KNOXVILLE - Airbnb has reported that the Knoxville Airbnb host community welcomed 7,300 guest arrivals and earned $655,000 in supplemental income during University of Tennessee home football weekends, helping the city significantly expand lodging capacity and welcome the surge in visitors as hotels reached peak capacity.

This includes a projected 850 guest arrivals and $70,000 in supplemental income during this coming weekend’s Senior Day game versus Missouri. The most dynamic stretch for the home sharing community came during the weekend of the game against #1 Alabama, which represented the largest influx of Airbnb guests to Knoxville in the history of the platform, narrowly eclipsing the weekend of the 2017 game against LSU. The $655,000 in combined host income is up from $533,000 during the 2017 season

With local hotels achieving peak occupancy during home games, the growth of home sharing in Knoxville has allowed the city to host thousands of extra visitors and take full advantage of the unique economic opportunity presented by Tennessee football. This benefits the local merchant community by keeping visitors’ food and shopping dollars within Knoxville’s corporate limits.

At a broader level, Knoxville’s hotels have enjoyed steadily increasing occupancy rates and revenues, illustrating 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 city benefits further from the expanded lodging capacity during Tennessee home weekends thanks to a new tax agreement with Airbnb that allows the company to collect Knoxville hotel tax (3%) on behalf of its local hosts and remit the revenue directly to the city. That tax agreement took effect on June 1, ahead of the fall semester. Airbnb also collects and remits the state and local sales taxes on behalf of its hosts thanks to a similar tax agreement with the Tennessee Department of Revenue that took effect on March 1.

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