New York and Los Angeles rank among the top 10 global destinations with listings for travelers looking to rent from Airbnb.
Tourism and business travel in expensive cities has driven demand for the popular home and apartment rental site, according to new data out from AirDNA. The rentals act as a cheaper alternative to hotels in most cities and can provide amenities such as kitchens, living rooms and multiple bathrooms.
London is No. 1 in active Airbnb listings, with almost 60,000 listings going for an average rate of $184 per night.
New York City ranks No. 3 with about 35,000 listings at an average rate of $186 per night. Los Angeles rounds out the list at No. 10 with just over 18,000 listings going on average for $162 per night.
“In cities such as London, Paris or New York, where hotel rooms are often hard to find and/or expensive, Airbnb has become an affordable and popular way to experience cities in a less touristy way,” Felix Richter, a data analyst at Statista, wrote in a release accompanying the data.
Richter points out that the platform has been “opposed by the hotel industry pretty much from the start, it has also drawn a fair amount of criticism from residents of popular city trip destinations for exacerbating the shortage of affordable housing in many areas.”
To that end, New York is cracking down on the San Francisco-based home-sharing service.
On Monday, Mayor Bill de Blasio signed a bill that requires companies like Airbnb to turn over detailed data about their hosts, per the New York Post. The new law will go into effect in Feb. 2019 and could affect the types of homes being rented and the frequency of the rentals.
