LEXINGTON, Ky. — Airbnb announced today that the Lexington Airbnb host community welcomed 7,000 guest arrivals and earned $535,000 in supplemental income during University of Kentucky home football weekends, helping the city significantly expand lodging capacity and welcome the surge in visitors as hotels reached peak capacity.
The most dynamic stretch for the home sharing community came during the weekend of the Homecoming game against Vanderbilt. That represented the largest surge of Airbnb guests to Lexington in the history of the platform, eclipsing the previous record which occurred during UK’s May commencement weekend.
With local hotels achieving peak occupancy when UK hosts major sporting events, the growth of home sharing in Lexington has allowed the city to host thousands of extra visitors and take full advantage of the unique economic opportunity presented by the university. This benefits the local merchant community by keeping visitors’ food and shopping dollars within Lexington’s corporate limits.
The city benefits further from the expanded lodging capacity during UK home weekends thanks to a tax agreement with Airbnb that allows the company to collect Lexington’s room tax on behalf of its local hosts and remit the revenue directly to the city. Airbnb also has an agreement in place with the Kentucky Department of Revenue to collect and remit the state sales tax and local transient taxes on behalf of hosts. The company recently announced that it delivered $2.1 million in tax revenue to the state in the first year of that agreement, more than doubling the initial projections.
The game-by-game data can be found in full below:
|
Opponent |
Weekend |
Guest Arrivals |
Host Income |
|
Central Michigan |
August  31 – September 1 |
970 |
$77,000 |
|
Murray State |
September 14-15 |
800 |
$60,000 |
|
Mississippi State |
September 21-22 |
840 |
$57,000 |
|
South Carolina |
September 28-29 |
1,160 |
$96,000 |
|
Vanderbilt (Homecoming) |
October 19-20 |
1,360 |
$109,000 |
|
Georgia |
November 2-3 |
1,200 |
$95,000 |
|
Middle Tennessee State |
November 16-17 |
670 |
$41,000 |
Example of Airbnb review during a UK home football game:
“Lovely quiet home, private space with a separate entrance. Stayed here while attending a college football game. Host was awesome giving traffic updates, dinner suggestions and was quick to respond with any questions. Would definitely stay here again when returning to Lexington.” — Amanda, November 2018
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