Numbers staying in Airbnb-style accommodation in Dublin down almost 60%
Tourists on Grafton St in the centre of Dublin. A crackdown on short-term rental lettings was introduced in Dublin in 2019. File Picture: PA
The number of nights spent by visitors in Airbnb-style accommodation in Dublin has fallen dramatically since pre-pandemic levels, according to a new report by the European Commission.
New figures — with data collated from four major accommodation booking platforms: Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia, and TripAdvisor — have revealed that the number of bookings for short-term rental accommodation in Dublin last year fell by almost 60% compared to 2019 levels.
It is the largest decline recorded by any major city destination for tourists within the EU, according to the latest figures.
The report shows a total of 1,063,270 guest nights in Dublin were booked on the four online platforms in 2022.
Although it represented a doubling of the number of overnight stays compared to 2021, which was badly affected by travel restrictions, last year’s total is almost 1.56m fewer guest nights than in 2019, representing a decrease of 59.4%.
The reduction in short-term rentals in Dublin is higher than the decrease recorded in other popular city destinations including Amsterdam (-54.5%), Prague (-52.4%), Berlin (-38.6%), Budapest (-33.8%), and Rome (-19.3%).
The figures are likely to raise questions over the crackdown on short-term rental lettings introduced in Dublin in 2019 due to concerns about their impact on the availability of residential accommodation, given the housing crisis in the city.
Property owners within the administrative area of Dublin City Council must secure planning permission to provide short-term or holiday letting, unless it is their own home which they can rent for a maximum of 90 days.
Almost 1,600 properties in Dublin have been investigated for operating suspected illegal short-term lets since the new legislation was enacted.
At a national level, the total number of guest nights in Ireland booked on the four platforms last year was down 23.2% on pre-pandemic levels.
It was the third-biggest percentage drop in short-term lets by visitors among EU countries in 2022 after the Czech Republic and Hungary, at a time when overall guest nights booked on online platforms across the EU were up almost 7% on 2019 levels.
The figures show that just over 5.3m overnight stays were recorded across the Republic in 2022, compared to over 6.9m in 2019.
Other regions to suffer a downturn in what the European Commission brands “platform tourism” included the South-West, covering Cork and Kerry, where guest nights were down 10.8% to 1.2m — a fall of almost 146,000.
Overnight stays via booking platforms were also down 10.5% to 988,000 in the West region, which includes Galway and Mayo.
The number of guest nights in the Mid-West and Mid-East regions were effectively unchanged since 2019 at 486,000 and 316,000, respectively.
In contrast, the number of bookings were up in some parts of the country compared to pre-pandemic levels, including the border region, which was up 27.8% to over 758,000 guest nights.
Other areas to record an increase were the South-East — up 11.5% to just under 409,000 guest nights — and the midlands, where overnight stays were up 10.1% to 85,000.
Commenting on the latest figures, the Irish Tourism Industry Confederation said the overall downturn in guest nights booked on online platforms was not surprising given 2019 was a record year for Irish tourism, while some pandemic restrictions were still in place during the first quarter of 2022.
However, ITIC chief executive, Eoghan O’Mara Walsh, said the reduction in the use of such accommodation in Dublin was “quite significant”.
“Irish
still has a hangover from covid, and overall visitor numbers are still a good bit down on 2019, so we’re a long way from a full recovery,” said Mr O’Mara Walsh.
He expressed concern about the availability of tourist accommodation, given the reduction of supply of one-fifth of hotel accommodation around the country for “humanitarian needs” to provide housing for Ukrainian refugees and asylum seekers combined, along with the restrictions on short-term accommodation lettings in Dublin.
“It would seem foolish to compound the situation by reducing the stock of short-term tourist lets,” he said.
The four international websites for booking short-term rental accommodation have provided data to the European Commission as part of an agreement signed in March 2020.
The next highest numbers were recorded in Spain (106.3m), Italy (77.3m), and Germany (38.6m).
