With our new free Smart Rental account you can visualise any short term rental market worldwide, and see how it compares in terms of average daily rate (ADR), occupancy, revenue and platform distribution.
Let’s look at the big vacation rental hitters in Europe and how they stack up.
Top 5 European supply markets
| Rank | Market | STR Properties (Dec 2019) |
| 1 | London, UK | 64,208 |
| 2 | Paris, FR | 43,678 |
| 3 | Rome, IT | 41,161 |
| 4 | Moscow, RU | 24,950 |
| 5 | Madrid, ES | 24,463 |
So how do the most significant vacation rental markets in Europe compare when it comes to performance?
Moscow
First, we take a look at Moscow in Russia. With a perhaps surprisingly large supply, Moscow comes in as 4th largest European market, ahead of Madrid. Below you can see average daily rate, average occupancy and average annual revenue achieved per property through 2019.
A less established market however, Moscow ranks lowest in daily rate (ADR), occupancy and revenue per property too through 2019.
In the doughnut chart below, we can see that Airbnb holds half of this more emerging market, with Booking.com, in one of their largest user bases, snapping at their heels on 41%. Vrbo are next and hold only 8% of the total Moscow listings.
Madrid
Next up and lowest ranked in supply of our biggest destinations is Madrid. Madrid is a well established vacation rental destination; the capital of Spain, 4th largest short term rental country in Europe.
Of our ‘big 5’ markets, Madrid beats only Moscow in terms of both occupancy and revenue, Madrid only misses out on top occupancy spot to Paris by 3%. Airbnb is also more dominant in Madrid relative to its competitors. Booking post a lower supply at 27% with Vrbo pulling a higher share at 13%.
Rome
Now we look at Rome, capital of the largest European short term rental country. Rome sits a steady middle of the road 3rd in all 3 performance metrics, with an ADR under $100, occupancy 67% and a $20.3k annual property revenue.
Things do however get more interesting when we look at the supply distribution amongst our leading OTAs. Rome represents the closest power struggle of our top 5 markets, with Airbnb only edging out Booking.com by 5%. Our 2 European booking channel juggernauts represent 75% of the total market share in the Italian capital. TripAdvisor meanwhile hits its highest listings proportion of 9% here.
London
Next up London, England, which is currently the largest STR market in Europe.
Ranked top in terms of supply it may be, but London comes in second behind Paris in terms of average daily rate. It also claims second in property revenue, losing out to Paris by nearly $6,000 a year, mostly as a result of an occupancy of only 66%, behind Paris (78%), Madrid (75%) and marginally, Rome (67%).
The platform distribution tells a more familiar European story in London, with Airbnb holding a dominant 55% of vacation rental listings – over double that of Booking.com’s 22% share. Vrbo hits its highest proportion of total market listings of our featured big 5 in London, with 16%, doubling Tripadvisor’s 8%.
Paris
With an impressive $27.2k average property revenue last year, our final featured market of Paris decidedly takes the crown for best revenue achieved per property of the largest EU markets, with not only the highest price tag ($118) but also the highest achieved occupancy (78%) through 2019.
Paris also sees the most significant Airbnb monopoly of our 5 locations. The supply ranking across the 4 main platforms remains the same in our final market too; Booking.com still hold a respectable 5th of the market, with Vrbo on 13% ahead of TripAdvisor (3.7%) in our biggest earning market.
Below is a summary table to compare the 5 markets.
So we’ve taken a brief look through the biggest European vacation rental markets, but the question is, how does your area compare? With our new free Smart Rental dashboard, you can search any area and compare even different parts of a market to understand where the best return on investment could lie, or even to benchmark your pricing or occupancy.
Take a look today, or book your own personal demo of our PRO dashboard to see what the data can do for you.
You can also take a look at a similar analysis of the US, with our article US: how much revenue do vacation rentals in your area make?