Airbnb worth over €20 million to Mayo but having ‘huge knock-on impact’ in Westport

TRAVEL on short stay booking website Airbnb was worth €21 million to Mayo’s economy in 2022, according to a new analysis.

‘The Economic Impact of Airbnb in Ireland’ by Oxford Economics found 238,000 nights of accommodation were booked through Airbnb last year. This generated €25 million of Airbnb-linked spending in ancillary businesses such as pubs, restaurants and other tourist businesses.

The report found that 330 jobs in Mayo were supported by Airbnb, which has properties listed for short stays in every part of the county.

Entire houses or apartments accounted for 92 percent of Airbnb bookings in Mayo, with the rest coming from private rooms.

Speaking to The Mayo News this afternoon (Wednesday), Westport-based county councillor Peter Flynn said that the number of Airbnbs in his area were creating a shortage of rental properties for local workers.

At present, there are nine properties to rent in the Westport area listed on Daft.ie.

According to Insideairbnb.com, there are 504 properties – including 305 entire houses and apartments - listed on Airbnb in the Westport Local Electoral Area, which runs from Newport to the Galway-Mayo border at Killary Fjord.

“There’s no debating the benefit of Airbnb in terms of direct visitors and money coming into the local economy, but it’s the other side of the equation that people are ignoring, and Airbnb are ignoring. You’re taking a hell of a lot of former long-term residential units out of the local economy, which is having a huge knock-on impact, particularly on employment,” said Cllr Flynn.

“People simply cannot get accommodation, particularly in the Westport town area. So the likes of the Abbvies are struggling, the Portwests, the bigger multinationals are struggling to get employees, the hotels are struggling to get employees, the restaurants, the tourism industry in general are really, really struggling to get people to come to relocate to Westport.”

Of those who booked Airbnb stays in Mayo, 45 percent were from the domestic tourist market.

Eleven percent of bookings were made by visitors from The United States, with the United Kingdom (25 percent), France (5 percent), Germany (4 percent) and other countries (10 percent) making up the remainder.

By comparison, domestic tourists accounted for 24 percent of Galway’s Airbnb nights while visitors from the United States made up 27 percent.

The direct, indirect and induced impact of Airbnb expenditure was calculated based on several factors. This includes spending by guests on retail, leisure and hospitality outlets as well as extra income spent by the host in the local economy.  

Airbnb-linked tourism employment impact was highest in the West region supporting over 1,200 jobs in 2022 (25 percent of total tourism employment impact).

This compares with 870 jobs in the South-West, 860 in the Border Region at 860 and more than 860 in Dublin.

The report found that Airbnb expenditure generated €79 million of extra GDP in the West region, which comprises Mayo, Galway and Roscommon.

Fifty-nine percent of this spending was not related to accommodation.

Airbnb-linked expenditure by Irish guests accounted for 4.1 percent of domestic tourism expenditure in 2022 amounting to €537 million from 4.4 million guest nights.

David Goodger, Managing Director, Europe & Middle East, Tourism Economics at Oxford Economics said that Airbnb listings ‘play an important role enabling visitors to experience Ireland’s tourism offering’.

“They also help to disperse tourism expenditure and bring economic benefits to regional areas of the country which is particularly important for local economies,” he added.