Airbnb: Madison Airbnb hosts earned $585,000 during UW games

MEDIA CONTACT: Ben Breit, Airbnb Midwest Public Affairs
Phone: (847) 274-5456
Email: benjamin.breit@airbnb.com

MADISON, WI – Airbnb announced today that the Madison Airbnb host community welcomed 5,500 guest arrivals and earned $585,000 in supplemental income during University of Wisconsin home football weekends, helping the city significantly expand lodging capacity and welcome the surge in visitors as hotels reached peak capacity.

This includes a projected 600 guest arrivals and $52,000 in supplemental income during this coming weekend’s Senior Day game versus Minnesota. The most dynamic stretch for the home sharing community came during the weekend of the Nebraska game, followed by the Homecoming game against Illinois.

With local hotels achieving peak occupancy during UW games, the growth of home sharing in Madison has allowed the city to host thousands of extra visitors and take full advantage of the unique economic opportunity presented by the football program. This benefits the local merchant community by keeping visitors’ food and shopping dollars within Madison’s corporate limits.

At a broader level, Madison’s hotels have enjoyed steadily increasing occupancy rates and revenues, illustrating the value to the city as short-term rentals expand lodging capacity during popular events and open up the market to families less able to afford hotels.

The city benefits further from the expanded lodging capacity during UW home weekends thanks to a tax agreement with Airbnb that allows the company to collect Madison’s room tax on behalf of its local hosts and remit the revenue directly to the city. Airbnb recently announced that it delivered $324,000 in room tax revenue to the city in the first year of their agreement, outpacing the original projection of $200,000.

The game-by-game data can be found in full below: