Magazine

The collaborative economy is a controversial issue, and this is especially true of tourist vacation accommodation advertised through websites such as Airbnb. On the one hand, the right to rent out one's home and, on the other hand, the undeniable reality that there is a business model around these platforms, hence the need for coherent regulation.

But how big is it? How many of the tourists who visit the city do so by staying through Airbnb?

Although it is difficult to know exactly how many tourists stay in each booking, what we can estimate is the total number of places booked.

Thanks to publicly available data, today we know that, between June 2016 and June 2017, almost 2 million accommodation places were booked through the Airbnb platform.

Once again, the district that offers the most places is Ciutat Vella, with 32.16% of all places booked (more than six hundred thousand), followed by Poblats Marítims, with 15.16%, the other major center of tourist attraction.

The vast majority of the places booked are in entire apartments, although the 283,820 booked in private rooms in shared apartments (almost 15% of the total) stand out.

However, it does not seem that this increase in accommodation places is affecting the hotel industry, an industry that in 2017 is showing occupancy rates and income at all-time highs.