com
Minnesota Airbnb Hosts Earned $24.3 Million, Welcomed 179,000
Guests in 2017
Benjamin Breit <benjamin.breit@airbnb.com>
Wed 12/27/2017 8:57 AM
Deleted Items
MEDIA CONTACT:
Ben Breit, Airbnb Midwest
Phone: (847) 2745456
Email: benjamin.breit@airbnb.com
Minnesota Airbnb Hosts Earned $24.3 Million, Welcomed 179,000 Guests in 2017
Airbnb, the world’s leading community driven hospitality company, announced today that its Minnesota host
community earned a combined $24.3 million in supplemental income while welcoming approximately 179,000
guest arrivals to the state in 2017.
The 179,000 guest arrivals to Minnesota via Airbnb represent 89% yearoveryear growth. This comes as
Minnesotans increasingly embrace the home sharing platform as an opportunity to earn supplemental income and
make ends meet. There are now 5,000 Minnesota hosts who share their homes for via Airbnb, typically earning
about $5,400 annually in supplemental income.
Airbnb and its host community appear to be complementing rather than competing with the Minnesota hotel
industry. Many of Minnesota’s largest markets including the Twin Cities, Duluth and Rochester are in the midst
of hotel booms. This suggests that Airbnb is opening up the state to a new slice of prospective tourists by catering
to travelers less able to afford hotels, those who desire to stay in neighborhoods or cities that lack hotels, and
families who prefer to be together under one roof.
2017 represented a transformative year for the Minnesota home sharing community. In February 2017, Airbnb
launched PROJECT 612, an initiative aimed at cultivating the home sharing community to help Minneapolis and
Saint Paul take full economic advantage of the Super Bowl through expanded lodging capacity. PROJECT 612
communicated what seemed like an audacious goal at the time doubling the number of hosts in the Twin Cities
from 1,000 to 2,000 by February 4, 2018.
Two months out from the Twin Cities Super Bowl, there are now 2,650 active Airbnb hosts in Minneapolis and
Saint Paul combined, already well past the initial PROJECT 612 goal. Based on current growth rates and the
dearth of available hotel rooms, it is increasingly realistic that the Airbnb host community will end up tripling to
3,000 by February. With local hotels already at full occupancy for the event, Airbnb’s expanding host community
will allow more visitors to stay within the corporate limits of Minneapolis and Saint Paul and support the local
merchant community.
In addition to the large Twin Cities markets, home sharing demonstrated a positive economic impact in parts of
rural Minnesota that mostly lack hotel inventory.
What follows is an overview of 2017 guest arrivals and total host income, broken down by the top 20 home
sharing in Minnesota.
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About Airbnb
Founded in 2008, Airbnb’s mission is to create a world where people can belong when they travel by being
connected to local cultures and having unique travel experiences. Its community marketplace provides access to
millions of unique accommodations from apartments and villas to castles and treehouses in more than 65,000
cities and 191 countries. With Experiences, Airbnb offers unprecedented access to local communities and
interests, while Places lets people discover the hidden gems of a city as recommended by the people that live
there. Airbnb is people powered and the easiest way to earn a little extra income from extra space in a home or
from sharing passions, interests and cities.
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