Airbnb Occupancy Rate in Athens, United States, Data & Trends 2026

Athens' numbers only make sense together: 45% occupancy, €223 ADR, €2,701 average monthly revenue, flat (0%) year on year, 162 occupied nights. Read in isolation, the occupancy looks weak; read with the ADR, it reveals the strategy this market demands. Revenue here is earned in bursts — football Saturdays, graduation, big campus weekends — at rates that can run several times the annual average, while ordinary midweeks stay quiet.

The discipline that separates good operators from poor ones: never discount the peak calendar to chase occupancy. A host who panics in July and lowers October prices to fill the summer has funded a bad month by giving away the good one. The 0% year-on-year figure says the market is stable and rational — supply and demand have found their level. To beat the €2,701 average, work the two edges: capture full event pricing with well-set minimum stays on football weekends, and build a midweek base from university-adjacent business travel — recruiting visits, medical stays, conferences — that most hosts ignore.

Athens, Georgia is a university market, and everything in its short-term-rental economics flows from the University of Georgia's calendar. Roughly forty thousand students bring a constant orbit of visiting parents, prospective families, alumni and academic travellers, but the demand that sets prices is SEC football: home-game Saturdays at Sanford Stadium — one of the largest college venues in the country — fill the town several weekends each autumn and let hosts charge multiples of their normal rate. Graduation in May, move-in weekends, and the city's storied music scene (this is the town of R.E.M. and the B-52's, and the 40 Watt Club still programs year-round) add secondary spikes.

The numbers show the classic event-market signature: occupancy averaged just 45% over the year we analysed, the lowest of comparable markets, while the €223 ADR is the highest. This is not a market you run on autopilot pricing; it is one where a handful of calendar dates carry a disproportionate share of annual revenue, and capturing them properly is the whole game.

Proximity to campus and the stadium is the amenity that outranks all others. Short-term rentals concentrate in and around downtown Athens and the campus edge, where guests can walk to Sanford Stadium, the bars on Broad Street and the music venues. Five Points, just south of campus, is the polished choice — leafy, walkable, full of restaurants — and reliably commands the strongest gameday rates. Normaltown and the Boulevard historic district offer Victorian and craftsman character a short drive out, popular with parents and returning alumni who want quiet after the tailgate.

Regulation shapes the map as much as geography: since the county's 2024 ordinance, short-term rentals in single-family residential zones are effectively limited to owner-occupied home-occupation permits, pushing dedicated rental stock toward mixed-use and commercial corridors. That constraint supports rates for compliant properties. When evaluating a property here, measure its distance to the stadium in walking minutes — that single variable explains more rate variance than bedroom count.