At the end of June 2017, almost 30,000 Airbnb properties were registered in Switzerland offering around 80,000 beds. This is an increase of 11,000 compared to last year.
The Valais Tourism Observatory estimates that by the end of the year there will be 3 million Airbnb overnight stays – approximately 8% of the 35 million hotel overnight stays.
Since 2014, the Valais Tourism Observatory (Tourobs) has been monitoring the development of the Airbnb properties in Switzerland and especially in Valais canton.
The analyses carried in 2015, 2016 and early 2017 showed a strong increase in the number of properties and beds and quite distinct territorial disparities. A new study provides an overview of the current Airbnb offer in Switzerland, based on the primary data collected by Tourobs at the end of June.
The results show that at the end of June 2017, 29,595 Airbnb properties with 80,227 beds were registered in Switzerland. This corresponds to an average of 2.7 beds per property and an increase of 11,000 properties in just one year.
The Valais canton remains the canton with most Airbnb properties (5,150) and beds (22,953). The other two cantons with most beds are Graubünden and Bern.
The ranking of the cantons based on the size of their Airbnb range shows a very strong dominance of Basel (20.3%), followed by Geneva (8.8%) and Zurich (6.5%). In this ranking the city cantons, which are well above the average of 4.2 percent on the Swiss level, predominated.
For Switzerland as a whole, the average price per bed is 73 franks. The highest rates are levied by the city cantons, with Basel being the most expensive – 121 franks.
In Switzerland, Airbnb’s share now accounts for 30% of the hotel supply. This is an increase of 5 percentage points in six months. The share of Airbnb beds in the hotel offer exploded in Valais from 57 to 73% in just one semester.
According to Airbnb data, Switzerland generated 447,000 arrivals in 23,000 properties last year. Taking into account an average stay of 4.5 days, the number of Airbnb overnight stays can be estimated at around 2 million, according to Tourbos analysts. And they expect a further increase: “We expect Airbnb to offer 35,000 properties by the end of 2017. This year, Airbnb could generate three million overnight stays in Switzerland, which would correspond to about 8% of the 35 million hotel overnight stays.”
The proportion of Airbnb properties managed by a single host has dropped significantly since the last Tourobs study half a year ago (from 60% to 56.8%, which is 16,818 properties).
There are 134 landlords which manage a total of 4469 Airbnb properties (around 15% of the offer in Switzerland).
The clearly most important players are Interhome with 19 user profiles and a total of 1,713 Airbnb properties (6% of the offer) followed by Interchalet with 10 user profiles and 241 properties. 1,274 properties are managed by 49 hosts (housing agencies and real estate companies, private individuals) in the classic holiday regions (Berne, Graubünden, Ticino and Valais). Valais is represented strongly with 27 hosts and 581 Airbnb properties.
