Does a hot tub increase your AirBnB income?

In a word: yes. Getting a hot tub can increase your AirBnB income by 40% on average. In fact, I was surprised how dramatic the effect was.

However, it does depend on location. Some areas saw as much as a 77% increase. One was down 1%. But the general trend is indisputably up.

How do I know? I’ve looked at a lot of data.

Airbnb has 52 ‘markets’ in the UK. Out of these, I picked 12 as a sample:

• 3 mountainous: Lakes, Peaks, Highlands
• 3 cities: London, Edinburgh, Manchester
• 3 seaside: Cornwall, Anglesey, Norfolk
• 3 countryside/suburban: Surrey, Chester, Stirling

For each of these I filtered by 3 bed houses, and noted revenue with and without a hot tub. 

Note: If you’re interested, the numbers for this come from AirDNA. It’s a research tool for AirBnB hosts and investors. Very useful, a bit pricey. Nerdy as hell.

How much does a hot tub increase AirBnB rental income?

On average, the increase in annual revenue with a hot tub is £14.8k. That’s a 40.2% increase. It’s spicy.

I should caveat this immediately. Although I have controlled for house size, there will still be other factors at play. Houses with hot tubs, for instance, are probably nicer in general. Or their owners are better at marketing them, or just happy to charge higher prices.

Even so, hot tubs appear to be an absolute goldmine.

And maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise. People love hot tubs, and increasingly so. We’re just a nation of hot tubbers, stewing away like cod fillets in parsley sauce.

And the place where people love hot tubs the most? Manchester. 

Homes in Manchester fetched 77% more with a hot tub. It stands to reason. It’s a bit chilly. It rains a lot. I grew up around Manchester, and, while no-one ever said it, you could see on their faces they were desperate for a hot tub.

However, Manchester was something of an outlier among cities. On average, the cities had a 33% increase in annual revenue with a hot tub, and Edinburgh was actually down 1% (presumably because the the Festival pushes all demand through the roof).

The regions which were most reliably enhanced by a hot tub were the mountains: the Highlands, Lake District, and Peak District. 

Seaside was next. Followed by the more suburban locations.

Is a hot tub worth the investment for Airbnb?

Yes, yes, yes. Probably.

Given a decent hot tub costs from ~£4000, you should be able to easily make the money back in year 1, even with running costs (£500-£1000 a year).

A hot tub increases both occupancy and daily rate. You get more customers, AND you can charge more.

However, let me caveat again, before you rush out and buy one. 

Although all the data says that hot tubs equal increased profit, you still need to market it, and you still need to make sure the rest of the house is up to scratch. 

A hot tub will not solve all of life’s problems. It’s mainly just a big bath.

More details on methodology, for the curious and skeptical

• I only measured 3 bed houses in order to avoid results being skewed by larger properties. Larger properties would be more likely to have hot tubs, therefore they would look more valuable.
• I picked 3 beds, not 4 or 5, as they are more numerous, and a real world example for most people. 
• Flats follow the same pattern, but are far less numerous in rural areas so you get weird outliers.
• The ‘markets’ I picked are very popular, but obviously not comprehensive. Hopefully there is one similar to your own area. AirDNA doesn’t let you look at the whole of the UK in one go, and in any case it would have been skewed – nicer areas would have more hot tubs AND charge more.
• The ‘markets’ defined by AirBnB are not perfect. For Instance, the Peak District market is much larger than the actual Peak District, and includes the city of Derby. Chester is most of Cheshire. Edinburgh includes the entirety of Lothian. Stirling includes Fife. But they’re broadly accurate.