Airbnb has booked more than 1 million guests for New Year’s Eve, nearly doubling last year’s total and setting its all-time record for one day.
The room-sharing company, which booked 550,000 guests last New Year’s Eve, had not previously surpassed the 1 million mark for a single day. New York City has 47,000 Airbnb bookings, the most of any place in the world. The other top U.S. destinations, in descending order, are Miami, Los Angeles, Orlando, Tahoe (California/Nevada), New Orleans, Oahu (Hawaii), San Francisco and Aspen/Vail (Colorado).
Worldwide, the other top destinations are Paris, London, Sydney, Berlin, Tokyo, Barcelona (Spain), Amsterdam and Rome.
Chip Conley, head of hospitality for Airbnb, told Skift that part of the reason for the record-breaking total is that there is the trend toward more multigenerational travel is particularly strong during holidays, when families enjoy staying in an actual home or apartment.
Bookings for the upcoming New Year’s Eve have taken some huge percentage jumps over the previous year in several cities. Leading the way are Fukuoka, Japan (1,287), Cuba (877), Osaka, Japan (678), Acapulco (519) and Kyoto, Japan (417).
Conley attributes the increased bookings in Japanese cities to their fast-growing middle class and millennial travel base.
The three most traveled routes on New Year’s Eve are Singapore to Tokyo, Buenos Aires to Rio de Janeiro, and Hong Kong to Osaka.
In Cuba, there are some 2,000 Airbnb listings, mainly in Havana, which has far too few for the rapidly increasing demand—partly because Airbnb guest who travel to Cuba share a high volume of social media traffic.
