How Many Airbnbs Actually Get Booked? The Dormant-Listing Problem, by Market
Data by Brixfox ·
Every market has a quiet majority of Airbnbs that look active but barely rent — listed, photographed, sitting on the calendar, almost never booked. The share that actually books is one of the most honest signals of a market's health: where demand is tight, nearly every listing fills; where supply has run ahead of demand (or where owners list speculatively), a large slice goes dormant.
We measured it across 150,000+ listings we track by daily calendar diffs. The booking rate — the share of tracked listings actually renting — ranges from 87% in Aruba down to 40% in the Philippines. Here is the full picture, sorted from tightest to loosest.
Airbnb booking rate and earnings, by market
Brixfox calendar data, trailing quarter to June 2026. Booking rate = share of tracked listings actually renting. Occupancy & revenue are medians for those that do. Markets shown have 200+ listings with calendar coverage.
| Market | Booking rate | Median occupancy | Median rev/mo |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aruba | 87% | 63% | $5,292 |
| Portugal | 81% | 52% | $3,294 |
| Greece | 81% | 57% | $3,408 |
| Spain | 81% | 50% | $2,853 |
| Curaçao | 79% | 57% | $3,038 |
| Bonaire | 79% | 50% | $2,947 |
| Turks & Caicos | 78% | 52% | $11,603 |
| Croatia | 74% | 46% | $1,980 |
| Mauritius | 73% | 43% | $2,450 |
| St. Barts | 70% | 48% | $13,164 |
| Sint Maarten | 69% | 48% | $3,427 |
| Bali (Indonesia) | 64% | 52% | $2,393 |
| Barbados | 59% | 50% | $3,966 |
| Dubai | 53% | 60% | $3,220 |
| Mexico | 50% | 35% | $1,644 |
| Vietnam | 50% | 44% | $1,272 |
| Thailand | 43% | 43% | $1,399 |
| Philippines | 40% | 37% | $717 |
What the data says
- The tightest markets are the supply-constrained islands. Aruba (87%), Curaçao and Bonaire (79%) and Turks & Caicos (78%) book almost everything that lists — small land mass, hard barriers to new supply, and the pricing power that comes with it.
- Mature Europe books reliably but at thinner revenue. Portugal, Greece and Spain all clear ~81% booking rates, but median monthly revenue ($2,850–$3,400) sits below the constrained Caribbean — deep, well-run markets where supply has largely caught up with demand.
- Bali is mid-pack at 64% — strong demand, but a third of listings effectively sit dormant, the signature of a market that has absorbed a very large supply wave.
- The loosest markets carry the biggest speculative tail. Thailand (43%), the Philippines (40%), Mexico and Vietnam (50%) have the most listings that rarely book — a mix of oversupply and owner-occupier or part-time listings that inflate the headline count.
- Dubai is the instructive exception: a low 53% booking rate sits alongside the highest occupancy on this list (60%) among the listings that do rent. New supply floods in faster than anywhere, so a big tail is brand-new or owner-blocked — but the listings that operate, perform.
Why booking rate matters more than the headline count
Listing counts are the number most often quoted about a market, and they are the most misleading. A market can look enormous and still be loose: in Thailand and the Philippines, more than half of the Airbnbs you would scroll past barely take a booking. Booking rate strips that out — it asks, of the listings actually in the game, how many are winning. A high rate means demand is absorbing supply; a low rate means you would be entering a crowded field where the average listing struggles.
It is a market-level filter, not a verdict on any single property. Even in the loosest markets the best-located, best-run listings book beautifully — oversupply just widens the gap between the top performers and the dormant middle. The point of a number like this is to tell you how hard the field is before you start, and how much your selection and management will have to do once you are in.
How this is measured
Figures come from Brixfox's data engine, which tracks 150,000+ active Airbnb listings across 20+ countries by diffing their Airbnb and Booking.com calendars every day. Booking rate is the share of listings with real calendar coverage (25+ tracked days) that rented at least 10% of nights over the trailing quarter to June 2026; occupancy and revenue are medians for those performing listings. Coverage varies by market, so very thinly-tracked markets are excluded. Observed medians, informational only, and not investment advice.
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