Poland has recorded another surge in the popularity of short-term rentals. Experts from RynekPierwotny.pl have analysed Eurostat data on the number of overnight stays booked online, showing that the market continued to expand strongly in 2025.
As the holiday season approaches, summer-related property topics are once again gaining attention. One of them is short-term rental, especially as regulatory issues surrounding this market have recently been widely discussed. This time, however, experts from RynekPierwotny.pl focus not on regulation, but on the growing scale of the phenomenon itself.
Recently published Eurostat data indicate that 2025 brought another record in the number of overnight stays in Poland booked through major online platforms, including Booking and Airbnb. Before looking more closely at these records, it is worth explaining where Eurostat obtains its short-term rental data.
What exactly does Eurostat count?
The cooperation between the European Union’s statistical office and short-term rental platforms began in spring 2020. At that time, an agreement was concluded under which four major platforms — Airbnb, Booking, Expedia and Tripadvisor — started providing data. In the case of Poland, however, the information goes back to the beginning of 2018, as the platforms also supplied historical data.
The figures show how the number of overnight stays in Poland booked through popular short-term rental platforms changed from month to month. It is important to note that Eurostat uses a specific method of counting overnight stays. For example, if a family of three books accommodation online for six nights, this is recorded in the statistics as 18 overnight stays.
Experts from RynekPierwotny.pl point out that Eurostat’s short-term rental data are still experimental and are published with some delay. The available information does not yet make it possible to distinguish between overnight stays in different types of properties, such as apartments, holiday cottages or single-family houses. Eurostat does, however, state that the presented short-term rental statistics do not include hotels or campsites.
Strong seasonality and continued growth
The data clearly show the seasonal nature of short-term rental demand, with a visible peak during the summer months. In Poland, August 2025 brought a new monthly record for the number of overnight stays booked through online short-term rental platforms.
The record is also visible on an annual basis. The number of overnight stays booked via online platforms changed as follows:
2018 – 15.59 million overnight stays
2019 – 19.69 million
2020 – 12.97 million
2021 – 15.03 million
2022 – 26.35 million
2023 – 32.74 million
2024 – 39.02 million
2025 – 44.39 million
According to RynekPierwotny.pl experts, the data clearly illustrate the short pandemic-related slump followed by a strong upward trend. It is also worth noting that much of this growth has been driven by domestic tourists. In 2024, Polish residents accounted for 61% of all overnight stays in short-term rentals booked online. In 2025, their share remained at the same level.
Some Polish regions among the EU’s stronger performers
Due to delays in the publication of short-term rental statistics, detailed regional data for 2025 at the NUTS 3 level are not yet available. However, broader data for NUTS 2 regions are already informative, especially for August 2025, which turned out to be a record month for Poland.
In August 2025, three Polish voivodeships exceeded the threshold of one million online short-term rental overnight stays, calculated as the number of guests multiplied by the number of nights spent. These were Małopolskie with 1.57 million overnight stays, Pomorskie with 1.54 million, and Zachodniopomorskie with 1.24 million.
Crossing the one-million mark placed these three Polish regions within the broader group of stronger EU performers. However, it should be remembered that the top ten statistical regions in the European Union recorded much higher results, ranging from around 3 million to 12 million overnight stays.
The top three EU regions in August 2025 were:
Adriatic Croatia – 12.16 million overnight stays booked through online platforms
Andalusia – 7.97 million overnight stays
Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur – 7.59 million overnight stays
An interesting point is that in terms of the annual number of overnight stays booked through online platforms, Poland had already overtaken Croatia as a whole in 2024. In last year’s EU ranking, Poland placed seventh, between Portugal and Croatia. However, as RynekPierwotny.pl experts note, the gap between Poland and the EU’s leading three markets — France, Spain and Italy — remains very large.
