Venice edges ahead of Sicily on higher occupancy (36% vs 24%), stronger RevPAR (£34 vs £7).
Head-to-head metrics
| Sicily | Venice | |
|---|---|---|
| Median occupancy | 24% | 36% |
| Median daily rate | £69 | £131 |
| Median RevPAR | £7 | £34 |
| Active listings | 29,746 | 6,967 |
| YoY occupancy | — | +6.4 pts |
| YoY daily rate | — | -13.2% |
| Regulation risk | — | — |
| Annual night cap | None | None |
| License required | No | No |
Full analysis: Sicily vs Venice
On the money side of this comparison — what a listing actually earns against the nights it has available — Venice finishes decisively ahead of Sicily. Revenue per available night — rate and occupancy combined, the figure that actually reaches an owner — is 373.8% higher in Venice: £34 against £7. Venice sells 12 more points of its calendar — 36% median occupancy against 24% in Sicily. That is not a rounding difference, and it compounds over a hold period.
Venice takes both halves of the yield equation, which is less common than it sounds. It charges more per night — £131 against £69 — and still fills more of the year, 36% against 24%. A market that leads on price and utilisation at once is normally one where demand has outrun supply, rather than one where hosts are discounting to keep the calendar busy. RevPAR reflects the double advantage at £34 against £7.
That verdict needs a caveat, because Sicily is not simply the weaker market of the two. Sicily's calendar is the flatter of the two — 14.3 points between its best and worst month against 34.7 in Venice — which makes debt service easier to underwrite. Sicily is the deeper market at 29,746 active listings against 6,967, which usually means better comparables going in and a wider buyer pool coming out. If your model leans on that dimension, the ordering above can reasonably flip.
Neither Sicily nor Venice currently has a verified short-term rental regulation record in our register, so the comparison above is a yield comparison only. Regulation is the single largest source of downside in this asset class — an unverified market is an unpriced risk, not an absent one.
The two calendars also behave differently. Sicily peaks in August at 43.2% and bottoms in November at 28.9%; Venice runs from 62.8% in September down to 28.1% in November. Sicily is the steadier of the two at 14.3 points peak-to-trough against 34.7 — easier to underwrite against a mortgage — while Venice concentrates its return into a shorter window and rewards operators who price the peak aggressively instead of holding a flat rate all year.
Who each suits, then. Sicily suits buyers who want a conventional, lightly regulated entry. Venice answers to the same regulatory profile, so the split between them is operational rather than legal. Every figure above comes from the same Inside Airbnb snapshot pipeline on both sides, dated 2025-09, filtered to listings with at least one booking in the last twelve months. Occupancy medians are drawn from 23,804 active Sicily listings and 3,599 in Venice.
Frequently asked questions
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