Airbnb Occupancy Rates By City

Occupancy rate is the number hosts watch most obsessively and misread most often. If you're sitting at 62% and don't know whether to celebrate or panic, you're not alone. The answer depends entirely on your city, your price tier, and which 30 days you're measuring. Here's what the 2026 data actually looks like across major STR markets — plus how to pull your own benchmarks and what to do once you have them.

What Occupancy Rate Means (And What It Doesn't)

Occupancy rate = nights booked ÷ nights available. If your listing is open for 28 days in February and books 19 of them, that's 68%. The math is simple. The interpretation isn't.

In Q1 2026, my Austin 3-bed hit 71% occupancy — up from 63% the year before — but net payout was down $1,840. My ADR had slipped from $187 to $161 because I was chasing fill rate without holding price. High occupancy with weak pricing is just as damaging as low occupancy with strong pricing. What you actually want to optimize is RevPAR (revenue per available night), not the raw fill number. A host who learns this early saves themselves a lot of confused spreadsheet hours.

That said, knowing your market's occupancy benchmark is step one. You can't set a smart pricing floor without knowing what "normal" looks like for your city and property type.

2026 Airbnb Occupancy Rates by City

These figures come from public AirDNA market reports, host discussions on BiggerPockets STR forums, and my own portfolio tracking. They represent typical annual occupancy for well-reviewed, competitively priced entire-home listings — not the top 10% of performers, not the bottom quarter.

A few honest caveats. These are 2025–2026 full-calendar averages for 2–3 bedroom entire homes. Studios and shared spaces run lower. Luxury properties ($400+/night) often operate at 45–55% intentionally — they're pricing for RevPAR, not fill rate. Regulations also move these numbers fast. New York's figures reflect post-Local Law 18 supply compression. Portland's reflect ongoing headwinds. Check Short Term Rentalz regularly for the regulatory updates that move city-level supply the fastest.

Why Raw Occupancy Can Mislead You

A host near me in Columbus brags every fall about 80% occupancy during the football and military-base calendar. His ADR runs $89/night. My unit runs at 51% but I price at $127/night for the same bedroom count. His RevPAR: $71.20. Mine: $64.77. He barely wins on RevPAR — but he's also running nearly twice as many turnovers, twice as much cleaning expense, twice as much key-exchange complexity. Once you account for $85-per-clean turnover costs, his margin advantage collapses to almost nothing.

The metric worth anchoring on: RevPAR = total revenue ÷ nights available. Benchmark it quarterly, not monthly. A single event week can blow up a 30-day occupancy window and make the number misleading in either direction.

How to Pull Your Own Occupancy Benchmarks

Three options, in order of cost:

1. Free: AirDNA free tier. Market-level averages, not address-specific. Useful for city-level sanity checks before you buy a property or set an annual pricing floor.
2. Paid: AirDNA MarketMinder (~$19–$49/mo). Address-level comp sets. Worth it for an acquisition decision; overkill for day-to-day management once you already own the property.
3. Free: your own calendar history. Your Airbnb host dashboard under Insights → Performance shows 12 months of occupancy data and a comparison to similar listings in your area. That comp is imperfect but directionally useful. Pair it with the city table above and you'll know within a week whether you have a pricing problem, a conversion problem, or a demand problem.

The third option is underrated. Your actual booking history is more accurate for your specific property type and location than any model AirDNA builds from aggregated data. Start there.

How to Set Up Occupancy Tracking Across All Your Channels

Manual spreadsheets break down fast once you're running more than two properties or listing on multiple channels. Here's the setup I use with a property management system:

1. Connect all booking sources. If you're on Airbnb + VRBO + direct, every channel needs to sync into one calendar. iCal handles most cases; a Hospitable or Lodgify API connection gives you the full financial picture alongside your booking calendar.
2. Track four monthly KPIs only. Nights available (after your own personal blocks), nights booked, ADR, RevPAR. Four columns. That's the entire performance dashboard you need.
3. Set a comp baseline each January. Record the AirDNA market average for your city and bedroom count. Lock it. Then track your monthly variance. Outperforming by 8 points means your listing quality and pricing are working. Underperforming by 10 points means investigate: photos, review score, pricing algorithm, minimum-stay settings.
4. Set your pricing floor from RevPAR, not cost-plus. Most hosts use PriceLabs, Wheelhouse, or Airbnb Smart Pricing. Your floor should be RevPAR target ÷ expected occupancy. If the Columbus market averages $65 RevPAR and you target 50% occupancy, your floor is $130/night — not your mortgage payment plus 20%.
5. Load event blocks two quarters out. Event weekends should already have minimum stays and price increases in place 6–8 weeks before the event. Demand curves for event markets peak 4–6 weeks out, not the week of. If you're adjusting price three days before SXSW, you've already missed the curve.

Common Mistakes When Reading Occupancy Data

Chasing 100% occupancy. Every night booked at the wrong price is a night you couldn't reprice up. 78% at $160/night beats 92% at $120/night in every scenario. Do the RevPAR math before you drop a weekend price to fill a Thursday gap.

Comparing to the wrong comp set. A 4-bedroom luxury cabin in Gatlinburg shouldn't benchmark against a market average that includes 200 studio condos. Segment your comp by bedroom count and property type. The table above is a starting point, not your personal target.

Not accounting for your own blocks. If you block 8 nights in March for personal use and then report 55% occupancy, your availability-adjusted occupancy is actually higher. Track available nights correctly or the metric is noise from the start.

Ignoring booking window compression. In softer markets, guests increasingly book 10–14 days out. If requests are thin, it might not be a demand problem — your minimum stay (say, 4 nights) may be filtering out 2-night guests who book late. Lowering minimums inside the 14-day window is a standard yield technique worth testing.

How Koohost Handles Occupancy Tracking

I built Koohost partly because I got tired of switching between Airbnb analytics, a PriceLabs tab, and a separate spreadsheet just to answer "am I on track this month?" The statements dashboard rolls up RevPAR, occupancy, ADR, and forward pickup (30/60/90-day windows) across all properties in one screen — including iCal bookings from VRBO and direct, not just Hospitable-sourced reservations.

On the operations side, the AI agent Koo ties occupancy context to guest management. When a new booking lands, Koo drafts a personalized welcome message in seconds — pulling the guest name, arrival date, and live door code from the Schlage Encode Plus lock and Nest Learning Thermostat (3rd gen) status. The TP-Link Deco X55 mesh I run at each property keeps the smart-home connection reliable enough that lock and thermostat data is always current when a booking comes in. That operational consistency — right codes, right temp, right message — drives reviews, which compound into higher future occupancy. The smart lock integration alone is why my turnovers run smoothly even when I'm not on-site.

For hosts comparing tools: Hospitable runs $29–$99/mo in 2026 and is excellent for automated messaging if you're PMS-dependent. Hostaway typically runs $125+/mo and goes deeper on channel management. Neither rolls up occupancy analytics with smart-home integration in one interface. That's the gap Koohost addresses at $15/mo (Solo Host, iCal sync) or $30/mo (Pro Host, full PMS API). There's a full side-by-side comparison here if you want to see the feature list before deciding.

One honest limitation worth stating: Koohost doesn't have AirDNA-style market benchmarking built in yet. You still pull city-level comps from AirDNA or the Airbnb Insights tab and compare manually against your Koohost RevPAR numbers. It's not one dashboard for everything — that gap is on the roadmap, but I won't pretend it isn't there right now.

If you want to get the operations side dialed — consistent messaging, pricing floors, automated lock codes, and occupancy tracking across booking channels — check the full list of STR management software options before committing to any one tool.

Try Koohost free for 30 days — no credit card. Sign up here.

FAQ

What is a good Airbnb occupancy rate?

For most markets, 60–70% annual occupancy is the target for a competitively priced, well-reviewed entire home. Below 55% consistently suggests a pricing, listing quality, or demand problem worth investigating. Consistently above 75% usually means you're underpriced — you could raise ADR and achieve the same or better RevPAR at slightly lower occupancy.

Which city has the highest Airbnb occupancy rates?

Based on 2025–2026 data, the Smoky Mountains / Gatlinburg corridor, Miami, and Sedona consistently rank near the top for entire-home listings, often hitting 68–78% annual average. Rankings shift year to year as local regulations change supply. New York's occupancy compressed upward after Local Law 18 restricted supply in 2023–2024.

How do I check my Airbnb occupancy rate?

Log into your Airbnb host account and go to Insights → Performance. You'll see occupancy over the last 12 months and a comparison to similar listings. For multi-channel setups (VRBO + direct + Airbnb), you need a PMS or iCal aggregator to get an accurate all-channel occupancy number — the Airbnb dashboard only counts Airbnb-sourced nights.

Does Airbnb Smart Pricing help occupancy?

It improves fill rate but often reduces ADR in the process. Airbnb's algorithm tends to drop prices more aggressively than most experienced hosts want. A third-party tool like PriceLabs or Wheelhouse lets you set your own pricing floor while dynamic pricing works within those guardrails. Never let any algorithm price below your RevPAR target.

Is 50% occupancy good for a short-term rental?

In most markets, no — 50% is below average for a well-positioned listing. Exceptions include luxury properties ($400+/night) that target 45–55% intentionally because ADR is high enough that RevPAR still works. Second-tier markets like Columbus, GA or Portland, OR also have lower demand ceilings where 50% may represent the realistic market ceiling.

How does occupancy rate affect Airbnb Superhost status?

Superhost requires 10 completed stays (or 100 nights) per year, a 4.8+ overall rating, and cancellations under 1%. Occupancy rate isn't a direct Superhost metric, but low occupancy makes the 10-stay threshold harder to hit for newer listings. Superhost status itself tends to lift future occupancy 5–10% through improved search ranking — so it compounds over time.