5% decline in nights reserved, leading to a 4% reduction in average occupancy rate (43%). Average daily rate (ADR) and average revenue per property increased by 20% and 17% respectively, but there was no change in average length of stay.
• Supply in short-term rental properties grew across all regions this month, with the East Midlands and the North East continuing to show the strongest growth compared to 2024. However, nights reserved declined in every region, with the largest decreases seen in Scotland, the South West, and London (-7%). As a result, all regions experienced a drop in occupancy rates, with Scotland and London recording the sharpest falls (-6pp).
• In May 2025, the most notable month-on-month shifts to the most popular UK cities by nights reserved were that Glasgow swapped places with Norwich becoming the 9th most popular city, and Brighton swapped places with York, becoming the 7th most popular city regarding nights reserved.
• Brazil and India led for reviews again in April 2025*, with an 25% and 17% respective increase in reviews left compared to the same month in 2024. In contrast, the volume of reviews from Russia and China are down -151% and -175% respectively.

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.