Airbnb has said that spending linked to its platform represented 10.5% of all international tourism-related spending in Ireland in 2022.
Research commissioned by the short-term letting site values Airbnb's total contribution to Ireland’s gross domestic product at over €500m in 2022, with local businesses, shops and restaurants benefitting from visitors availing of Airbnb accommodation.
The Irish Economic Impact Report was compiled by Oxford Economics and found that Airbnb supported almost 5,000 jobs across the country and accounted for 6% of all nights in paid accommodation in Ireland in 2022.
"That €500m of contribution would have been money that our guests would have spent on hosts in Ireland... but also that money they would have spent in local cafés, local pubs, local restaurants," said Derek Nolan, Head of Public Policy at Airbnb Ireland.
"Interestingly, what the report shows is the vast majority of that spending is outside Dublin. 20% of it, approximately, is in Dublin, but the rest is in all of the small corners and nooks and crannys of Ireland, spreading that tourism benefit to everyone in the country."
Had visitors instead chosen to stay in a hotel or regular B&B that spending would likely have still been made in the economy.
However Mr Nolan argues that the strength of Airbnb is its ability to make more parts of the economy accessible to tourists.
"I think what Airbnb has done is open up parts of the country that were never open to tourism before," he said.
"There are parts of the country that don't have a hotel, now you have little cottages on laneways and people sharing their home in small villages that just don't have that."
Mr Nolan also argues that the tightness in the tourism market last year means that many of those who used Airbnb may not have come at all if it was not available.
"I think 2022 was an interesting year in that we had real tight capacity in the tourism market," he said. "You can argue that a lot of that spend wouldn't have happened without the ability of Irish people to share their homes on platforms such as Airbnb."
Airbnb has faced criticism for its impact on the wider property market, with opponents arguing that it has pulled accommodation out of the long-term rental market.
In recent years the Government has moved to restrict the short-term letting of houses and apartments in a bid to address the housing shortage.
In 2019, a regulation was introduced which required the permission of a local authority if a property was being rented out on a short-term basis for more than 90 days a year in a rent pressure zone.
Mr Nolan said everyone accepted that housing was a priority for Ireland, but said it was a "fallacy" to suggest that Airbnb was the cause.
However he said it was vital that the rules around short-term lets were enforced, and he said a national registration system was required to make that happen.
"I think it's important we get that sooner rather than later", he said.
The Government is currently working on this kind of a system, but progress has been paused until the end of the year following an intervention by the European Commission.
