London’s Short-Term Holiday Rental Market: Coming Back, But Slowly

When it comes to revenue management for 2021, it’s clear that using 2020 pace data may be a tad misleading, to say the least. That doesn’t rule out all historical data, however, as using data prior to 2020 can still provide necessary insight into market and portfolio performance.

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Key Takeaways:

Booking lead time has decreased significantly in London since the start of the pandemic, and that’s still the case as guests are booking stays closer to their arrival more than ever before.
Compared to 2019, demand in the market is still low for the majority of 2021, with most guests not choosing to make bookings outside of the next 30 days.
While the London market is starting to slowly see booking activity rise, the market overall still has a lot of recovering to do as urban city destinations pace behind rural and coastal markets that have seen more domestic leisure demand over the past year.

In the London market, for example, the chart above displays all bookings that have been made over the past 21 days by their check-in week. Additionally, the same values for 2019 are included to provide pacing context for the entire market.

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Guests Are Booking Closer to Their Check-In Dates

Overall, guests that have made reservations in London listings over the past 21 days are overwhelmingly arriving in the short term. Compared to 2019, booking lead times seem to be shortening, with the majority of recently-made bookings arriving just a few days after they have been booked. For late Spring and all of Summer in London, bookings made over the past 21 days are pacing behind the same period in 2019 which was more of a “normal” year than 2020.

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This type of booking pattern shows how travelers are still focusing on making bookings for the short term and may not be confident with traveling over the course of the Summer at this time.

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In general, the London market has also seen a decrease in occupancy for the beginning of 2021 compared to early 2019 and 2020 as overall demand is still depressed due to the continuing COVID-19 pandemic.

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For a more detailed look at your properties against the market, check out our Insights tool today.

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