• Airbnb Crackdown a Windfall for New York City Hotels   

Excerpt from Travel Weekly

Business is booming for New York City's hotels, and the city's recent crackdown on short-term rentals may be a driving force.

New York enjoyed the highest December occupancy of any top 25 market in the U.S. at 86.6%, according to STR. The city's average daily rate (ADR) also surged in December, rising nearly 11% to $393, while revenue per available room (RevPAR) shot up 15.6%. 

That compares with a national December RevPAR average increase of just 0.3%. 

The spikes coincide with a plummeting of availability for short-term rentals of 30 days or fewer, which went from approximately 13,500 listings in August to under 3,000 in December, according to data from AirDNA, due to a New York City law enacted last year that made rental requirements much more onerous for hosts.

New York has long had regulations restricting home rentals of less than 30 days, but enforcement of those measures had historically been lax. That changed with the city's 2022 passage of Local Law 18, which strengthened existing short-term rental legislation and put an emphasis on mandatory host registration. 

The law officially went into effect in September, but previous reservations for fewer than 30 days made via Airbnb were permitted through Dec. 1.

Bram Gallagher, an economist with AirDNA, said the impact of Local Law 18 on New York's short-term rental inventory was "immediate," with the vast majority of short-term rentals in the market now operating as "medium-term stay" accommodations.

AirDNA found that last August, of New York's 27,000 available short-term rental listings, about half were marketed for stays of less than 30 days. By December, that number had shrunk to around 23,000, with only about 10% offering stays under 30 days. 

"In the past, we've seen that the primary effect of short-term rentals on traditional hotel product is to lower their ADR, because that flexibility takes out some of the compression," Gallagher said. "And in urban areas, short-term rentals do compete more closely with hotels than in rural areas, because in rural areas, hotel inventory may not even exist."

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