Airbnb, the hospitality company, announced today that Hot August Nights will help bring 500 guest arrivals to the city. This is the largest number of Airbnb guests expected to travel to Reno since Airbnb’s founding in 2008.
During this record weekend, hosts in Reno are expected to earn $150,000. These Airbnb hosts are providing an affordable way for visitors to stay in Reno, with the typical nightly price of a booked listing at $75 this weekend.
“Airbnb is democratizing capitalism by making it possible for Reno residents to use their home–typically their greatest expense–to generate supplemental income to pay the bills, while also providing travelers an affordable option,” explained Marisa Moret, Airbnb’s Public Policy Manager for the Mountain West.
Airbnb has a long history of helping cities accommodate guests for big events, from Super Bowl LI in Houston and Chicago’s Lollapalooza earlier this summer, to local festivals and conferences. Airbnb visitors tend to stay longer and spend more money in the neighborhoods where they stay compared to visitors who stay in hotels, so this revenue can be very significant for the local economy. Guests traveling to Reno tend to stay for 3.4 nights.
Roughly three-quarters of Airbnb listings are outside of main hotel districts, giving visitors the chance to travel to cities and neighborhoods they might otherwise miss, and bring economic benefits to neighborhoods and local businesses that typically have not benefited from tourism. Thirty-one percent of the people who travel on Airbnb say they would have stayed home or would not have stayed as long but for Airbnb.
