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The (Statistically Speaking) Most Popular Cities in the World to Celebrate St Patrick’s Day in an Airbnb

March 15, 2017

With St. Patty’s Day coming up this weekend, there’s been lots of talk about the biggest bashes around the globe where everyone is donning their greenest outfits in search of a little Irish cheer and a little luck of the Irish.

Beyond Pricing decided to take a look at the markets around the world where we help hosts price their homes to account for big events like St. Patrick’s Day. While Dublin is definitely the place to be, you’d be surprised which cities have the biggest influx of people booking up everything in sight.

Boston's rich Irish history and NYC's extravagant St. Patrick's Day parades and celebrations would lead most of us to believe that these two cities are the most popular to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. However, Beyond Pricing looked at the data and found that according to Airbnb and vacation rental booking data, Boston and NYC don't even break the top 5.

So where are revelers piling into vacation rentals and Airbnbs to celebrate with some green beer?

Winners: Dublin, Savannah

Dublin

Population: 1.1 Million
Total attendees: 550,000
Average Price Increase: 88%

As the birthplace of St. Patrick's Day, Dublin comes in as the most "in demand" city to celebrate St. Patrick's Day according to vacation rental demand. This comes as no shock as over half a million people attend the celebration for a city with just over 1 million residents.

Savannah

Population: 150,000
Total attendees: 700,000
Average Price Increase: 72%

Per capita, Savannah is the largest St. Patrick's Day celebration in the United States. With a population of just over 150,000, the city brings in over 4x it's population to celebrate St. Patrick's Day weekend, causing a major noticeable increase in vacation rental demand each year.

Losers: NYC, Boston, Chicago

Although the total number of attendees for all 3 cities (NYC, Boston, and Chicago) is larger than that of both Dublin and Savannah, we don't see a major increase in Airbnb and vacation rental demand for St. Patrick's Day 2017 for these cities.

There's one primary reason for this: total number of available accommodation options. There's simply enough existing traditional accommodation to support the nominal increase in demand for St. Patrick's Day.

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For comparison, in NYC, there's over 25,000 Airbnb listings and 115,000 hotel rooms.

In Savannah, there's less than 1,000 total vacation rental listings and only a few thousand hotel rooms. This shortage, in comparison to total attendees for St. Patrick's Day, illustrates why the demand for cities like Savannah and Dublin is much greater for St. Patrick's Day 2017.

So if you’re headed to the Hostess City of the South in Savannah this weekend, you might find there aren’t quite enough hostesses to put you up for the night. Unless you want to crash on Chris’s couch for $500/night:

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