Good morning,

Here’s what’s going on in the vacation rental world this week:

A new PriceLabs report says guests are staying almost 10% longer than last year, Airbnb’s dusting off its anti-party system in time for Memorial Day, and we take a closer look at what the booking data actually says to see if the World Cup hype is meeting reality.

Lets dive in. 

NEWS

Headline Roundup

• New data shows U.S. vacation rental stays grew nearly 10% longer, while booking windows shrank (The Host Report)

• CraftedStays published new research on vacation rental SEO and AI search visibility (CraftedStays)

• Airbnb and Uber want to own more of your trip: history says it will be tough (Skift)

• Guesty adds Wander as a new channel partner (LinkedIn)

• Airbnb's rolling out its anti-party system again for Memorial Day weekend (Airbnb)

• Inntopia data shows western mountain towns rebounding into a strong summer after a soft winter (Inntopia)

• Wellness tourism hits $894B, with more growth ahead (PhocusWire)

• Airbnb says adult "playcations" are the defining U.S. summer travel trend for 2026 (Euronews)

• Airbnb shares pool safety resources with hosts in Florida and Arizona (Airbnb)

• Agoda launches new tech letting guests book stays, flights, and activities in a single transaction. (PR Newswire)

The #1 Priority for 84% of people booking a place to stay is The Location!

INTERESTING INSIGHTS

Boom or Bust? What the World Cup Data Actually Says

If you've been trying to track what's going on with World Cup bookings over the last couple months, you've probably had whiplash. Six months ago, Airbnb projected the tournament would be the biggest event in its history. With a projected $210 million in host earnings and $3.6 billion in host-city economic impact, hosts started doing math on remodels and new listings.

But last week, the WSJ ran a piece called "no World Cup windfall for Airbnb, and hosts are surprised." NPR followed with a survey showing nearly 80% of hotels are running below their projections. Sports Illustrated reported match-day rates have been "slashed" more than 40% from peak across 11 U.S. host cities.

So which is it? Boom or bust?

Everyone's weighing in, but my take is that people are over-generalizing in both directions. Bookings really are coming in faster than they did last year, and at the same time, pricing has gotten a lot higher than what guests are willing to pay. People on both the boom and the bust camp have data points that they can latch on to, so I did a deep dive into the data from multiple sources.

What the "bust" camp has right

It's been interesting to see the bust narrative gain a lot of steam in the last few weeks. The WSJ featured an Atlanta host who spent $60,000 remodeling her home and listed it at $4,500 a week during the tournament, and she has nothing booked. "I don't think it's going to be the huge windfall that I once thought it was" was her quote.

She's not alone. AirDNA's data shows hosts in 11 host cities have raised their rates by more than 90% compared to last year. Yet guests are only actually paying those higher rates in 5 of the 11 cities. That basically means hosts jacked up their pricing, and in most markets the guests aren't taking the bait.

Then there's the math. Take AirDNA's reported number of roughly 430,000 extra nights booked compared to this time last year. Spread those over 16 host cities and the 18 days of the group stage. That works out to fewer than 1,500 extra nights booked per city per night. For the biggest international sporting event of the decade, that's really not that impressive.

What the "boom" camp has right

Here's a strong stat, courtesy of AirDNA:

The teal line is last year, which was a normal summer with no World Cup demand. Back on May 12th last year, hosts had 1.3 million nights booked. You can see what happened next: the nights booked jumped way up to 2.9 million by the end of June, which was more than double in the span of about one month. Most people these days are just waiting longer to book, and often aren't booking their place to stay until just before the trip begins.

The purple line is this year. We're already at 1.8 million nights booked, which is 32% ahead of last year at the same point. If this year just follows the normal last-minute booking behavior, we're looking at another million-plus nights being booked between now and the tournament. And that's just an average late-booking curve.. with World Cup demand layered in this year, I'd expect last-minute bookings to be closer to two million.

Beyond made the same point a different way: World Cup fans book differently than regular vacation travelers. They want to see if their team qualifies for a specific match before locking in their place to stay. That pushes a lot of bookings later, into the final couple weeks before the games. So a slow week of bookings for a knockout-round game where the teams aren't confirmed yet is a very different signal than slow bookings for a group-stage match we already know is coming.

Basically, there's going to be a ton of bookings rolling in as we get closer to match day. So if your place hasn't been booked yet, it's not time to panic.

Where the lift actually is

Based on all the data I'm seeing, the real story is that the bookings lift is wildly uneven. The difference between a fully booked and an empty calendar comes down to three main areas:

Geography. Mexico's ripping. Guadalajara and Monterrey bookings are up more than 250% over last year, and Mexico City is +89%. Other over-performers are Houston (more than double last year's bookings for June) and Philadelphia (ahead of last year in every window according to Beyond). Markets falling behind are Vancouver and Toronto, where bookings for the knockout rounds are actually further behind than where they were last year. San Francisco gets its own bucket, with almost no extra bookings coming from the World Cup at all.

Supply tightness. In the markets where there are fewer places to book (Kansas City, Guadalajara, Monterrey, Mexico City), booked rates are up 40%+. In the markets with lots of available rooms (Miami, Atlanta), hosts are asking for double their normal nightly rates but guests don't feel any pressure to lock in their stay.

Hotels vs. short-term rentals. This is the split I think most of the mainstream "bust" coverage is missing. Key Data shows Kansas City hotel occupancy is down 36% compared to last year... and Kansas City STR occupancy is up 291%. Boston hotels +2%, STRs +38%. San Francisco hotels -20%, while STRs flat. A lot of what's getting written as "the World Cup is flopping" is hotel data being treated like the whole lodging market. STRs are actually doing fine in cities where hotels are not.

Where this leaves us

The lesson from the last couple of months is that calling vacation rental bookings for the World Cup a boom or a bust are over-generalizing it. The real answer depends on where you sit.

If you're in a market where pricing is way up but bookings aren't following, it's a tough pill to swallow, but your prices might just be too high for the supply in your market. If you're in a market where there's not as much competition, you're already on the boom side of this. And if you're a 1-3 hour drive from a host city, the overflow AirDNA is seeing in places like Providence, Columbia MO, and Broken Bow OK is probably moving toward you.

Two things I'm watching as this finalizes: The first is whether AirDNA's projected million-plus in late bookings actually materializes between now and the group stage. The second is what happens to bookings for the knockout rounds once the bracket fills in mid-June. Those two will settle this argument more than any single data point we've seen yet.

MARKET INSIGHTS

Mortgage Rate Snapshot

Mortgage rates entered the week at a 6-week high after Wednesday's PPI surprise, dipped Thursday on bond recovery and Trump/Xi peace hopes, then reversed hard once that meeting wrapped without progress on Iran. By Tuesday rates were up a cumulative 0.75% from the war's start, the fastest spike since late 2024.

Regulations Update

• A New York City Council member filed a bill to loosen Local Law 18's strict cap on under-30-day rentals ahead of the 2026 World Cup

• Illinois HB 5776 would impose a statewide 4% excise tax on STR stays under 30 days, with collections starting January 1, 2027 if passed

• Flagstaff, Arizona approved the first reading of updated STR licensing rules, with further readings and public hearings to follow

• Arapahoe County, Colorado adopted a new STR ordinance with a $200 application fee, $350 annual license, 500-foot spacing between rentals, and a local agent required to answer calls within 15 minutes

See this weeks full regulations report here: (The Host Report)