Short-term lets through online collaborative economy platforms, UK: July 2023 to December 2025

• From January to December 2025, there were 100,911,620 guest nights spent in short-term lets in the UK.

• There was an 11.5% increase in guest nights in 2025 from the previous 12-month period, January to December 2024 (90,507,070).

• Wales had the largest increase in guest nights among individual UK countries, rising by 17.4%, from 6,282,250 in 2024 to 7,374,780 in 2025.

• The North East saw the biggest percentage rise in guest nights, increasing by 22.2%, from 2,253,220 in 2024 to 2,753,800 in 2025.

• The share of guest nights from domestic visitors to the UK increased by 3.0 percentage points to 67.2% between 2024 and 2025.

• Germany had the largest growth in the number of international guest nights contributing to the UK total, rising by 8.5% between 2024 and 2025; the other three countries in the top four experienced declines (United States, France and "Asia other").

In this bulletin, "short-term lets" refers to rentals, such as apartments or rooms, booked through Airbnb, Booking.com and Expedia Group, excluding other forms of accommodation, such as hotels or campsites.

We publish further statistics on our Leisure and tourism web page.

This analysis provides aggregated data booked through the three large online collaborative economy platforms on the number of guest nights, nights, and stays spent in short-term lets offered via online platforms.

The "number of guest nights" accounts for the number of nights spent during a stay multiplied by the number of visitors in the travel party. This can be influenced by guest group size and length of stay. For example, a group of four staying for two nights would be eight guest nights, but one guest staying for two nights would be two guest nights. The "number of nights" refers to the number of nights a property or room offered by the platforms was occupied during a stay. However, the "number of stays" refers to the number of times a facility offered by the platforms was occupied by a single booking, regardless of length of stay.

This bulletin focuses on the number of guest nights, unless otherwise stated.

There were 100,911,620 guest nights spent in short-term lets in the UK from January to December 2025. This was an increase of 11.5% from the previous 12-month period, January to December 2024 (90,507,070).

Across individual countries, Northern Ireland had the lowest increase of 10.8%, while Scotland rose by 10.9%, and England by 11.1%. Wales had the largest increase in the number of guest nights among individual countries, rising by 17.4%, from 6,282,250 in 2024 to 7,374,780 in 2025.

Following the previous year’s trend, January had the fewest number of guest nights in 2025, with 4,344,890 during the month (4.3% of the 2025 total). Despite this, there was a 19.0% increase compared with January 2024, from 3,651,460 guest nights (4.0% of the 2024 total).

August was the most popular month in 2025, with 14,143,560 guest nights during the month (14.0% of the 2025 total). This was a 10.6% increase compared with August 2024, with 12,788,560 guest nights, but a slight decrease in the share of the total across the year (14.1% of the 2024 total).

The only month with a decrease between 2024 and 2025 was March, where guest nights reduced by 5.9%. April saw the largest increase in guest nights, rising by 29.3% compared with the previous year. These months were likely affected by the changing date of the Easter bank and school holidays between the years.

The Easter bank holiday fell on 29 March and 1 April in 2024, but fell on 18 and 21 April in 2025. As such, guests taking advantage of the bank holidays for weekend trips or visits to family were recorded in March in 2024, and April in 2025. When March and April are combined, the increase across the two years was 12.7%, largely in line with the overall annual increase.

Figure 1: August was the most popular month for guest nights in 2025 across all UK countries

Percentage of guest nights in short-term lets offered through collaborative economy platforms, by month and country, UK, January 2024 to December 2025

Guest nights increased in all regions between January and December 2025 compared with the same period in 2024. The largest increase was in the North East, rising by 22.2%, from 2,253,220 to 2,753,800 guest nights. London, while having the largest number of guest nights of all regions, had the lowest increase between the two periods, only rising by 6.3%, from 20,270,590 to 21,557,480.

Guest nights continue to be concentrated in a small number of local authorities, with nearly a quarter (24.4%) being spent in 9 of the 361 local authorities in the UK between January and December 2025. Of these, 7 are in England (Westminster, Cornwall, North Yorkshire, Kensington and Chelsea, Camden, Westmorland and Furness, and Liverpool), and 2 are in Scotland (City of Edinburgh and Highland).

In 2025, North Yorkshire had the largest increase in guest nights among local authorities, rising by 452,960 (20.5%), followed by Cornwall, rising by 449,450 (13.0%). In contrast, Brighton and Hove had the largest fall in the number of guest nights, decreasing by 35,900 (3.7%).

Figure 2: Guests spent almost a quarter of all guest nights in nine local authority areas

Number of guest nights for each local authority, UK, July 2023 to December 2025

International guests were estimated to have contributed 32.1 million guest nights to the UK in 2025. This was a small increase of 2.1% in international guest nights compared with 2024 (31.5 million guest nights). Domestic visitors contributed 67.8 million guest nights, a large increase from 2024 of 16.7%.

Of all UK guest nights during the year, 31.9% were by international guests and 67.2% were by domestic visitors. Approximately 1% of records could not be classified as either domestic or international visitors, meaning that totals may not add up to 100%.

There were substantial differences across the UK countries in whether guests were domestic or international. Wales had the highest proportion of domestic guest nights (89.5% of all). However, Scotland had the lowest proportion (55.8%), showing a near-even split between domestic and international guest nights compared with Wales's largely domestic tourism.

The UK saw an increase in the share of guest nights from domestic visitors in 2025 by 3.0 percentage points to 67.2% compared with 2024 (64.2%). This trend was seen across all countries in the UK, with England seeing the largest increase in the share of domestic visitors, by 3.1 percentage points, followed by;

• Scotland, by 2.3 percentage points

• Wales 1.7, by percentage points

• Northern Ireland, by 1.5 percentage points

There were similar corresponding falls in the share of international visitors.

There were 26 local authorities that had a higher proportion of international guest nights than domestic in 2025, a decline from 30 local authorities in 2024. Of these;

• 22 were in London

• 2 were in Scotland (67.6% in the City of Edinburgh, 50.4% in Highland)

• 1 was in the South East (56.1% in Oxford)

• 1 was in the East of England (49.6% in Cambridge)

The top 3 local authorities were:

• Kensington and Chelsea (81.7%)

• Westminster (80.5%)

• City of London (80.4%)

In comparison, the top 3 local authorities by proportion of domestic guest nights were:

• East Lindsey (98.3%)

• Great Yarmouth (97.1%)

• North Norfolk (96.4%)

There were 57 local authorities where more than 9 out of 10 guest nights were by domestic guests with a geographical spread across the country. This is except for Northern Ireland and London, which had no local authorities in this list. For London, this is likely because of the high levels of tourism across all parts of the capital. For Northern Ireland, guest nights spent by those from the Republic of Ireland are classed as international nights and may contribute to the higher percentage of international visitors.

Figure 3: Coastal areas in England and Wales mainly had domestic visitors

Proportion of guest nights by country of origin and local authority, UK, July 2023 to December 2025

Guest nights from the United States (6,214,210), Germany (3,032,410) and France (2,600,090) accounted for the highest number of international guest nights in 2025. This is a change from 2024, where “Asia other” was the second highest contributor of guest nights, but now ranks 4th. The order has changed between 2024 and 2025, partly because of an 8.5% rise in guest nights from German visitors, but also because of falls in guest nights from visitors from the United States (1.4% decrease), France (5.8% decrease), and “Asia other” (9.9% decrease).

Figure 4: The United States remains the largest country of origin for international guest nights in 2025

Top 15 countries of origin for guest nights in 2024 and 2025

Many of the largest increases in the number of guest nights in the UK from 2024 to 2025 were from European countries:

• Germany (237,810 guest nights, by 8.5%)

• Italy (229,830 guest nights, by 20.0%)

• Spain (165,970 guest nights, by 10.4%)

The largest guest night increase of non-EU countries was from Turkey, which had a 91,960 increase in guest nights (34.5%), ranking 6th of all countries. This was followed by Canada, with 85,590 guest nights (7.9%), ranking 8th.

There were 14 countries that saw a decrease in the number of guest nights spent in the UK from 2024 to 2025. "Asia other" saw the largest fall of 281,550 guest nights (9.9% decrease) to 2,560,990. France fell by 160,460 guest nights (5.8% decrease) to 2,600,090, and China by 154,790 guest nights (19.4% decrease) to 643,300.

Number of guest nights

The number of nights spent during a stay, with a night counted per individual member of the visiting group. This can be influenced by guest group size and length of stay. For example, a group of four staying for two nights would be eight guest nights, but two nights and one stay.

Number of nights

The number of nights a short-term let offered via the platforms was occupied.

Number of stays

The number of times a short-term let offered via the platforms was occupied.

Short-term lets

Refers to rentals, such as apartments or rooms, booked through three online booking platforms (Airbnb, Booking.com and Expedia Group), excluding other forms of accommodation, such as hotels or campsites.

Data from three online collaborative economy platforms (Airbnb, Booking.com and Expedia Group) provide data on short-term lets to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Data from Vrbo, Expedia, Hotels.com, Orbitz, Ebookers, CheapTickets, Trivago and others under the Expedia Group umbrella are included as part of Expedia Group. We then aggregate the data for these statistics.

Data are provided at the local administrative unit (LAU) level in the UK, which is also aggregated to form local authorities, counties, combined authorities, international territorial levels (ITLs), countries, and the UK as a whole.

The data have a strong seasonal trend. Therefore, changes over time should generally be compared year-on-year, rather than month-on-month or quarter-on-quarter.

Strengths and limitations

The article is based on data provided to us by three international platforms (Airbnb, Booking.com and Expedia Group). The data covers short-stay accommodation in the UK, offered by service providers via one of these three online collaborative economy platforms.

Only accommodation offered through the three platforms is included in this bulletin and dataset. It cannot be added to other tourism statistics on holiday rentals or other types of accommodation, such as hotels, because of potential overlaps. Only the merged data for the three platforms are available; individual data on each platform will not be disclosed.

While we believe these statistics cover a large proportion of short-term lets activity in the UK, they do not cover all activity, as data from other providers and platforms are not included.

The data we receive cannot be de-duplicated across the three platforms, which means we cannot calculate the number of unique hosts or visitors.

Short-term lets in Scotland

The Scottish Government introduced licensing for short-term lets in October 2022. New and existing short-term let operators are required to obtain a licence to operate a short-term let property in Scotland from October 2023. The Scottish Government publish Short-term lets licensing statistics, which are available at Scotland, local authority and data zone level.

There will be differences between the Scottish Government data and our Hosts, listings, and bed spaces of short-term lets, UK: 2023 dataset for a few reasons. Firstly, the Scottish Government publish data on the number of short-term let license applications that were validated by local authorities up to 31 December 2024. Because of the large volume of applications received by the October deadline for existing hosts and some applications being incomplete, some applications were not validated in time to be reflected in their published data. Data are subject to revision in future releases.

Secondly, the data that we have released on hosts, listings and bedspaces refer to the number of hosts and visitors of short-term lets listed by one of the three online collaborative economy platforms in 2023. The number of unique hosts cannot be identified, as there will be duplication because of hosts advertising their property on more than one platform. Consequently, we would generally expect the number of hosts in the data accompanying this release to be higher than the number of licenses in the Scottish Government data.

Short-term lets in Northern Ireland

In Northern Ireland, it is a legal requirement that all tourist accommodation providers receive certification from Tourism Northern Ireland before they are allowed to begin operating.

Short-term lets in Wales

In September 2025, the Visitor Accommodation (Register and Levy) Etc. (Wales) Act 2025 received Royal Assent. Following this, registration will be compulsory for all visitor accommodation in Wales from Autumn 2026. Additionally, local councils may apply an overnight visitor levy from April 2027.

On 27 April 2026, the Development of Tourism and Regulation of Visitor Accommodation (Wales) Bill received Royal Assent, at which point the Bill became an Act of the Senedd. This Bill expands upon the Visitor Accommodation (Register and Levy) Etc. (Wales) Act 2025, and provides the legislative framework for a licensing scheme for visitor accommodation in Wales.

Short-term lets in England

In 2023, the previous UK government consulted on a registration scheme for short-term lets, and Parliament legislated for a registration scheme for short-term lets in the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023. In February 2024, the proposal to introduce a mandatory, national register of short-term lets in England was announced by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), known at the time as the Department for Levelling up, Housing and Communities. The current government remains committed to implementing this proposal.