Contact:
Ben Breit, Airbnb Public Affairs
c: 847-274-5456
Madison, WI — Airbnb, the world’s leading community-driven hospitality company, announced today that Madison hosts earned over $133,000 in income while welcoming an additional 1,000 guests to the city last weekend during the University of Wisconsin commencement (May 10-11).
This represented the second largest surge of guests to Madison in the history of Airbnb’s platform, behind only a stretch in early August 2018 that coincided with the Crossfit Games.
UW commencement has long been known to fill Madison hotels to peak occupancy, even with higher rates. Home sharing and vacation rentals have allowed cities like Madison to utilize pre-existing resources – people’s homes – to expand lodging capacity and retain as many visitors as possible.
Additionally, Airbnb collects and remits the Madison room tax thanks to a tax agreement with the city. This means the surge in guests represented a boost in tax revenue as well.
Airbnb previously announced that Dane County hosts earned $5.5 million in supplemental income in 2018 while welcoming 44,000 guest arrivals.
About Airbnb
Founded in 2008, Airbnb exists to create a world where anyone can belong anywhere, providing healthy travel that is local, authentic, diverse, inclusive and sustainable. Airbnb uniquely leverages technology to economically empower millions of people around the world to unlock and monetize their spaces, passions and talents to become hospitality entrepreneurs. Airbnb’s accommodation marketplace provides access to 6+ million unique places to stay in nearly 100,000 cities and 191 countries. With Experiences, Airbnb offers unprecedented access to local communities and interests through 30,000+ unique, handcrafted activities run by hosts across 1,000+ markets around the world. Airbnb’s people-to-people platform benefits all its stakeholders, including hosts, guests, employees and the communities in which it operates.
