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Guide · UK hosts

How to price a short-term let: nightly, weekly and monthly rates (UK)

City and town lets are a different pricing problem from a holiday cottage. The season matters less, and the day of the week and the length of stay matter more. Here’s how to set your nightly price, how big your weekly and monthly discounts should be, and what changes for long stays.

By the PeakRate team. We're UK holiday-let hosts. Facts checked on 17 October 2026; sources are listed at the end.

Why city lets are priced differently

The ONS publishes monthly figures for short-term lets booked through Airbnb, Booking.com and Expedia Group, down to local authority. We took the 2025 figures for occupied nights and divided each area’s busiest month by its quietest:

ONS, Guest nights, nights and stays for short-term lets, monthly, UK (July 2023 to December 2025, released 24 June 2026), Tables 2a and 6b. Ratios are our maths. The ONS notes the three platforms can’t be de-duplicated.

In a holiday area, the season does most of the work. In a city, demand is much flatter through the year, so the bigger levers are which nights of the week you sell, and how long people stay. Edinburgh shows the exception: its August, festival month, had about three and a half times January’s nights. Events move a city’s prices more than the season does.

Stays in cities are not all short, either. Across the UK in 2025, the average stay was about 3.4 nights; in London it was about 4.1 (ONS Tables 1 and 6, our maths).

Step 1: your nightly price, by day of the week

Airbnb lets you “add a premium to your base price for Friday and Saturday nights” (Resource Centre, article 707). That suits a cottage, where weekends sell first. In a city, your busy nights might not be the weekend.

Work trips are part of the reason. VisitBritain’s February 2026 report on business visits found that in 2024, visits of three nights or less were “almost two thirds” of inbound business travel to Britain, and that London received “almost half” of all GB business visits (3.3 million). Its figures include lorry drivers, so treat them as a broad guide.

No official source publishes a weekday-versus-weekend split for UK city short-term lets, so don’t guess. Instead:

1. Pick your real competitors: same area, size and standard, the places a guest would choose between.
2. Look at their prices for the next four weeks, and compare their Tuesday with their Saturday.
3. Copy the shape. If their midweek is dearer than their weekend, yours probably should be too. If it’s the other way round, use Airbnb’s weekend price.

Events

Airbnb tells hosts to “update your availability and pricing ahead of big concerts, festivals, sporting events and more”, and says your calendar highlights most of your area’s holidays and major events (Resource Centre, article 15). Find the dates that fill your city early, such as big concerts, conferences, sporting fixtures and graduation weeks, and raise those nights before they sell at your normal price.

Late bookings

Set your advance notice to the same day, and choose a same-day cut-off that suits you. Airbnb lets you pick any hour from 6am to midnight (Resource Centre, article 708). Last-minute guests can then still book tonight.

Step 2: weekly and monthly discounts

On Airbnb, a weekly discount applies to stays of 7 nights or more, and a monthly discount to stays of 28 nights or more. Guests see a special callout in search and on your listing for weekly and monthly discounts of 10% or more (Resource Centre, article 707). With rule-sets you can also discount other trip lengths, from 2 to 6 nights, 1 to 3 weeks, and 4 to 12 weeks (Help Centre, article 2061).

The break-even rule

How big should a length-of-stay discount be? Here’s a simple rule, from our own maths:

An illustrative example. Say you’d normally fill 70% of February at £100 a night:

Illustrative, our maths. Before cleaning, changeover and per-booking costs, which all favour the long stay. Airbnb’s host fee is a percentage, so it scales both sides equally.

So the right discount depends on how full you’d be anyway. Use your own occupancy for the same month last year:

• In a quiet month, a bigger monthly discount can make sense. In Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and London, January and February were the two quietest months of 2025 (ONS, Table 2a).
• In a busy week, if the nights would sell anyway, a discount just gives money away. Keep it small.

One catch: Airbnb applies only one of these per booking: a new-listing promotion, a custom promotion, a length-of-stay discount, an early-bird discount or a last-minute discount (Help Centre, article 3421). A weekly discount and a last-minute discount don’t add up. And Airbnb requires “a true discount”: the price before the discount must be your real price for that date (Help Centre, article 2980).

Step 3: stays of 28 nights or more

Stays of 28 nights or more work differently on Airbnb:

• Cancellation: your long-term cancellation policy applies to “reservations of 28 or more consecutive nights” (Help Centre, article 475).
• Payment: the guest pays a first month up front, then the rest in monthly instalments (Help Centre, article 245).
• Monthly Stay Savings: Airbnb sometimes adds its own saving to stays of 28 or more nights. It’s “fully paid for by Airbnb” and isn’t deducted from your payout (Help Centre, article 1233).

London’s 90-night limit

Airbnb says it automatically limits “entire home listings in Greater London to 90 nights a year, unless you have planning permission to host more frequently” (Help Centre, article 1379). The law behind it is section 44 of the Deregulation Act 2015: short-term use of a London home is allowed without planning permission for no more than ninety nights in a calendar year, and the provider must be liable for council tax.

That changes the maths. If you’re capped, one 28-night stay uses 31% of your year’s 90 nights (our maths), so a big monthly discount costs more than it would elsewhere. Make sure the price is worth it.

Stays of several months

Holiday lets are among the tenancies that can’t be assured tenancies under the Housing Act 1988 (Schedule 1, paragraph 9), but a long stay that isn’t a holiday may be treated differently. Check the tenancy rules before you take a stay of several months, and take legal advice if you’re unsure. This isn’t legal advice.

In Scotland, every short-term let needs a licence “regardless of how long you let the accommodation for” (gov.scot), and the whole City of Edinburgh is a short-term let control area (City of Edinburgh Council).

More guides

• England’s short-term let register
• How to price your Airbnb
• Airbnb’s 15.5% host fee
• Airbnb slow season
• Airbnb bookings down?
• Airbnb cleaning fee

Sources

1. ONS, "Guest nights, nights and stays for short-term lets, monthly, UK", July 2023 to December 2025 (released 24 June 2026), Tables 1, 2a, 3a and 6b–6c: occupied nights and stays by local authority and region; ratios and averages are our maths
2. VisitBritain, "Understanding Business Visits to Great Britain" (February 2026): in 2024, visits of 3 nights or less were almost two thirds of inbound business travel; London received almost half (49%, 3.3 million) of GB business visits
3. Airbnb Resource Centre, "Using Airbnb pricing tools" (article 707, updated 14 July 2025): weekend premium for Friday and Saturday nights; weekly (7+ nights) and monthly (28+ nights) discounts; callout for 10% or more
4. Airbnb Resource Centre, "Updating your availability" (article 708, updated 14 July 2025): advance notice and same-day cut-off from 6am to midnight
5. Airbnb Resource Centre, "Setting your pricing strategy" (article 15, updated 14 July 2025): update availability and pricing ahead of big concerts, festivals and sporting events
6. Airbnb Help Centre, "How rule-sets work" (article 2061) and "How discounts are applied" (article 3421): length-of-stay discounts from 2 nights to 12 weeks; one discount per reservation
7. Airbnb Help Centre, article 2980 (Host Discount Policy): discounts must be a true discount
8. Airbnb Help Centre, articles 475 (long-term cancellation policy for 28+ consecutive nights), 245 (monthly payments) and 1233 (Monthly Stay Savings paid by Airbnb)
9. Airbnb Help Centre, article 1379: entire home listings in Greater London limited to 90 nights a year without planning permission
10. Deregulation Act 2015, section 44 (legislation.gov.uk): the 90-night exemption for short-term use of London homes
11. Housing Act 1988, Schedule 1, paragraph 9 (legislation.gov.uk); gov.uk, "Repossessing your privately rented property after 1 May 2026" (updated 13 July 2026)
12. gov.scot, "Short-term lets: regulation information" (updated 15 May 2026); City of Edinburgh Council, short-term let control area

PeakRate makes pricing and competitor-benchmarking software for hosts. Where this guide mentions it, we say so; everything else is sourced above.