Airbnb.com officials say hosts in Morgantown, West Virginia, earned more than $21,000 while welcoming 230 guests to the city during the West Virginia University (WVU) commencement May 10-13.
The jump represented the third largest surge in bookings for Morgantown, in Monongalia County, in the history of Airbnb.com’s online home-sharing platform—behind only a couple of football weekends in 2018, according to Ben Breit, a public affairs spokesman for the platform.
The WVU commencement has long been known to fill Morgantown hotels to peak occupancy, Breit said.
Briet said home-sharing platforms such as Airbnb have allowed cities like Morgantown to utilize pre-existing resources to expand lodging capacity and retain as many visitors as possible, he wrote.
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Airbnb previously announced that Monongalia County hosts earned $479,000 in 2018 while welcoming 4,800 guests, and the state gained $10 million while welcoming approximately 90,000 guests in 2018.
In 2018 there were more than 900 hosts in West Virginia sharing their homes via Airbnb, typically earning about $7,300 annually in supplemental income, Breit said.