Europe's Short-Term Rental Market Doubled Since 2018

When Airbnb made the jump across the pond in 2011 and opened its first European office in Germany, few people would have predicted the impact that the platform would have on the European travel market. The startup helped establish a new model that has since transformed the way Europeans travel by making private homes and apartments available to travelers. Originally intended for people who would share their apartment with travelers or sublet it while away, the market grew so quickly that many hosts bought apartments specifically to offer them on platforms like Airbnb. Today, the scale of this market is immense. According to Eurostat, guests spent 952 million nights in accommodations booked through short-term rental platforms in the EU in 2025, more than double the 442 million recorded in 2018. After the pandemic-related collapse in 2020, demand rebounded strongly and has continued to set new records.

The boom of short-term rentals has also intensified a contentious debate in tourist hotspots. Critics argue that when apartment owners can earn significantly more through short-term rentals than they could renting out their property to long-term tenants, as is typically the case in Southern European cities popular with international travelers, housing supply for local residents shrinks and rents rise, pricing many locals out of attractive areas. In Barcelona, rental prices for contracts signed in 2024 were almost 70 percent higher than a decade earlier, according to Catalonia’s housing agency, a jump that many local residents cannot afford.

The issue has fueled protests against overtourism and Airbnb-style rentals in cities like Lisbon and Barcelona, but so far to no avail, as the market is still booming. Last year, Spain recorded 128 million guest nights of foreign travelers in short-term rentals – the most of any European country. Barcelona saw 13 million guest nights in such accommodation, trailing only Paris and Rome in that respect. However, authorities in several cities are taking steps to limit the footprint of short-term rentals. Barcelona plans to phase out the licenses of its roughly 10,000 tourist apartments by November 2028, in an effort to return these homes to the regular housing market. Amsterdam and Paris have imposed annual caps on the number of nights homes can be rented to visitors. It remains to be seen whether these measures will have the desired effect of returning properties to local residents and bringing rents down, however, as policy makers continue to walk a thin line between protecting tourism revenue and keeping the housing market affordable for locals.