Which U.S. Cities Have High Airbnb Densities?

With 32,597 Airbnb listings for an estimated 1.4 million inhabitants, the island state of Hawaii has the highest Airbnb density out of all U.S. cities and regions analyzed by InsideAirbnb as of June 2023. The project, which scrapes publicly available data from Airbnb's website, was founded by activist and artist Murray Cox and has seen contributions by data journalists and researchers. As our chart based on InsideAirbnb data shows, popular tourist spots don't always have the highest amount of rental listings per 1,000 inhabitants.

New York City, for example, recently passed Local Law 18, which requires short-term rental businesses to register with the city, limits guests per property to two and requires the owners to live in the space they're renting out. In practice, this scales back a booming business model rivaling hotels to an approximation of a paid version of traditional couch surfing. A lawsuit by Airbnb to prevent the law was dismissed in August. Interestingly, New York City only has a density of 4.9 Airbnb listings per 1,000 residents. Other popular tourist destinations analyzed include Broward County (9.1 listings per 1,000 inhabitants), San Francisco (8.5), the city of Los Angeles (5.8) and Clark County, which includes Las Vegas (6.9).

While InsideAirbnb provides details of the prevalence of Airbnb listings in selected cities and regions, it can only show part of the whole picture. The overall importance of the U.S. market for Airbnb can be seen in the company's financial results. In 2022, $4.2 billion of the vacation rental provider's total revenue of $8.4 million was generated in North America, $3.9 billion of which was in the United States. The EMEA region was responsible for $2.9 billion, while the company generated $643 million and $622 million in Latin America and Asia-Pacific, respectively.