Local Airbnb Hosts Earned $170,000 During MSU Games

Airbnb announced today that the Lansing and East Lansing Airbnb host community welcomed 2,100 guest arrivals and earned $170,000 in supplemental income during Michigan State home football weekends, helping the city significantly expand lodging capacity and welcome the surge in visitors as hotels reached peak capacity.

The $170,000 total is up significantly from $83,000 during the 2017 football season. This includes a projected 210 guest arrivals and $12,000 in supplemental income during this coming weekend’s Senior Day game versus Rutgers. The weekend of the Ohio State game represented the largest surge of Airbnb guests to Lansing and East Lansing the history of the platform, far exceeding the previous record set during the 2017 game against Penn State.

With local hotels achieving peak occupancy during MSU games[lansingbusinessnews.com], the growth of home sharing has allowed the cities to host thousands of extra visitors and take full advantage of the unique economic opportunity presented by Michigan State football. This benefits the local merchant community by keeping visitors’ food and shopping dollars within Lansing and East Lansing’s corporate limits.

At a broader level, Greater Lansing is in the midst of a historic hotel boom and is experiencing steadily growing hotel occupancy rates[lansingstatejournal.com]. This illustrates the value to the city as short-term rentals expand lodging capacity during popular events and open up the market to families less able to afford hotels.

The region benefits further from the expanded lodging capacity during Michigan State home weekends thanks to a tax agreement between Airbnb and the Michigan Treasury Department that allows the company to collect the state use tax on behalf of its local hosts and remit the revenue directly to the state. Airbnb recently announced that it delivered $4.2 million in revenue to the state in the first year of that agreement.
 

The game-by-game data can be found in full below: