by Leo Marchandon and Pauline Foret
(Reuters) – Europe’s short-term rental market continued to boom in the first quarter, with the number of nights booked online jumping 28.3 percent year-on-year, data from Eurostat showed on Monday.
Figures from Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, compiled booking data from Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia Group and TripAdvisor. They show that tourists staying in the EU spent a total of 123.7 million nights in accommodation booked through these platforms.
The number of online bookings also hit three consecutive monthly records in January, February and March, while posting double-digit growth for the third year in a row, the data shows.
Eurostat figures exclude hotels and campsites.
The records come as the European Parliament adopted regulations on such rentals in February, requiring platforms to share their data with local authorities.
In Spain, protests took place in Barcelona and Mallorca earlier this month, with residents denouncing pressure on property prices. The Catalan capital went so far as to pledge to ban short-term rentals by 2028.
In 2023, the most popular region for holidaymakers booking online was Andalusia, Spain, with 35.6 million overnight stays, and six of the 20 most visited regions were in the country, according to Eurostat data.
In France, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire declared in 2023 that he was open to a reform of Airbnb’s taxation in France, which he considered “too favorable”.
(Written by Pauline Foret and Leo Marchandon, edited by Augustin Turpin)
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