Length of Stay Discounts

With the length of stays in vacation rentals impacted by the changing shape of coronavirus-era demand, analysing discounts according to length of stay can give insights into strategy and pricing.

We have reviewed hundreds of thousands of vacation rental listings across over 200 Airbnb markets to paint a global picture of discount structures. How are hosts setting discounts to encourage longer stays? How can property managers use discounts as a basis for their mid-term pricing strategy on a traditional short-term rental platform?

First of all we take a look at the average percentage discount applied to each length of stay: 7, 15 and 30 days. 

As you can see in the chart above, 7 and 15 day stays were comparable in the average percentage discount applied, while a 30 day stay was subject to almost double the discount on average. As a result of this and also to explore how different hosts are using discounts to promote stays of over a month, we carried out some further analysis on the nature of the 30 day discounts.

30 day discounts

Considering stays of only 30 days allows us to dissect discount settings that hosts are applying for mid-term stays. Whilst the average 30 day stay discount across our listings was around 22%, our second graph shows the frequency of different discount ranges, with 10-15% discount being the most common. 

Subsequently, we analysed the 30 day discounts offered by listing ‘characteristics’. When comparing urban and leisure markets, we observed very little difference – 30 day stays in urban listings were discounted by 22.17% on average, next to 22.08% for those in leisure markets. Further, whilst we also saw no significant difference in discount applied across number of bedrooms or listing type (house, apartment etc), discounts were seen to vary significantly geographically. See the final 2 charts; with the first displaying the aggregated regional averages from our sample markets. Despite the European market average (21.65) being remarkably comparable with that of their North American counterparts (21.95), considerable differences were noted across our other 3 regional groupings.

In our final chart, you can see 30 day stay discount averages across the largest markets in our sample. The dark blue represents the average across all of these markets, while the green shows the average in the given market.

Ultimately, an understanding of how other listings in your market are marked down for longer stays will facilitate a more in tune pricing strategy across your inventory and across different types of stay.

If you would like to learn more about rates in your market, or explore our demand, occupancy, supply, performance or competitor insights, you can book a demo any time at the button below.