← Straight Answers Part of: Airbnb numbers explained
Owner terms · 4 min read
Fully booked, but earning less?
Occupancy rate is the nights your home was booked ÷ the nights it was open. 24 of 30 nights booked is 80%. It shows if guests came, not what they paid, so a cheap price can fill your calendar and still earn you less.
In short
- Occupancy = nights booked ÷ nights open. It counts booked nights, not money.
- A higher occupancy from a lower price can earn you less. Check it next to ADR and RevPAR.
- An average hides where your empty nights are. 92% of ours were Sunday to Thursday.
In this article
- Occupancy rate: how many of your nights had a guest
- Is 90% better than 80%? Not always, if a lower price paid for it
- Did you block nights? It changes the answer
- What's a good occupancy rate? Here's what our 13 homes got
- Where are your empty nights? Look at the days of the week
- Check your occupancy the right way, once a month
- Questions owners ask
Your statement says your unit was 90% booked in September. Sounds great. But was it?
This guide is for owners of short-stay homes in Johor Bahru, but the sums work for any home on Airbnb.
| What it means | The share of your nights that had a guest |
|---|---|
| The sum | Nights booked ÷ nights open |
| Unit A | 24 ÷ 30 nights = 80% |
| What it can't show | What each night sold for, and which days stayed empty |
Unit A is made up: open all 30 nights of a month, 24 nights booked.
Occupancy rate: how many of your nights had a guest
Start with 1 weekend. Your home is open Friday and Saturday night, and a guest books only Saturday. 1 of 2 nights booked: 50%.
Think of the nasi lemak stall from our ADR guide. It wraps 14 packets and sells 10: 10 of 14, about 71%. That tells you how much sold, not what each packet sold for.
A packet left over is like a night nobody booked.
Now Unit A, from our guides on ADR (what a booked night sold for) and RevPAR (what every night earned): 24 of 30 nights booked.
Occupancy equals nights booked divided by nights open equals 24 divided by 30 equals 80%
Is 90% better than 80%? Not always, if a lower price paid for it
Here's the trap. Say Unit C is the same home, but cheaper:
| Unit | Monthly revenue | Occupancy | Nights booked | Rate a night | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unit A | RM4,800a month | 80% occupancy | 24 nights booked | RM200 a night | Earns more |
| Unit C | RM4,320a month | 90% occupancy | 27 nights booked | RM160 a night |
And Unit C still pays for 3 more nights of guests: more power, more water, more wear. If those nights came as extra short stays, there are more cleanings too, as our RevPAR guide shows.
Our advice: don't chase 100%. A few empty nights can be a sign your price is about right.
Did you block nights? It changes the answer
A night you block for your own stay or a repair isn't open to guests. So do you divide by 30, or by fewer?
Both are right. About 67% shows the whole month. 80% shows how well the nights you put up for sale sold.
What's a good occupancy rate? Here's what our 13 homes got
There's no 1 good number for every home. Here's ours, as 1 real example.
We counted every night booked by a guest on the 13 homes RoomGuru managed in Johor Bahru all year. The year ran 1 Oct 2025 to 30 Sep 2026. That's 3,702 of 4,745 nights booked.
Our 13 homes, month by month
December was busiest, October quietest. The year: 78%
| Oct | 69% |
|---|---|
| Nov | 76% |
| Dec | 91% |
| Jan | 76% |
| Feb | 71% |
| Mar | 72% |
| Apr | 73% |
| May | 75% |
| Jun | 83% |
| Jul | 81% |
| Aug | 85% |
| Sep | 83% |
- All 13 homes together: 78.0%, counting every night, blocked ones too. Leave out the 90 blocked nights, as our formula does, and it's 79.5%.
These are our homes, not all of Johor Bahru. We don't have a fair number for the whole city, so we won't give one.
Where are your empty nights? Look at the days of the week
An average of 78% sounds like every night of the week is about 78% full. It hides where the gaps are.
Our 13 homes, night by night of the week
Friday and Saturday fill. Sunday to Thursday wait. The year: 78%
| Mon | 73% |
|---|---|
| Tue | 71% |
| Wed | 69% |
| Thu | 72% |
| Fri | 91% |
| Sat | 97% |
| Sun | 74% |
On our 13 homes, Saturday nights were 97% booked and Friday nights 91%. Wednesday nights were only 69%.
Our guess: many guests come from Singapore for the weekend, so Friday and Saturday fill first. We can't prove why from booking data alone.
Check your occupancy the right way, once a month
Do it when your statement comes in. 3 numbers, side by side:
Your monthly check: 3 numbers
0 of 3 checked
If occupancy goes up and RevPAR goes down, the lower price cost more than the extra nights brought in. That's Unit C: 90% full, but RM144 for every night open, against Unit A's RM160.
If both go up, you earned more per night open. Check ADR to see if your price held.
It's number 3 of our 4 Airbnb numbers every owner should know.
Questions owners ask
Does a 2-night stay count as 2 or 3 days?
2. Occupancy counts nights, not days. A guest who checks in Friday and out Sunday sleeps Friday and Saturday night.
Does Airbnb show my occupancy rate?
Yes, with your earnings data. Our reading of its help page: the figure can draw on up to 48 months back and 2 years ahead. So it may not match 1 month on your statement.
Sources: Occupancy rate is "your nights booked at your listings divided by the total available nights": Airbnb Help Centre. Our own figures count every night booked by a guest from 1 Oct 2025 to 30 Sep 2026 on the 13 homes RoomGuru managed for that whole year (3,702 of 4,745 nights booked, from 1,389 stays, monthly stays included), on all channels, from Hospitable; cancelled stays are left out. We divided by every night, blocked or not. Our homepage shows 75.5%: that's Airbnb's own figure for all our Airbnb listings, including homes that joined during the year, 12 Oct 2025 to 10 Oct 2026. This 78.0% counts every channel, on the 13 homes we managed all year. Airbnb also divides by its own "available nights", which may not match ours. Prices and Units A and C are made-up examples. Simon runs RoomGuru, which has managed homes in Johor Bahru on Airbnb since 2023. This is general information, not financial advice.