Short term lets pass 104 million guest nights as bookings rise in every part of the UK

Britain's short term let market grew again in the year to June. The Office for National Statistics reported on Friday that guests spent 104,617,530 nights in rentals booked through online platforms between July 2025 and June 2026. That total is 10.2 per cent above the 94,959,330 recorded in the previous twelve months, and 22.9 per cent above the 85,157,810 of two years earlier. Behind the headline count sit 36,386,970 occupied nights and 10,525,200 separate stays.

The measure needs its definition kept in view. In this bulletin a short term let is a rental such as an apartment or a room booked through Airbnb, Booking.com or Expedia Group, and hotels and campsites are outside it. A guest night is not a booking: it counts each person in a party for each night stayed, so four people staying two nights make eight guest nights but only one stay. The statisticians also warn that only those three platforms feed the series, that the figures cannot simply be added to other tourism counts because of overlaps, and that bookings cannot be de-duplicated across platforms.

Every part of the country took a share of the growth. England accounted for 81,079,920 guest nights, 77.5 per cent of the UK total, followed by Scotland with 13,303,340, Wales with 7,739,500 and Northern Ireland with 2,494,760. In percentage terms Wales grew fastest, up 14.3 per cent in a year, ahead of Scotland at 12.0 per cent, Northern Ireland at 10.1 per cent and England at 9.5 per cent. Among the English regions the North East posted the largest rise, up 17.3 per cent to 2,888,820, while London remained by far the biggest market in absolute terms, at 21,901,250 guest nights, even though its 5.4 per cent increase was the smallest regional rise.

Photograph: Mainlymazza, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Nearly a quarter (24.5%) of guest nights were spent in 9 of the 361 UK local authorities, between July 2025 and June 2026.Office for National Statistics, short term lets bulletin, 13 November 2026

The business stays heavily concentrated. Almost a quarter of all guest nights, 24.5 per cent, were spent in just nine of the 361 local authorities: Westminster, Cornwall, North Yorkshire, Kensington and Chelsea, Camden, Westmorland and Furness and Liverpool in England, and the City of Edinburgh and Highland in Scotland. Cornwall added the most guest nights of any area in a year, up 394,430 to 4,041,390, while Westminster added 380,940 and recorded the largest increase over two years, at 980,730. At the other end, 34 areas recorded fewer guest nights than a year before, with Gedling showing the steepest percentage fall, at 16.8 per cent.

Domestic trips did most of the work. Guest nights by UK based visitors climbed to 70,990,590, a rise of 13.4 per cent, while the international total grew more slowly, by 4.1 per cent. Wales, where 89.7 per cent of guest nights were domestic, had the highest home share of any country, and Scotland, at 43.3 per cent international, had the highest share from abroad, and London was the only English region where visitors from abroad made up a majority, at 71.3 per cent of its guest nights.

Photograph: Mikey, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

For overseas visitors, the United States remained the largest source market by a wide margin, with 6,164,480 guest nights, nearly twice Germany's 3,133,850, with France third at 2,679,270. Together those three countries supplied 35.6 per cent of all international guest nights. Spain was the fastest growing of the five largest source countries over the period covered, reaching 1,919,580 guest nights. The seasonal pattern held: August 2025 was the busiest month, with 14,143,560 guest nights, and January 2026 the quietest, although even its 4,707,920 was 8.4 per cent above the same month a year earlier. The statisticians advise comparing year with year rather than month with month, because the data move strongly with the seasons and are subject to revision.