Short-term lets in Cornwall 2024
- rpwills
- Aug 6
- 2 min read
The data in this post is from an ONS bulletin. It is a useful source of data on the short-term holiday rental market in Cornwall.
UK headline trends
From January to December 2024, there were 90,096,700 guest nights spent in short-term lets in the UK.
The distribution of guest nights across the year was strongly affected by the seasons. August was the most popular month, with 12,788,560 guest nights (14.9% of the annual total) in the UK. January had the fewest guest nights with 3,651,460 (4.0%).
The four local authorities in the UK with the highest total number of guest nights in short-term lets in 2024 were Westminster (3,901,890), Cornwall (3,430,070), City of Edinburgh (3,016,130), and Highland (2,622,400).
Cornwall
... Cornwall, the local authority with the second-highest total number of guest nights (3,430,070, 3.8% of the UK total), is a predominantly rural area in the South West of England. In mid-2023, it had a resident population of 578,342 and in 2024, the median house cost 8.85 times the yearly average earning for the area.
Like Westminster, the average length of stay in short-term lets in Cornwall was four days in 2024. Unlike Westminster, guest nights in Cornwall followed a more pronounced seasonal pattern. In the summer months, Cornwall overtook Westminster as the place with the highest number of guest nights in the UK:
May (364,110)
June (378,160)
July (595,550)
August (803,920)
September (320,320)
The Cornish August figure was almost 23 times the UK average guest nights (35,430) at that time. During the winter, guest nights in Cornwall decreased, with the August high being about twelve times the January low (66,810). The proportion of international guests was low, at 16.2%; most people staying in short-term lets in Cornwall were domestic visitors.
Notes
In this bulletin, "short-term lets" refers to rentals, such as apartments or rooms, booked through Airbnb, Booking.com and Expedia Group, excluding other forms of accommodation, such as hotels or campsites.
This analysis provides aggregated data booked through the three large online collaborative economy platforms on the number of guest nights, nights, and stays spent in short-term lets offered via online platforms during the twelve months to December 2024.
The number of guest nights accounts for the number of nights spent during a stay multiplied by the number of visitors in the travel party. This can be influenced by guest group size and length of stay. For example, a group of four staying for two nights would be eight guest nights, but one guest staying for two nights would be two guest nights. The number of nights refers to the number of nights a property or room offered by the platforms was occupied during a stay; whereas the number of stays refers to the number of times a facility offered by the platforms was occupied by a single booking, regardless of length of stay.
This bulletin focuses on the number of guest nights, unless otherwise stated.
Source
Office for National Statistics, (19th May 2025), Short-term lets through online collaborative economy platforms, UK: January to December 2024.
Comments