Why July Was So Strong for Short-Term Rentals

**Jamie Lane** (0:05)
Welcome to the STR Data Lab.
Hello, and welcome to the STR Data Lab. I'm Jamie Lane, Chief Economist at AirDNA, and I'm joined today by my trustee co-host, friend, colleague, Bram Gallagher. Bram, welcome back.

**Bram Gallagher** (0:24)
Thanks for having me, Jamie. Always a pleasure on the Data Lab.

**Jamie Lane** (0:27)
Yeah. And for those that celebrate, Happy Eclipse Day.
We're getting a recording here on August 12th, and we're getting the eclipse, I think, going through or having already gone through Iceland and Spain.

**Bram Gallagher** (0:44)
Yeah. If any of our listeners subscribe to the Financial Times, I would invite them to look below the fold. There is an interesting story about that.

**Jamie Lane** (0:52)
Yeah. As soon as I get off this recording, Bram, I'm going to go grab a copy. I was actually just asking Claude where I can actually get a copy of the Financial Times here in Atlanta, and it suggested I go to Barts and Noble. So I'm going to venture over there and see if I can get a copy.

**Bram Gallagher** (1:09)
That's an excellent idea. That may do the same.

**Jamie Lane** (1:13)
So yeah, last week, I dug in to the World Cup with Linda, our colleague, and our friend Susan Brown with the Kansas City Short-Term Rental Alliance. And I don't want to spend a lot of time today talking about World Cup, but it feels like if we're going to recap July, you get a sense of what happened, what's going to be happening going forward, and the World Cup is part of the narrative. So interested in getting your high-level thoughts on how it impacted the country this year or this past month. But before you get started, I haven't talked with you live on air since I was gone for the summer. So how's your summer been?

**Bram Gallagher** (2:04)
Oh, wow, what a summer it has been. Incredible summer. You know, World Cup, thanks so much to Linda. If no one's listened to that episode, they really should.
She had done so much work, and we had spoke to so many people, but incredibly busy summer with the World Cup going on. Just a lot of press, a lot of interest in it, a lot of excitement. And it was a really positive event for the short-term rental industry.
In a period where, you know what, hospitality could use a little bright spot or a nice story. With all the geopolitics and all that kind of stuff that is going on, it was really great to hear. Kansas City in particular had a lot of heartwarming stories, a lot of interesting stuff. So yeah, summer has been really good. It's not once in a lifetime vacation to Iceland, but on the other hand, from a professional standpoint, one of the highlights, all-time highlights, of my entire career this last summer.

**Jamie Lane** (3:08)
Yeah. How many interviews around the World Cup do you think you did over that three or four-month period?

**Bram Gallagher** (3:15)
Oh, gosh.
It was like three or four a day, so multiply that out. It's a lot. It's a lot. A few hundred, it seems like. But it was really exciting to talk to so many people all across the country.

**Jamie Lane** (3:27)
Well, hopefully we get a little break. What's the next big event with the Olympics coming up in LA? Yes.

**Bram Gallagher** (3:32)
People are already interested in that.
We've got, of course, college football also is warming up, and there's some Labor Day games that are, I think, topping our charts at the moment as far as pacing goes. So yeah, looking forward to the next thing, but I don't know if we'll see an event quite like this one in a long time.

**Jamie Lane** (3:52)
Yeah. So I definitely want to dig in to the top line figures, Bram, but maybe I want to ask first, since it was top of mind for me coming back and was Airbnb's earnings call from last week. And I feel like it's always a good indicator, sort of level set around what we're seeing and how does that relate to the public companies, OTAs. So we get, I'm booking Expedia and Airbnb reporting and their view on sort of the health of the market. And are things growing? Are they contracting? Are we seeing ADRs growing? Are they seeing that pull back? And I think in general, from my view, like it was a really healthy conversation about short-term rental demand across really all three major OTAs, and Airbnb and then Expedia talking about Verbo and booking, they all called out in mid to and upper mid single digit growth in the US in terms of overall nights booked. They all talked about healthy ADR growth. Airbnb even dove in specifically around how they were seeing just so much stronger demand for larger listings.