European Holiday Home Association (EHHA) welcomes today’s EUROSTAT publication of the first key data on short-term rental accommodation booked via four private platforms for the years 2018 and 2019. This comes as a result of the short-term rental sector commitment to work in a good faith with policy-makers at all levels, allow them to better understand the sector’s specificities and impact and support the development of evidence-based policies.
Today, Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, published first key aggregated data on short-stay accommodation booked via four online platforms (Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia Group and Tripadvisor) for the years 2018 and 2019. The data published today are a first step and will be regularly updated by Eurostat. In particular, they cover national, regional and city-level data on the number of stays booked and the number of nights spent in short-term rental accommodation booked via these four platforms.
EHHA welcomes Eurostat pre-COVID data and is eagerly looking forward to further publication of short-term rental aggregated data for the year 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic heavily impacted the tourism industry, a key sector of the EU’s economy. Short term rental hosts, entrepreneurs, professional property managers, online platforms and other business owners who cater the short-term rental sector – all of them were hit hard due to the loss of travellers affected by the COVID pandemic. Aggregated data for 2020 will shine a light on how travel trends have changed since the pandemic, and will allow for better informed policy making when it comes to regulating short-term rental activity.
The short-term rental sector, by contributing to more complete statistics on tourism accommodation in Europe (in line with GDPR rules), calls for decision makers across the EU to better understand the development of the short-term rental services and cooperate more proactively to ensure a balanced development of short-term rental services by introducing clear, non-discriminatory, proportionate and evidence-based policies.
As a sector, we will continue to work in good faith with policy-makers at all levels to help develop these evidence-based policies.