Swiss short-term rentals in 2026: how the market grew, where demand is, and which cities lead

Switzerland's short-term rental market is not a niche anymore — it is a structural part of how the country's tourism economy absorbs visitors. The headline number keeps getting bigger: Swiss hotels registered 43.9 million overnight stays in 2025, a fourth consecutive record, while short-term-rental supply (Airbnb and similar platforms) has grown far faster than hotel capacity, rising roughly a third since 2019.

That combination — record demand plus even faster-growing supply — is exactly the tension owners in Montreux, Geneva, Zurich and the alpine resorts now live with. Demand is at an all-time high, yet occupancy per listing is under pressure in several cities, and regulators are responding with 90-day caps that have produced very uneven results. This article pulls together the official Federal Statistical Office (FSO) accommodation data and the independent short-term-rental market data we use at RivieraHost to show how the market evolved, where the real demand is, and how cities compare.

Short answer: Swiss tourist accommodation hit a record 60.1M overnight stays in 2024 (43.9M in hotels alone in 2025), while Airbnb supply has climbed ~34% since 2019 — far outpacing hotel capacity. Zurich and Geneva show the strongest sustained occupancy; alpine and lakeside markets are more seasonal; and 90-day regulations have slowed but not stopped supply growth in most cities.

The national record that keeps breaking

Start with the clean, official number: how many people actually slept in paid tourist accommodation in Switzerland. The FSO's accommodation statistics show a market that collapsed in 2020, then built four consecutive record years back-to-back.

After the COVID crash to 23.7 million hotel nights in 2020 (−40%), recovery was fast: 29.6M in 2021, 38.2M in 2022, and a first record of 41.7M in 2023. 2024 pushed to 42.8M (+2.6%), and 2025 to 43.9M — roughly 11% above the pre-pandemic 2019 level of 39.6M (FSO, Tourist accommodation in 2025, published 25.02.2026). The driver is inbound demand: foreign visitors set an all-time high of 22.8M nights in 2025, having already hit their best level since 1972 in 2024.

Add in supplementary accommodation — holiday flats, campsites and group accommodation — and the total 2024 tourist market was 60.1 million overnight stays (+1.4% vs 2023). Commercially-run holiday homes represented 7.1 million of those nights, about 41% of all supplementary-accommodation demand, with an average stay of 6.0 nights.

The supply surge: Airbnb vs hotel beds

Demand rising to records is only half the story. The other half is supply — and here the figures diverge sharply. Independent market data (AirDNA, cited by IamExpat and the Swiss Property Owners Association) put the number of Airbnb-style listings in Switzerland roughly 34% higher in autumn 2024 than in 2019. The PriceLabs short-term-rental index, tracking active listings nationwide, peaked near 51,000 in August 2024.

Hotel beds did not grow anywhere near that fast. That means the supply of individually-hosted short lets has grown faster than formal hotel capacity — a dynamic that, all else equal, puts downward pressure on per-listing occupancy and rates even while total demand climbs.

Occupancy: where the pressure really is

Looking at national and city averages separately matters, because they tell opposite stories. In 2024 the net hotel room-occupancy rate in Switzerland was 55.1%, essentially touching the record 55.2% set in 2019 — evidence that hotels, on average, are as full as they have ever been.

Short-term rentals are a different picture. PriceLabs data shows national short-term-rental occupancy swinging dramatically with season — 62% in July 2024 (the peak) falling to 19% in October 2024 — with ADR peaking at EUR 217 in February 2024 (ski season) before easing to about EUR 151 by October. In short: seasonal peaks are extremely strong, but the shoulder seasons are where occupancy evaporates and revenue per available night is lost. That seasonality gap is precisely where professional management earns its keep — the same pattern we document in our Montreux & Vevey occupancy analysis.

City by city: an 80-point gap in supply growth

National averages hide huge city-to-city variation. On the demand side, Zurich and Geneva are the clear leaders in hotel room occupancy (64.3% and 64.1% in 2024 vs a 55.1% national average). On the Airbnb-supply side, the variation is even wider — and it runs counter to a naive "more rules = fewer listings" story.

Two cities deserve special attention because they are the cleanest test of regulation. Lugano introduced a 90-day cap in 2022, yet its Airbnb supply is roughly 80% above 2019 — the cap did not bite. Lucerne, which capped at 90 days in January 2024, is the clearest success so far, with listings about 7% below 2019 — though even there the data shows them starting to climb again. We track these patterns because the same regulatory wind is now reaching Vaud, including communes around Montreux.

The 90-day rule: what it has — and hasn't — done

Swiss cities have converged on the 90-day residential cap as the default tool, but the outcomes are inconsistent. Geneva capped in 2018 and got an initial ~20% drop, only to see listings rise steadily from end-2022. Lugano's 2022 cap coincided with an 80% surge. Lucerne's 2024 rule is the outlier that actually reduced supply. The Swiss Property Owners Association's overview of city and regional regulation maps the patchwork: Zurich restricting commercial lets in residential zones, Basel-Stadt reform of its overnight-tax collection, Bern's "Lex Airbnb" protecting the old town, Interlaken requiring registration plus a five-night minimum, and Valais relying on local zoning in Zermatt and Verbier.

What the data says is that registration and enforcement matter more than the day-count on paper. A cap with weak enforcement (Lugano) changed nothing; one with registration and municipal follow-through (Lucerne) moved the number. For owners, this is not a reason to ignore the rules — it is a reason to confirm the exact regime in your commune before scaling up, which is a step we cover in our Montreux short-term rental registration guide.

What this means for owners

Taken together, the data points to three practical conclusions for anyone owning or considering a short-term rental in Switzerland:

• Demand is real and at records — 43.9M hotel nights in 2025 and 60.1M total overnight stays in 2024 means there is no shortage of travellers wanting somewhere to stay.
• Supply is growing faster than demand per listing — with ~51,000 active short-term listings nationally and ~34% supply growth since 2019, occupancy and ADR pressure will not come from demand disappearing but from competition for the same high-season nights.
• Seasonality is the biggest swing factor, and regulation varies by commune — the same Swiss property can earn far more or far less depending on how it is priced, marketed and kept bookable through shoulder seasons, and on whether its specific commune's cap is actually enforced.

This is where data-backed management changes the outcome. We benchmark every listing we manage against real regional comparables — the same FSO and short-term-rental figures above, applied to your specific micro-market — rather than against a citywide average. For owners weighing a purchase against rising supply, our five-metric market analysis framework shows how to read these signals before you commit capital.

Frequently asked questions

Related reading: Montreux & Vevey Airbnb: prices up, but occupancy is where revenue is lost · How to analyze a Montreux Airbnb market before you buy · How much can you earn renting your Montreux apartment? · Swiss short-term rental registration rules · Airbnb management in Montreux

Bahram Khanlarov

10+ years in hospitality. BBA Hospitality (Glion), MSc Tourism (FHGR), MSc Data Science (HSLU).