Airbnb is Lisbon’s largest “hotel”
Since the Arab Spring, the demand for travelling to Lisbon skyrocketed, making it one of the trendiest capitals in Europe. Tourism has been growing, and it’s becoming one the most critical industries in the country.
And to follow that demand increase plus the Airbnb expansion to Lisbon, the number of homes allocated to tourists has increased and locals are finding it harder to find a place to live at reasonable prices.
I decided to run an analysis of the current situation of Airbnb in Lisbon, so please read below to find some of my findings.
General stats for Airbnb in Lisbon:
- Capacity to accommodate 50,000+ people
- 20,000+ rooms available
- 13,000+ listings
(Data: July 2017)
This makes Airbnb bigger than any hotel in Lisbon.
And comparing Lisbon to other southern European cities, it is ahead of Madrid, Florence and Porto, only being beaten by iconic Rome and crazy-popular Barcelona.
Regarding its evolution, from 2015 until 2017, supply doubled and looking at the latest data until July 2017, every month on average 300 new listings are added to Airbnb.
Also, rent prices are increasing while salaries are not following the same behaviour, making it harder for locals to live in the city.
We can’t say that rent price index is increasing due to Airbnb’s but most likely is creating pressure in the real estate market, especially in the city centre.
Supply analysis in Lisbon
The majority of Airbnb listings are entire homes/apartments (74%) and private rooms (25%).
Unsurprisingly, the most expensive room type is entire homes/apartments, with the majority of the prices falling between $60 and $104.
Interestingly, the price evolution according to the number of bedrooms is not as linear we might think. Meaning that you may find apartments with seven rooms that cost the same an apartment with five rooms. Also, there is a lack of supply for apartments with more than six rooms.
Finally, Airbnb is still a locally run thing: 70% of the hosts have just one listing on the platform, enabling some 4400+ locals to gain additional income with their apartments.
Which neighbourhoods are more affected?
One known thing about the Airbnb community is that they are looking for local experiences — following this growing trend across all travel industry. This reflects people’s choices of where they want to stay during their trips.
In Lisbon, Airbnb is spread across town, but we can see two clusters: one in Alfama and the other one in Bairro Alto. Also, the east part of the city has more apartments and rooms probably because of the good transportation network to the city centre.
These neighbourhoods are amongst the oldest and most authentic: clothes hanging to dry on the balconies, picturesque streets, colourful tiles and lovely flowers everywhere. The typical Lisbon’s postcard photo.
But aren’t we destroying all that? Just in Alfama we have more than 1,800 listings, and in Bairro Alto we have 1000 listings, which sounds like a lot of homes where people actually could live!
One thing I noticed is that Airbnb is affecting more the central areas where poor people would live or still live: like Bairro Alto, Madragoa, Alfama or Intendente — making these neighbourhoods more gentrified but also losing their charm and authenticity. Aren’t we turning Lisbon’s historical centre into a massive playground for grown-ups? I hope not.
The large concentration of Airbnbs in Lapa is in Madragoa.
For Martim Moniz/Intendente is in Mouraria.
Conclusions
With this analysis, we can see how massive Airbnb is in Lisbon, capable of accommodating 50,000 people and 20,000 rooms listed on the platform and making it more significant than any hotel chain. The most popular areas are Alfama and Bairro Alto. Also, we can observe the most prominent concentrations of Airbnbs in Lisbon are in charming and picturesque neighbourhoods and streets, usually close to the city centre.
It’s difficult to analyse the impact of the Airbnb in any city but living in Lisbon today is hard: the average rent in Lisbon is €830 and the average net income of a Portuguese is €846.
Not all is bad from Airbnb; I believed that it had a positive effect on the restoration and maintenance of old buildings because now landlords can make money out of it, it’s creating new job opportunities. Ultimately, we need to start thinking about the people that live in Lisbon, not only about those who visit it.
The data source is Tom Slee’s website. The methodology used to extract data can be found here.
The code for this analysis can be found on Github.
Update (04/11/2017):
The general stats for the hotel industry in Lisbon are:
- 37,090 beds
- 20,715 bedrooms
- 193 hotels
Source: Dados Abertos, Lisboa (July 2017)
The goal of this project was to do an analysis around Airbnb’s supply in Lisbon. Regarding the rent price, there are many factors to explain its increase in Lisbon and Airbnb is not the only one to be blamed:
- New legislation for renting
- The slowdown in the real estate industry in Portugal after the crisis
