European Review July 2026: ADR Gains Drive RevPAR as Occupancy Steadies

Key Takeaways

• RevPAR growth reflects rate increases rather than occupancy gains. Europe’s RevPAR rose 7.7% in July, driven by an 8.2% increase in ADR, while occupancy slipped 0.3 percentage points to 69.2%. RevPAR grew in 19 of Europe’s top 20 markets.
• Demand is holding up better than the headline suggests once Spain is set aside. Demand nights grew in 14 of the top 20 markets, and the four largest markets excluding Spain grew 1.5%, led by Italy (+4.2%) and the United Kingdom (+2.5%), against a 0.5% decline for the Top 5 as a whole.
• Supply growth is concentrating in larger homes. Available listings rose 1.9% across Europe, but growth climbed steadily with size, from 1.3% for two-bedroom listings to 5.1% for homes with six or more bedrooms, tracking the same segments where demand grew fastest.

In July, Europe’s short-term rental market steadied. Supply growth held at 1.9%, keeping it inside the narrow band it has occupied since spring, while demand nights edged 0.8% higher, returning to year-over-year growth. With listings and bookings finally growing at closer to the same pace, occupancy nearly held level at 69.2%, and ADR climbed 8.2% to €159.

Looking ahead, the shoulder season is where the strength sits. September is pacing 6.9% ahead of 2025 on demand nights and October 6.0%, and in both months occupancy is running ahead rather than behind. August, by contrast, paces just 1.6% higher. Travelers heading into the shoulder months aren’t hunting for discounts either. September’s on-the-books ADR of €152 sits above the €150 Europe actually realized in June, and occupancy gains climb steadily with price tier, from 1.1 percentage points for budget listings to 2.3 points for luxury. Rather than trading down or pulling back, European travelers are moving into the quieter edges of the season and paying peak-adjacent rates to be there.

At a Glance: July 2026 STR Performance in Europe

• Available listings reached 4.18 million, an increase of 1.9% YoY
• Demand nights grew slightly by 0.8% YoY to a total of 61.68 million
• Average daily rates (ADR) increased 8.2% YoY to €159.2
• Average occupancy rate fell to 69.2%, down 0.3 percentage points
• Revenue per Available Rental Night (RevPAR) increased 7.7% YoY to €110.1

Pricing did the heavy lifting once again. ADR rose 8.2% and RevPAR climbed 7.7%, a sign that hosts held their rate discipline even in a market where listings still grew faster than bookings. The more telling story remains forward-looking: the shoulder season is pacing considerably stronger than the peak, with September and October both gaining occupancy rather than losing it, and September’s on-the-books ADR sitting above what June actually delivered. Rather than trading down, travelers are spreading out.

Sentiment Improves Despite Higher Inflation

The European Central Bank (ECB) decided at its July 23 meeting to hold the three key ECB interest rates steady, after raising them by 25 basis points on June 17, with a 2% inflation goal still the medium-term target. Inflation in the Euro Area rose slightly to 2.9% in July, up from 2.8% in June but still down from the May high of 3.2%.

Despite the higher July reading, European sentiment has improved. Both the Economic Sentiment Indicator, which tracks economic activity across five key sectors, and the Employment Expectations Indicator, which measures business managers’ outlook for hiring, remain below their long-term averages. Both have risen sharply from April, when each hit its lowest value as the conflict in the Middle East began.

Although higher interest rates are moderating supply growth across Europe, stabilizing inflation and improving economic sentiment could still support demand as conditions for travel improve in 2026, particularly since shoulder-season travel offers both lower temperatures and fewer fellow travelers.

Despite higher travel costs, including rising inflation and energy prices compared with 2025, forward bookings still surpass last year’s figures, with August demand nights 1.6% higher. Shoulder-season travel is performing notably well, with September leading at 6.9% ahead and October at 6.0%, suggesting that travel activity in Europe remains strong.

Supply Growth Is Concentrating in Larger Homes

In July, Europe’s available listings reached 4.18 million, a 1.9% increase year over year and a slight rise from June’s 1.2%. The significance lies more in the trend than in the individual month. Since March, annual growth has consistently held between 1.2% and 2.5%, a stable pace that has produced a year-over-year increase of 2.3% in available listings for 2026 year-to-date. The scale of the shift becomes clear against 2024, when July supply rose 19.6% year over year. That percentage translated to roughly 658,000 listings added in a single year. This July, Europe added about 78,000. The slowdown is real in both relative and absolute terms, but it reflects a market operating from a much higher baseline rather than a loss of momentum, and supply expansion continues at a rate typical for a maturing market.

Beneath the headline, growth skews clearly toward larger properties, and the gradient rises with size. Three-bedroom supply grew 2.6% year over year, four-bedroom listings 3.7%, five-bedroom 4.5%, and homes with six or more bedrooms 5.1%, all ahead of the European average. The smaller end did the opposite, with studios and one-bedroom listings up just 1.4% and two-bedroom listings 1.3%. Because those two segments hold 76% of European supply, they set most of the aggregate pace. The contrast with last July illustrates the widening growth differential: in July 2025, growth ran between 1.9% and 3.9% across every bedroom count, a broadly even spread. A year on, small-unit growth has roughly halved while four-bedroom and larger supply has accelerated.

Demand by bedroom is moving the same way as supply, with demand nights up 4.3% for homes with six or more bedrooms and 3.8% for five-bedroom listings, against a 0.6% decline for two-bedroom properties. Operators appear to be adding inventory where group and multi-family travel is actually growing. Properties with four or more bedrooms remain under 10% of European supply, though, so fast percentage gains there shift the continental total far less than slow ones at the smaller end.

At the market level, Europe’s five dominant markets expanded their available listings by a modest 1.2% year over year, trailing the broader continental growth of 1.9%. This is primarily a Spanish story. Available listings there fell 12.5% as the regulatory delisting momentum that took hold in mid-2025 continues to reshape the market. The scale of Spain’s contraction is significant, removing approximately 52,000 listings, a figure that exceeds the total supply gains recorded in France over the same window. Excluding Spain, the remaining top four nations outpaced the continent with 3.6% growth, led by France (+4.0%, reaching 1.11 million listings), followed by Italy (+3.6%), the United Kingdom (+3.4%), and Germany (+3.0%). Spain’s year-over-year figures are expected to find a new equilibrium by late autumn, once the comparison baseline shifts to the post-regulation environment. Until then, the aggregate performance of Europe’s largest markets will continue to be masked by the Spanish decline.

The mid-sized tier of nations with over 80,000 listings recorded a muted 1.5% increase, dampened by ongoing supply corrections in two key Mediterranean markets. Croatia and Greece recorded listing declines of 2.1% and 2.0% respectively, though both are showing signs of stabilization compared with the sharper drops recorded in June. In Croatia, the contraction is part of an ongoing structural shift, while the Greek market continues to recalibrate following the October 2025 quality-focused regulations. Despite these headwinds, the cluster was supported by strong performances elsewhere, particularly in Poland, where supply rose 7.7%, alongside gains in Portugal and Denmark.

Nordic markets remain the fastest-growing part of Europe, accounting for four of the six fastest-growing markets in the top 20. Finland outpaced the continent with supply growth of 11.1%, followed by Sweden (+9.3%), Norway (+7.9%), and Denmark (+6.9%). That performance pushed the 50,000+ listing tier to a cluster-leading 5.2% growth rate. The smallest tier of markets under 50,000 listings grew 3.2%, as strength in Finland and the Czech Republic (+8.9%) was partially offset by supply retreats in Hungary (-3.7%) and Belgium (-2.1%).

Market maturity, rather than sheer scale, appears to be the primary driver of growth. Established mid-sized markets are increasingly mirroring the behavior of the continent’s largest nations. Switzerland and Portugal grew 4.6% and 4.0% respectively, aligning with the 3% to 5% growth band recorded in France and Germany despite their smaller inventory. More mature markets such as Austria (+1.9%) and the Netherlands (+1.6%) expanded even more slowly, trailing their cluster peers. As the European market evolves, the distinction between high-growth emerging regions and stable mature markets is becoming the clearest way to read supply.

Travelers Stayed More Nights but Booked Fewer

Demand nights in Europe reached 61.7 million in July, up 0.8% year over year. Nights Booked, which measures reservations made during the reporting month for current and future stays, moved the other way, falling 3.9% to 42.0 million. That split between what travelers actually consumed and what they newly reserved reframes the soft booking figure as a question of timing rather than appetite.

Comparing July across multiple years makes the divergence clearer. Demand nights sit above every prior July since 2022, up 8.6% on 2024, 15.9% on 2023, and 33.5% on 2022, while holding essentially flat against an exceptionally strong 2025. Nights Booked tell a different story, running 3.4% below July 2024 and only 2.3% ahead of 2023. Travelers stayed more STR nights this July than in any previous July, but they committed to fewer new ones during the month itself, which points toward stays being locked in earlier and concentrated into a tighter window. Median lead time for July stays supports that reading, though only faintly, edging up from 38 days in 2025 to 39 this year.

Across January through July, demand nights total 257.4 million and Nights Booked 293.1 million, down 3.0% and 3.6% respectively against the same stretch of 2025. Against every other year in the series, however, 2026 is comfortably ahead: demand nights are up 6.6% on 2024, 14.2% on 2023, and 31.1% on 2022, with Nights Booked up 2.4%, 8.5%, and 24.1% across the same comparisons. What stands out is how closely the two metrics move together, declining by nearly identical margins against 2025 and ranking identically against every earlier year.

The distribution of demand across those seven months explains how July can outperform while the year-to-date declines. July accounted for 24.0% of demand nights from January through July, up 0.9 percentage points on 2025 and the highest July share in the series, ahead of 23.5% in 2022 and 2024 and 23.6% in 2023. Every month from February through April gave ground, with April down 0.6 points and March down 0.3. Demand is bunching into the peak rather than spreading across the spring. That concentration offers a plausible explanation for the gap between the two headline metrics: when a larger share of the year’s travel lands in fewer months, more of it gets reserved before those months arrive, thinning the volume of new reservations booked during the peak itself even as realized stays climb.

Demand nights grew in 14 of Europe’s top 20 markets in July, with three of the four clusters posting gains. Momentum ran inversely to market size: the tier above 80,000 listings grew 1.5%, the tier above 50,000 grew 3.9%, and the smallest tier under 50,000 led at 4.0%, while the five largest markets slipped 0.5%. Spain accounts for that decline on its own. Excluding Spain, the remaining four grew 1.5%, matching the cluster directly beneath them, with Italy up 4.2%, the United Kingdom 2.5%, and France 2.0%. Spanish demand nights fell 11.8%, and Germany, down 4.3%, was the only other Top 5 market in negative territory. Croatia extended its run of contraction with a 5.9% decline, while Greece managed a 1.9% gain despite its own shrinking supply, a combination that puts upward pressure on occupancy rather than down. Poland (+9.7%) and Denmark (+9.3%) led the tier above 80,000 listings, and Sweden topped the entire top 20 at 11.9%.

Nights Booked, by contrast, declined in every cluster, from 1.8% in the tier above 80,000 listings to 5.2% among the Top 5, and only four markets grew: Finland (+9.4%), the Czech Republic (+5.4%), Poland (+4.7%), and Portugal (+2.0%). The Nordics illustrate the divergence most sharply. Sweden combined 11.9% demand growth with a 0.9% booking decline, Denmark 9.3% growth with bookings essentially flat, and Norway 8.0% growth against a 6.1% booking drop. These are markets filling considerably more nights while writing fewer new reservations during the month, exactly the pattern visible at the continental level and consistent with July stays having been committed to earlier in the year. For hosts in these markets, the takeaway is less about July itself than about how much of the season is decided before it starts.

Rate Growth Is Broad-Based, but New Supply Is Doing Some of the Work

Average daily rates (ADR) in Europe reached €159 in July, up 8.2% year over year. The Repeat Rent Index (RRI), which tracks pricing changes among the same listings over time and excludes the impact of properties entering or leaving the market, rose 6.6%. When ADR runs ahead of the RRI, composition is doing part of the lifting: either higher-priced inventory has entered the market, or lower-priced inventory has left it. When the two move together, existing hosts are raising rates themselves. Every one of Europe’s top 20 markets posted year-over-year gains in both measures, so rate growth is broad-based rather than concentrated in a handful of countries.

Across those 20 markets, 18 recorded ADR growth ahead of RRI growth, so composition is adding something almost everywhere. That is a low bar, though. Mix shift only becomes the dominant force when the gap between the two measures exceeds RRI growth itself, meaning new or departing inventory accounts for more than half of a market’s rate gain. Only five markets clear that line, and two very different mechanisms put them there.

In the Nordics, fast supply expansion is arriving above existing price points. Norway is the clearest case anywhere in Europe. Available listings grew 7.9%, and the 7.7-percentage-point gap between 13.1% ADR growth and 5.5% RRI growth means most of the headline rate increase came from the properties joining the market rather than from hosts raising prices. Denmark (6.7 points, on 6.9% supply growth), Ireland (6.5 points) and the Czech Republic (3.5 points) sit on the same side of the line. Sweden is the useful counterexample. Its 5.0-point gap looks much like Denmark’s, but with RRI growth of 8.2% behind it, the bulk of Sweden’s 13.1% ADR gain came from existing hosts charging more, not from new entrants. In the markets that do clear the line, the aggregate rate is climbing faster than what existing hosts raised their prices by, because the properties joining the market sit higher on the price ladder than the ones already there.

The reverse mechanism is at work where supply is contracting, though it rarely reaches the same intensity. Spain is the most consequential case among Europe’s largest markets. Spanish available listings fell 12.5% in July, yet ADR rose 10.1% against RRI growth of 7.3%, a 2.8-percentage-point gap. If the delisting effort had removed properties evenly across the price spectrum, the two measures would have tracked closely. That they didn’t suggests the listings leaving the market skewed toward the lower end, lifting the average rate beyond the changes existing hosts are making. Even so, most of Spain’s rate growth is still coming from hosts themselves.

Greece shows the same dynamic more strongly, where a 2.0% supply decline sits alongside 12.8% ADR growth against a 7.8% RRI, a 5.0-percentage-point gap. Greece is the more instructive of the two, since the October 2025 regulations explicitly aimed to raise market quality by clearing out lower-quality inventory. Seeing that intent show up this plainly in the ADR and RRI spread offers a reasonable read on what Spain’s delistings have been doing as well. Only Belgium and Hungary reach mix-shift dominance on the contracting side, Belgium with a 7.1-point gap against 6.1% RRI growth and Hungary with the widest gap in Europe at 9.3 points on 3.7% lower supply.

Only Germany and Finland invert the pattern, and in both, existing hosts are the ones pushing rates. German RRI grew 6.2% against ADR growth of 4.5%, a 1.6-point gap in the opposite direction, implying new supply entered below the prevailing price level and dragged the average down. Finland is the more dramatic example, with RRI up 4.1% while ADR barely moved at 0.1%, which is what you’d expect in the market with the fastest supply growth in the top 20 at 11.1%: a wave of newer, lower-priced listings pulling the average flat while established hosts kept raising rates.

Finland is a useful reminder of why the distinction matters for individual operators. A Finnish host who raised rates 3% this July would look like they’d beaten the market against a flat national ADR, when in fact they trailed what their actual peers achieved. ADR tells you what the market looks like in aggregate. RRI tells you what your neighbors did, which is usually the more useful benchmark. You can read more about how we build it in the Repeat Rent Index explainer.

RevPAR Growth Is Entirely a Rate Story

RevPAR in Europe reached €110 in July, up 7.7% year over year, the joint strongest monthly gain of 2026 alongside May. Look at how that gain was assembled, though, and the picture is one-sided. ADR contributed 8.2 points of growth while occupancy subtracted, slipping 0.3 percentage points to 69.2%. That’s the pattern of the entire year so far. RevPAR growth in 2026 has been a rate story from start to finish, with occupancy declining year over year in six of the first seven months. July’s decline of 0.3 percentage points is the narrowest of those six, and after a spring in which April occupancy fell 5.0 points and pulled RevPAR down 3.3%, that near-flat reading counts as meaningful improvement. Rate growth has been on a positive trajectory, from a 1.1% decline in January to 8.2% in July, with RevPAR positive in four of the seven months so far this year.

The mechanism behind this is the supply and demand balance covered earlier in this review. Available listings grew 1.9% in July while demand nights rose just 0.8%, so there were more listings competing for a pool of nights that expanded more slowly. That naturally reduces occupancy, leaving rate as the only lever to lift RevPAR. Operators pulled it hard: in July, ADR growth exceeded occupancy declines in 19 of Europe’s top 20 markets, and RevPAR increased in all but one.

At the country level, the rate-driven pattern holds nearly everywhere but with real variation in how much occupancy helped or hurt. In eight of the top 20 markets, ADR growth exceeded RevPAR growth, meaning occupancy acted as a drag that rate gains had to overcome. Switzerland and Portugal are the sharpest examples, shedding 3.3% and 3.1% of their occupancy, which converted 11.7% and 8.3% ADR growth into RevPAR gains of only 8.0% and 4.9%. Germany fared worst among the largest markets, where a 2.3% occupancy decline cut 4.5% ADR growth down to 2.1% RevPAR growth, the weakest positive result in Europe. France and the United Kingdom followed the same shape more mildly, losing 1.3% and 0.8% of their occupancy respectively.

The exceptions are worth attention because they show what happens when both levers move together. Hungary led Europe with 25.0% RevPAR growth, combining the continent’s highest ADR gain of 19.2% with a 4.9% occupancy increase, the largest in the top 20. Poland managed the most balanced result of any market, turning 7.5% ADR growth into 11.0% RevPAR growth on the back of a 3.3% occupancy gain, and the Netherlands did something similar with a 2.4% occupancy rise.

Among the largest five markets, Spain was the only one to add occupancy in any meaningful measure, up 0.5%, which lifted 10.1% ADR growth to 10.6% RevPAR growth and gave it the strongest result of the Top 5. Shrinking supply appears to be working in Spanish hosts’ favor on this measure. Greece tells a similar story with 1.4% occupancy growth and 14.3% RevPAR growth. Only Finland ended the month in the red, where flat ADR at 0.1% and a 1.3% occupancy decline produced a 1.2% RevPAR decline, the sole negative in Europe’s top 20.

French Wildfires Hit Bookings Hard, and Briefly

Wildfires broke out north of Arcachon Bay in southwestern France on July 23, and within two days authorities had evacuated tens of thousands of residents and visitors from the Lège-Cap-Ferret peninsula at the height of the summer season. Across the 13 affected markets around the bay, weekly cancellations rose from a June average of roughly 4,600 to 24,500 in the week of July 20, and peaked at 38,100 the following week, with the single heaviest day landing on July 27. Bookings moved the other way, falling to 14,900 in the week of July 20, about 37% below the June baseline. Bordeaux, roughly 70 kilometers inland, offers a useful reference point: its cancellations rose too, though to a little over twice the June norm rather than eight times, and its weekly bookings never dipped below their June average at all. The disruption was severe, and it was also tightly limited to a narrow geographic area.

The market found its footing quickly. By the week of August 3, weekly bookings across the affected markets had recovered to 24,900, slightly ahead of where they sat in June, and cancellations had fallen back to 6,600 from that late-July peak. On a daily basis, the last few days of our data are effectively indistinguishable from a normal week. Two weeks is a fast turnaround for an event of this scale, and it speaks to how durable demand for the Atlantic coast is. Even so, a single week of disruption removed 37% of one week’s bookings and generated eight times the usual cancellations, and it arrived with almost no notice in the most valuable weeks of the calendar.

The Shoulder Season Is Outpacing the Peak

Pacing data is our best look at where the market is heading rather than where it’s been. Instead of waiting for a month to finish, we can measure the reservations already sitting on hosts’ calendars and compare them against the same point in last year’s booking curve. Everything below reflects bookings as of August 11, 2026, which means August is nearly settled while September and October still have plenty of reservations to come. Their occupancy figures will keep climbing, so read the year-over-year comparisons rather than the absolute levels.

August is largely locked in, and it looks like a solid but unspectacular month. Demand nights pace 1.6% ahead of last year, with occupancy tracking 1.1 percentage points behind at 67.5% and ADR carrying the month, pacing 9.4% higher at €162, which lifts RevPAR 7.7%.

September and October are where the story gets interesting. September demand paces 6.9% ahead of last year and October 6.0%, and in both months occupancy is running ahead rather than behind, up 1.1 points and 0.2 points respectively. That combination has been rare this year. RevPAR paces 16.9% ahead for September and 15.9% for October, comfortably the strongest readings in the forward book. What makes the September figure especially notable is that rates aren’t being discounted to achieve it. September ADR sits at €152 on the books, 12.9% ahead of last year and above the €150 Europe actually realized in June. October’s €149 is close behind at 14.3% growth. Travelers are paying peak-adjacent rates for shoulder-season stays, which is not the behavior of a market clearing inventory cheaply.

Breaking occupancy pacing out by price tier sharpens the picture considerably. In September, occupancy gains rise cleanly with price point: budget listings pace 1.1 points ahead, economy 1.6 points, midscale 2.0 points, upscale 2.2 points, and luxury 2.3 points. August shows the same gradient running in the same direction, with budget occupancy down 0.9 points while luxury is the only tier in positive territory at 0.5 points ahead. Travelers heading into the shoulder season are moving up the quality ladder rather than down it, and the higher tiers are absorbing that shift best. October is the exception, where gains cluster tightly between 0.6 and 0.9 points across all five tiers with midscale marginally in front, suggesting the tier effect concentrates in September rather than running through the whole shoulder period.

Demand pacing by bedroom count reveals a different shape again, and one worth reading carefully. Rather than a straight line, it forms a U. Studios and one-bedroom listings pace 8.8% ahead for September and 7.8% for October, while homes with six or more bedrooms lead outright at 9.5% and 13.1%. The middle of the market lags both ends, with two-bedroom demand pacing 4.3% ahead for September and four-bedroom just 3.7%. August follows the same U-shape in muted form. The small-unit strength is the notable part, because it inverts what we saw in July, when studios and one-bedroom listings posted the weakest demand growth of any segment at 0.7%. Whatever is driving shoulder-season bookings is disproportionately favoring smaller properties, which typically means couples, solo travelers, and small groups rather than families.

Taken together, three signals point the same direction: shoulder-season demand growing faster than peak, occupancy improving rather than eroding, and rates holding near peak levels. The composition of that demand, skewing toward smaller properties and higher quality tiers, is consistent with travelers who aren’t tied to school holidays and can pick their timing. For hosts, the practical implication is that September and October deserve the same rate discipline usually reserved for summer.