Excerpt from PhocusWire
The short-term rental segment in Europe was on track to generate gross bookings of over €40 billion in 2020 – then came COVID.
Phocuswright's latest research, Niche No More: European Short-Term Rentals, developed in partnership with AirDNA and Transparent, finds gross bookings for the European short-term rental (STR) market declined by 33% in 2020, totaling €25.3 billion, a level last seen in 2010.
But with COVID cases beginning to fall sharply and an increasing share of the European population being vaccinated, the recovery accelerated in spring and early summer 2021 and bookings were projected to rebound by 31% versus 2020.
By the end of 2022, gross bookings will reach €37.5 billion, and a full market recovery to pre-pandemic levels is projected to occur in 2023.
And by 2025, the short-term rental segment is projected to reach €44.3 billion.
The five core markets – United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and Spain – account for about 70% of the total European STR gross bookings. Recovery is expected to be the fastest in the U.K., exceeding pre-pandemic levels by the end of this year, while France will not see full recovery to 2019 levels before 2024.
Online bookings continue to grab the majority of share in the European STR landscape. From 77% in 2019, online penetration is expected to grow to 85% in 2025.
Intermediaries like third-party platforms and OTAs have the lion's share in this online market. In 2021, with a share of 70% of STR bookings, intermediaries outperformed online-direct (9%) by a factor of seven.
The major players in the online space include Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo (and other Expedia Group brands such as FeWo-direkt in Germany and Abritel in France) and Awaze with multiple brands in the U.K.
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