287,000 Guests: Airbnb's Impact on DC in 2016

• February 7th 2017

by Nena Perry-Brown

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As Airbnb becomes an increasingly mainstream part of the traveling experience worldwide, it has also become a larger part of the DC tourist experience.

A new Airbnb study reports that over 287,000 Airbnb guests visited the District during 2016 — nearly 80 percent more than the 160,000 Airbnb guests in 2015.

DC’s Airbnb hosts earned nearly $59 million on the service, including $1.3 million for hosts east of the Anacostia. Overall, the study calculates that Airbnb created over $209 million in economic activity in the city last year, a 72 percent increase over 2015. The flaw in this study, however, is that it doesn’t account for the commercial activity in the city that just moved from hotels, for example, to Airbnb rentals, an important point to consider when looking at the economic findings.

The top five cities of origin for visitors who use Airbnb were New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago. Airbnb reports that these guests spent nearly $160 million at retail shops and restaurants in the city. A large portion of that money went toward small businesses outside of the city’s typical hotel districts or tourist core.

After a record-breaking inauguration weekend last month, Airbnb’s 2017 numbers could be higher than those quoted in the report; however, with new regulations for the service under consideration, there is also the potential for this growth to slow down.

From a methodology standpoint, the Airbnb study measures economic activity by multiplying the average daily spending of Airbnb guests in DC ($146) by the total number of guest nights, then adding total host earnings.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/airbnbs_economic_impact_on_dc_in_2016/12147.