The four major online platforms AirBnB, Booking.com, TripAdvisor and Expedia can look back on a successful year in Germany. According to the Federal Statistical Office, in 2022 there were a total of 38.6 million overnight stays in holiday apartments and houses in Germany that were booked via these platforms. On the one hand, the providers exceeded their results from the travel year 2021, which was still severely restricted by corona measures, and on the other hand they also topped the pre-pandemic figures from 2019.
For this evaluation, the Federal Statistical Office presented for the first time data on the number of overnight stays below the 10-bed limit, which come from the European statistical authority Eurostat. This data supplements the previously known tourism statistics, which only record establishments with more than 10 beds.
The fact that the four platform operators report data of this kind to Eurostat at all goes back to an agreement at EU level. The EU would like to get a better overview of the private short-term rental market by collecting data and thus be able to counter influences on the housing market better.
More bookings from abroad
According to the Federal Statistical Office, 37.2 million overnight stays were booked via the four platform operators in Germany in 2019. The figures for 2022 were 3.6 percent higher. The majority of overnight stays (96 percent) in 2022 were in holiday apartments or houses with fewer than 10 beds. These are offered by private landlords as a sideline.
In particular, bookings from abroad have picked up again in Germany. They doubled to 11.3 million compared to the numbers from 2021. However, the pre-corona level has not yet been reached here. Despite the increase, the number of overnight stays booked by guests from abroad in 2022 was still 17.5 percent below the level of 2019.
In the years 2020 and 2021, the booking curves will actually only rise as usual in the summer months. In the winter months, among other things, more restrictions applied.
(Image: Federal Statistical Office)
Overnight stays by Germans in Germany, on the other hand, increased significantly: the number of overnight stays by guests from Germany was 15.9 percent higher than before the pandemic. When comparing the years 2021 and 2022, the number of domestic overnight stays booked via the online platforms rose by almost a quarter to 27.2 million.
methodology
The data used by the Federal Statistical Office comes from an agreement between Eurostat and the platform operators AirBnB, Booking.com, TripAdvisor and Expedia. The monthly overnight stays booked via one of these four platforms in holiday apartments and houses in Germany and classified as short-term rentals are recorded. The Federal Statistical Office classifies the data as “experimental() data” in its own statement.
Data from the hotel industry or campsites and data on bookings made via other platforms or directly with the accommodations were not collected. According to Destatis, the figures shown are therefore to be regarded as the lower limit of actual overnight stays in holiday apartments and houses. In relation to the number of overnight stays recorded in the monthly tourism statistics (450.7 million in 2022), this platform data (38.6 million) initially made up a relatively small addition, explains the officebut adds: “However, if you only look at the type of holiday apartments and houses, the platform data represents about half as many overnight stays as the official tourism statistics (91.7 million).”
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