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The Real Dollars Are Not Spent In Hotels; They Are Spent In Downtowns & At Local Attractions
By Michael Oates
Here is the number that should end the argument.
In 2024, visitors spent $5.45 billion in the Hudson Valley. Lodging accounted for just 22 percent of it. The other 78 percent — $4.25 billion — went to restaurants, retail counters, gas pumps, orchards, breweries, galleries, and outfitters. Food and beverage alone drew $1.83 billion, a full third of everything visitors spent.
That is the whole case in one line. The bed is not the destination. The bed is the ticket. And when we argue about which kind of bed a visitor should sleep in, we are arguing about 22 percent of the money while the other 78 percent waits to be spent in our downtowns.
At HVEDC, our job is to grow the regional economy — not to pick winners inside it. On short-term rentals, the data says something economic development professionals should say out loud more often: this is not a zero-sum fight. Airbnb and the traditional hospitality sector are both working, both growing, and both essential. The Hudson Valley needs two front doors.
The multiplier is real, and it is local
New York’s tourism economy runs on a well-documented ripple. Tourism Economics, an Oxford Economics company, found that $94.0 billion in direct visitor spending across New York State in 2024 generated $145.2 billion in total economic impact — $25.5 billion through supply chains and $25.8 billion through the wages those workers spend back home. Roughly $1.55 of activity for every dollar a visitor puts down.
In our region, that ripple carried 57,033 jobs — 6.5 percent of all employment in the Hudson Valley. It produced $658 million in state and local taxes. Without it, the average household here would owe an additional $835 a year to keep services level. In Orange County, $1,286. In Columbia County, tourism accounts for nearly 12 percent of all jobs and 10 percent of all personal income.
Short-term rentals feed that same ripple. Airbnb’s 2026 U.S. Economic Impact Report estimates that travel on the platform generated more than $93 billion in economic activity nationally in 2025, supporting over 1.1 million jobs and more than $26 billion in tax revenue. The detail that matters most for us: the company reports that nearly half of guest spending happened in the neighborhood where the guest stayed, at roughly $200 per person per day beyond the cost of the listing.
That is not lodging revenue. That is Main Street revenue.
Reaching the places hotels have not reached
New York’s Hudson Valley and Catskills regions are made of small places. Callicoon. Rosendale. Athens. Livingston Manor. Wurtsboro. Many of them are wonderful and have no hotel — and no realistic financing case for one.
Airbnb reports that 63 percent of U.S. census tracts have active listings but no hotel at all, and that hosts in hotel-free areas earned $9.9 billion in 2025 — close to 40 percent of all U.S. host earnings. In those communities, home sharing is not an alternative to hotels. It is the only lodging that exists. Take it away and the visitor does not switch hotels; the visitor drives past.
The travel patterns favor us. Airbnb reports that 64 percent of its U.S. guests traveled fewer than 300 miles in 2025 — shorter, more frequent, drive-market trips. The Hudson Valley sits inside the largest drive market in the country. Every hamlet with a listing is a hamlet that captured a weekend it would otherwise have lost.
The receipts back it up locally. The Ulster County Comptroller documented occupancy tax collections climbing from roughly $1.53 million to $3.57 million over five years, with the bulk of that growth arriving after the county’s 2021 voluntary collection agreement with Airbnb put the tax in the booking flow. That is real money for real budgets, collected from visitors rather than residents.
What hosting does for a household
We spend a lot of time in economic development talking about capital stacks and incentive packages. We should spend more time on the household balance sheet.
Airbnb reports the typical U.S. host earned about $15,600 in supplemental income in 2025, and that in its survey 46 percent said hosting helps them cover the rising cost of living while 42 percent said the income helps them stay in their homes. In a region carrying some of the highest property tax burdens in America, that is not a rounding error. That is a tax bill, a roof, a semester, a small business kept afloat between seasons.
A retired couple in Highland renting a garage apartment is not a hedge fund. They are a Hudson Valley household using an asset they already own to stay in a place that has gotten expensive. Economic development should be able to see that clearly.
The hotel sector is not losing. It is investing.
In January, Starwood Hotels announced 1 Hotel & Homes Hudson Valley — roughly 100 rooms on 775 acres at the Rosendale–Kingston line, on the old Williams Lake site, with more than 500 acres set aside as nature preserve and a 2028 opening. Ulster County has added boutique inns and restored historic properties across New Paltz, Kingston, and Rosendale. Statewide, Tourism Economics found lodging led all spending categories in 2024, growing 8.2 percent as room rates rose 6 percent.
Sophisticated hospitality capital does not commit to a market it believes short-term rentals have hollowed out. It commits because the Hudson Valley’s visitor economy is deep enough to support multiple products.
Because travelers are not one customer. A corporate team at Stewart needs a front desk, a block of rooms, and a meeting space. A wedding needs a ballroom. A family of six with a dog and a Tuesday-to-Sunday plan needs a kitchen and a yard. Four couples doing the Shawangunk Wine Trail need one house, not four rooms. These are different products serving different demand curves. A region that offers only one of them is a region that turns business away.
The money lands twice
The strongest argument for short-term rentals is not simply that guests spend. It is that the money lands twice.
First the guest spends. Airbnb reports the typical U.S. guest spent more than $775 on goods and services beyond the cost of the listing — the diner in Callicoon, the hardware store in Athens, the farm stand on Route 209, the outfitter renting kayaks by the hour. In a region where food and beverage alone pulled $1.83 billion from visitors last year, those receipts are the whole ballgame for a Main Street business trying to make it to Columbus Day.
Then the host spends. The roughly $15,600 a typical host earned last year does not leave the county. It goes to the cleaner who turns the house over on Sunday morning, the roofer, the landscaper, the accountant, the plumber — and to the property tax bill that funds the school district. Economists call this the induced effect, and it is precisely why $94.0 billion in visitor spending across New York in 2024 became $145.2 billion in total economic activity. A short-term rental puts lodging revenue directly into the hands of a household that already shops here.
Hotels drive this same engine, and drive it hard — lodging supported nearly 98,000 jobs across New York State in 2024, and those are our neighbors on payroll. The point is not that one channel beats the other. It is that a region running both channels keeps more of every visitor dollar inside its own county lines.
What we should do
Let towns zone for their own character. And stop framing this as hotels versus Airbnb, because our nine counties do not have the luxury of choosing.
The Catskills region — Ulster, Sullivan, and Greene among them — grew visitor spending 7.1 percent in 2024, the fastest of any region in the state outside New York City. The Hudson Valley region grew 6.2 percent to a record $5.45 billion. We are winning. We are winning with hotels and with hosts, with resorts and with farmhouses, with front desks and with lockboxes.
The visitor does not care which door they came through. They care that the door was open.
Mike Oates is President & CEO, Hudson Valley Economic Development Corporation
