Florence vs Sicily Airbnb Investment: Which Market Actually Pays

Florence earns three times Sicily's median revenue on lower supply growth. This piece works through the numbers, the seasonality gap, and the regulatory picture to give you a clear call.

VS

The number that should end this debate quickly is €11,000. That's the gap between Florence's €15.5K median annual revenue and Sicily's €4.5K. On a property that costs you €200K to buy and fit out, that difference is the line between a business and a hobby.

What makes it stranger is that Sicily's nightly rate grew 41% year-on-year against Florence's 19%, so on the surface Sicily looks like the momentum play. It isn't. Rate growth without occupancy growth just means the market is repricing a thin pool of bookings upward. This piece will settle which city deserves your deposit and where the real risks sit for each.

Where the money actually is

Florence's 36% occupancy against Sicily's 24% is the engine of that revenue gap, and it's structural, not cyclical. Florence added six occupancy points year-on-year; Sicily added none. When a market posts 41% ADR growth and flat occupancy, the most likely explanation is that weaker listings dropped out, flattering the rate average without adding a single night of real demand. That's consolidation, not a boom.

The €163 versus €127 nightly rate difference matters less than it looks in isolation, but in context it compounds the occupancy gap rather than closing it. Run the rough arithmetic: 36% occupancy on €163 across 365 nights gives you around €21,400 in gross potential revenue before voids and platform fees. Sicily's equivalent comes to roughly €11,100. The €15.5K and €4.5K medians sit below those ceilings, which tells you something about the distribution of listings in both cities, but Florence's floor is still high enough to service debt. Sicily's isn't, for most buyers.

The one number I'd treat with caution is the median itself. With 28,837 active listings in Sicily, the median is being dragged down by a long tail of rural and semi-rural properties with single-digit annual occupancy. If you're buying a well-located flat in Palermo or Catania, your ceiling is meaningfully above €4.5K. The data can't tell you exactly how much — street-level variance in Sicily is enormous.

The shape of the year

Florence runs from a 32% trough in November to a 53% peak in June, a 21-point swing. Sicily drops from 52% in July to 24% in October, the same swing in a shorter window. Both cities are seasonal, but the character of that seasonality is different. Florence's curve is broader: the shoulder months of April, May and September are reliably strong because the city draws conference visitors, school groups and cultural tourists alongside summer leisure travellers. Sicily's curve is sharper and skewed to a narrower July-August peak, with autumn falling away hard.

For a year-round operator who needs consistent cashflow to cover a mortgage, Florence's flatter curve is worth more than the headline peak figures suggest. For someone buying a second home they'll use in summer and rent out around their own holidays, Sicily's tight peak is less of a problem — you'd be blocking out August anyway. The honest version of that strategy is that you're accepting a lifestyle asset with partial yield, not a pure investment.

What the rules actually do to your returns

Neither city currently imposes a night cap, which removes the single biggest structural risk to short-term-let income. In Florence, the absence of a cap is more significant because the city has been on the European watchlist for overtourism and has already tightened registration requirements, introduced a city tourist tax (currently €5 to €7 per person per night depending on property category), and restricted new licences in the historic centre. That last point is critical: if you're buying an existing licensed property, you're buying scarcity. If you're buying unlicensed and hoping to convert, you may find the door closed.

Sicily's regulatory environment is lighter at the municipal level, which sounds attractive until you factor in that lighter regulation is part of why there are 28,837 listings competing for 24% average occupancy. The barrier to entry is low, and it shows in the numbers. No night cap is not the same as a permissive regime that will stay permissive; both Italy and the EU are moving toward tighter short-term-let controls, and Florence's stricter framework now may actually mean a more stable operating environment than Sicily's looser one, which could tighten sharply once Brussels gets further into its platform regulation work.

The call, and the honest hedge

Florence. The revenue gap is too large, the occupancy trajectory is too strong, and the regulatory moat around licensed historic-centre properties is genuinely valuable as rules tighten across Europe. A €163 nightly rate at 36% occupancy is a functioning short-let business. You can model it, finance it, and exit it to another investor on a yield basis. €4.5K median annual revenue in Sicily is not a business on those terms.

The case for Sicily anyway is an appreciation case, not an income case. Parts of the island — the south-east around Ragusa and Modica, the coastline near Trapani — are attracting buyers early in a gentrification cycle, and purchase prices remain low enough that even thin rental yields pencil out if you're underwriting to a ten-year capital gain. If that's your thesis, buy something you'd want to own regardless of the rental income, because there will be years when the rental income is modest. Don't buy it expecting Florence-style returns. You won't get them.

Frequently asked questions

Methodology. Figures are medians across active listings from Inside Airbnb's 2026-06-26 snapshot, refreshed automatically as new snapshots land. The table and chart above always show the latest data; the commentary is re-written when the numbers move materially.