Nashville Is Fastest Growing Destination For Home-Share App Airbnb

Stephen Lynch and his wife list this cozy room, and say more than a hundred visitors they booked online have crashed in their house over the last year. (Photo via Airbnb)

Nashville is the fastest growing U.S. destination for Airbnb, a San Francisco-based tech company that connects travelers to people with spare rooms or even houses they can rent for a night or two.

Nashville now has some 572 listings on Airbnb, from a retro backyard camper to swanky condos.

Stephen Lynch’s place is somewhere in between; for around 60 bucks a night, you can get a cozy room close to downtown and East Nashville.  Lynch says the only downside is strangers who might be coming in late have to master the alarm: “Sometimes they’ll figure out the passcode right after the alarm goes off,” he says.

Lynch and his wife have had over a hundred bookings in the last year—mostly young people drawn to the music scene, he says.

Another Airbnb host WPLN contacted was reluctant to talk, for fear the codes department might frown on the arrangement, as has happened in other cities.  Lynch says that argument makes sense if a host is renting the property—a landlord might be ticked at tenants profiting off a steady churn of short-term guests.  But as a homeowner, Lynch isn’t stressing it.  He says he even declared his Airbnb income on his taxes.

Ranking

Airbnb compared bookings for this summer (Memorial Day to Labor Day) against the same time period last year and found Nashville’s had more than quadrupled.  Here’s their top 10:

1) Nashville – up 365 percent.
2) New Orleans – up 340 percent.
3) Palm Springs – up 334 percent.
4) Portland, Maine – up 328 percent.
5) Santa Barbara – up 320 percent.
6) Oregon coast – up 316 percent.
7) The Adirondacks, NY – up 316 percent.
8) Denver – up 306 percent.
9) Coastal Orange County – up 306 percent.
10) Boulder – up 291 percent.