October events like Aftershock, GoldenSky lead to Sacramento Airbnb boom
SACRAMENTO — It's a busy month for Sacramento with last week's Aftershock music festival, the GoldenSky country music festival this weekend and the Ironman the following weekend.
As out-of-towners flock to the city of trees, local Airbnb owners are seeing a boom in business.
Austin Cooper became an Airbnb host exactly a year ago, and since then, his "sweet little downtown suite" has stayed booked and busy.
"Honestly, it never slowed down," he said. "It was only slow if we blocked it off and we had family or something in town. There was never really a lull."
Cooper is celebrating his Airbnb anniversary as those three major events bring tourists to town.
"The people that just checked out for Aftershock were also here last year," he said. "They loved it so much they went on and booked it shortly after last year's stay."
According to Visit Sacramento CEO Mike Testa, the region only has about 15,000 hotel rooms. That's not enough to keep up with the demand for events like Aftershock, GoldenSky and the Ironman competition.
"We don't have enough hotel rooms for events this size," Testa said. "People talk about the NBA All-Star Game or other large events like that – the short-term rentals, the Airbnb short-term rentals of the world are a huge factor in that."
AirDNA, a data provider for the short-term rental market, tracked a spike in listings last year for the Sacramento region.
"If we were to look back, say, at the beginning of 2022, there's only about 1,800 listings," said Bram Gallagher, an economist with AirDNA. "We've increased those listings to about 1,000 over the course of that year."
That's when Cooper began his Airbnb business, and since then, others have followed suit.
"I have two neighbors now that are doing the same thing," Cooper said.
Competition is stiff for Airbnb hosts as the number of listings grows faster than demand.
"A lot of interest, big supply rushing in," Gallagher said. "In 2022, about a thousand new listings came on board, and this has the effect of lowering the occupancy."
Cooper said the competition doesn't bother him. He said investing in high-quality photos and furnishings early on helped him establish a reputation on the app.
"Absolutely not threatened at all because we have that superhost status that I think is attractive to a lot of our guests, and the photos speak for themselves," he said.