*Updated June 15th, 2021
Tourism is one of the fastest-growing industries worldwide and the vacation rental business is one of those sectors driving that very growth. However, it goes without saying that 2020 was a challenging year, to say the least. The impact of the pandemic has been significant for many short-term vacation rental owners as so much has changed in travel: from where we can travel, to how we travel and why we travel.
Many hopeful signs, like the three approved vaccines, are mounting the expectations for 2021 to be the bounce-back year. Travel may have slowed down, but travel planning hasn’t.
But will travelers start to book again? Let’s find out.
Please take a careful look at these statistics collected by Hosthub customers, from over 78 countries around the world, and several thousand properties.
Booking Stats
New bookings per week worldwide
Click the graph to zoom in
From the graph above we observe that in the last month, new bookings experienced a steep increase. Travelers seem to feel more comfortable start planning their summer vacations.
Even though new bookings in 2021 are, on average, at lower levels compared to 2019, bookings in the last week of June 2021 display an upward trend, outnumbering those of the 2020 corresponding periods.
Let’s hope this trend continues!
Accumulated bookings per week worldwide
Click the graph to zoom in
Looking at the accumulated bookings for the three years, a similar pattern emerges.
Accumulated bookings this year are at a lower level than in 2019 & 2020 even though we notice an upward trend in the last 2 months.
In particular the last week of June 2021, we observe a drop of almost 45%, compared to the same period in 2019.
Booking window in days worldwide
Click the graph to zoom in
The booking window is an important metric to consider, and it refers to the time between the day when a booking is made by the guest and his check-in day.
As we would expect, this year travelers are increasingly booking more at the last minute and less in advance.
The above graph shows that the median number of days a reservation was made before the check-in date has significantly increased since 2019.
However, we can’t ignore, that in the past few weeks, the booking window has started decreasing again. This reflects the fact that guests feel more comfortable to start traveling again, mostly because of the vaccination campaign being met with high success in most countries.
To conclude, it seems that the second wave of the pandemic still affects new bookings, but there has been a steep increase in bookings since the second week of January, which allows us to look through this season in a positive light.
Stats will be updated weekly.
STR new bookings in 2021 in the UK – pre covid and post covid
STR new bookings in 2021 in the USA – pre covid and post covid
