More Airbnbs in Cape Town than Amsterdam, San Francisco, and Singapore combined

• A collaborative project has provided insight into the number of Airbnb listings in different cities around the world.
• The sizeable number of listings in Cape Town outstripped many other cities across the world.
• For more stories, visit the Tech and Trends homepage.
  

There are currently more Airbnb sites in the City of Cape Town than in the cities of Amsterdam and San Francisco and the city-state of Singapore combined.

According to data from Inside Airbnb, a collaborative project that has sourced and visualised data on the number of Airbnb sites in different cities around the globe, there are just over 21 000 Airbnbs in Cape Town.

Based on Western Cape government data, there were 4.7 million people who lived in the city as of 2021. There are in the order of 7 million people in the cities mentioned above, based on different statistical releases. There are less than 20 000 Airbnb listings across the cities.

Here are how many Airbnbs are in different cities around the world based on Inside Airbnb’s data:

In Cape Town, the Airbnb sites are dotted around the city, but the greatest concentration of listings is in the city bowl and the Camps Bay and Sea Point areas. There are very few Airbnb listings in the Cape Flats.

Inside Airbnb shows the location of Airbnb listings on a map.

Screenshot/ Inside Airbnb

Cape Town is the only city on the continent for which data has been provided through the project.

The accommodation booking platform has become incredibly popular in South Africa since Airbnb was launched in 2015.

READ MORE | Airbnb Rooms: Another way SA homeowners can make money from the house they live in

It is perhaps the best-known short-term rental site, but many others have also risen to prominence such as booking.com and the South African-started LekkeSlaap.

Insight

In a statement announcing a memorandum of understanding that was reached between the South African Department of Tourism and Airbnb at the start of September, Minister of Tourism Patricia de Lille said little was known about the short-term rental sector in the country.

“Insufficient information is available about the unregulated short-term rental subsector, and this hampers informed policy decision-making,” she said.

As part of the memorandum of understanding, the parties agreed to set up a national registration system for short-term rentals in the country. It is hoped that this will provide transparency regarding the scale of the short-term rental industry in South Africa.

This should result in official data on a national level becoming available in South Africa.

The memorandum also laid down plans for a shared information portal, an entrepreneurship academy, and a summit that will be jointly hosted by Airbnb and the Department of Tourism.

Velma Corcoran, the regional lead of the Middle East and Africa at Airbnb, said Airbnb welcomed the opportunity to work with the department to regulate the industry.

“We welcome the opportunity to work with the department to develop a clear proportionate national framework for the regulation of short-term rentals ... and see huge power in public and private sector collaborations,” she said.