Tourism Is Missing $10 Billion and Honestly? It's an Inside Job

Every destination has a number it doesn't track, doesn't report, and would rather not think about: the gap between what visitors spend and what they would have spent if anyone, literally anyone, had talked to them when they arrived. I call that gap the drift. And for U.S. destinations, I'd argue it's a $10 to 15 billion annual leak flowing straight through the short-term rental channel.

That's billion. With a B. Leaking quietly, every year, while we all argue about bed taxes.

Let me show you the math. Then let me show you why nobody owns the problem, which is exactly why it's still a problem.

Exhibit A: The channel nobody manages

Short-term rentals stopped being the scrappy alternative a long time ago. AirDNA pegged U.S. STR revenue at $64 billion back in 2023, and given the growth since, the industry is approaching $70 billion in annual gross bookings. For scale: Airbnb alone processed $91.3 billion in global gross booking value in 2025, up 12% year over year. This is not a cottage industry. It's barely even cottages anymore.

But here's the thing about lodging: it's just the cover charge.

Accommodation runs roughly 20 to 26% of total trip spend. The rest goes to food, transportation, recreation, entertainment, and that inexplicable $60 everyone spends at a candle store. Apply that ratio to a roughly $70 billion lodging base and the total guest economy wrapped around STR travelers is conservatively $200 billion a year. (Run the math yourself. At a 20% lodging share, it's closer to $350 billion. I'm being polite.)

Two hundred billion dollars in trip spending. And almost none of it is influenced by anyone with an actual stake in the destination.

Exhibit B: The guest nobody talks to

Hotels figured this out decades ago. That's what the concierge desk, the spa upsell, and the "may I book you a dinner reservation?" are for. DMOs, bless them, spend their entire budget convincing people to visit and approximately zero dollars shaping what happens once they do.

STR guests fall into the canyon between those two worlds. They've booked a lovely house in a neighborhood, not a resort with an activities desk. Their itinerary gets assembled at 9pm on the couch from whatever an algorithm feels like serving them. Nobody who loves the destination is in that conversation.

So the spending drifts. To the national chain instead of the taco place that would've changed their life. To platform-commissioned inventory instead of the outfitter the destination actually wants to grow. Or to nowhere at all: the tour never taken because nobody mentioned it existed.

And this isn't theory. Two weeks ago we put 30 destination and STR leaders in a room for Hosts & Home Teams (HHT), and the breakdown we found wasn't budgets, tech, or willingness. It was roles. Everyone in that room wanted alignment. Not one of them had a job description that made the guest's in-destination spend their problem. The DMO's role ends at arrival. The operator's starts at check-in. The platforms quietly own everything in between. The drift exists because it's in nobody's lane. (side quest: if you follow me, but have been trapped under a rock, Hosts & Home Teams just launched its inaugural lab, and the reception has exceeded expectations, so you'll hear a LOT more about these curated salons.)

And no, I didn't pull my percentage from the sky. Drift is a standard consulting concept: in complex, non-integrated systems, the working assumption is that 5 to 10% of total value leaks through the seams where nobody's role connects. Tourism's STR economy is about as complex and non-integrated as systems get, and I'm applying the low end of the band. If even 5 to 7.5% of that $200 billion is misdirected or simply never happens, the drift is $10 to 15 billion a year. Quibble with my percentage if you like. That's fair, and I'll enjoy the argument. But nobody who's watched an STR guest plan their trip from a group chat would testify under oath that the leak is zero.

Exhibit C: Why the booking button is the whole ballgame

Here's where direct booking stops being a fee-avoidance tactic and becomes destination strategy. This is also where I'll probably lose the OTA loyalists, which is fine. They weren't reading my emails anyway. (Neither are their guests. That's the point.)

When a stay comes through an OTA, the platform owns the guest. No email address, no real communication, no ability to market so much as a coupon until check-in, if ever. And operators are paying handsomely for this arrangement: Airbnb's host-only fee model now takes 15.5% of the booking subtotal, and OTA commissions industry-wide run 15 to 25%. You're paying a quarter of the rent to be kept away from your own guest. Incredible deal. Where do I sign.

A direct booking flips all of it. The operator owns the name, the email, the relationship, and most importantly the pre-arrival window, which is when trip decisions actually get made. Here's my favorite stat in this whole piece: direct bookings carry booking windows 51% longer than OTA bookings. That's weeks of extra runway to introduce a guest to the destination. Sell the tour, reserve the table, book the charter, all while they're still at home, excited, and holding a credit card.

Direct booking gives operators marketing flexibility. Marketing flexibility, pointed at ancillary spend, closes the drift. That's the whole chain. It fits on a napkin.

Exhibit D: The platforms already did this math

If you think I'm imagining the prize, watch where the money's going. In 2025, Airbnb relaunched Experiences in 650 cities, rolled out a Services vertical (chefs, massages, catering, the works), and committed up to $250 million to scale it all. They looked at the same $200 billion I did. They just plan to run it through their checkout.

And look, platform-captured ancillary spend doesn't close the drift. It franchises it. The inventory is platform-picked, the take-rate leaves town, and the destination gets a lovely view of someone else's revenue. It's drift with extra steps and better branding.

The verdict

Operators: direct booking isn't just a commission dodge; it's an ancillary revenue engine. The 15 to 25% you save may end up being the smaller number.

Destinations: stop treating STRs like a bed-tax compliance headache and start treating them like what they are: your largest unmanaged distribution channel. Help your STR community go direct, feed that pre-arrival window with destination-priority content and partnerships, and you've just built a distributed concierge network out of a thousand front doors.

Local businesses: the operator down the street with a direct-booking list is a better channel than any marketplace you'll pay to enter.

The drift isn't inevitable. It's just unowned. Fixing it starts with redrawing the roles, which is exactly the work we're doing with Hosts & Home Teams: getting destinations and operators in the same room until the guest's whole trip is somebody's job. First destination to claim it wins, and builds a guest-data moat no platform can rent back to them.

Court adjourned.

I'm Jenn Barbee, and We ALL host this place. It's probably time we started acting like it.

Sources: AirDNA U.S. STR market data via Congressional Research Service; Airbnb Q4 2025 financial results; U.S. Travel Association / ValuePenguin trip-spend breakdowns; StayFi OTA fee analysis; Houfy direct booking statistics; Skift coverage of Airbnb's 2025 Experiences relaunch.