The outlook for vacation rental travel this year is confident as Key Data reveals a significant rise in the number of reservations made in January 2023 compared to January 2022.
Key Data, the industry’s most trusted and accurate data and insights platform and the exclusive data partner of the Vacation Rental Management Association, compared reservations made on Airbnb and Vrbo for U.S. and U.K. vacation rentals during the first three weeks of January to the same period in 2022. They found that reservations made in the U.S. are up 27%, from 3,332,605 to 4,245,574 trips in total, and reservations in the U.K. are up 19%, from 877,169 to 1,039,495 trips in total.
However, despite the rising frequency of reservations, there was a slight decline in both countries (4% in the U.S. and 11% in the U.K.) in the number of nights booked overall. The drop in length of stay may be due to the impact of recession, with consumers still travelling but cutting trips short in order to meet their budget.
In the context of global inflation, the value of reservations made during this period sharply increased compared to 2022. In the U.S., this was the most dramatic at a 43% increase, while in the U.K. 10.5%. Hosts and property managers in both countries generated USD nearly $7 billion (GBP £5.6 billion) in revenue in the first three weeks of January.
2023 reservations peaked in the middle of the month in both countries, with travellers making the highest numbers of reservations on January 17 and 18. In the U.K. there was also a peak on January 9 straight after ‘Sunshine Saturday’, which typically sees a flurry of holiday bookings across the travel industry. Looking at both January 2022 and January 2023, travellers were more likely to book their vacation rental accommodation in the middle of the week, with the lowest number of reservations made on a Saturday and Sunday.
