Here’s how much London’s Airbnb hosts will make on New Year’s Eve
If you've already made your New Year's resolutions, here's one to add to your list: put your home on Airbnb.
Figures by the company have suggested Londoners will make a whopping £17m this New Year's eve. The 2m people the service expects to find beds for is a 1,400-fold rise from New Year's Eve in 2009.
London is the second-most popular location for Airbnb guests, after New York, whose hosts are expected to make £26m, but ahead of Paris, Tokyo and Rome.
Meanwhile, Cuba, New Zealand, Japan, Spain and Mexico are emerging as popular New Year destinations, the service said.
Earlier this week, Airbnb chief executive Brian Chesky asked its users which features Airbnb should launch in 2017.
Among the 1,700 answers he received were suggestions of more group travel features, longer-term rentals and even rentals on Mars.
The company has cracked down on so-called professional hosts, and earlier this month confirmed plans to introduce automated limits on the number of nights each year hosts can rent out their properties using the service.
In September research by the Residential Landlords Association suggested Airbnb may be fuelling the capital's housing crisis, with 61 per cent of the entire homes listed on the site available for more than 90 days.
However, Airbnb has hit back saying the research "deliberately confuses availability with nights booked".
"The typical Airbnb host in London shares their space for 50 nights a year and hosts generated £1.3bn of economic activity in the capital last year," it added.
"Rather than removing housing stock, hosting on Airbnb puts money in the pockets of regular Londoners and helps them afford living costs in one of the world's most expensive cities."