$20 million: That’s how much money Airbnb hosts in Grand Traverse County netted between January and September of last year. No other county in the state saw more Airbnb revenue for that nine-month stretch, and northern Michigan’s other counties were top performers as well. The data showcases the region’s draw as both a tourist destination and a medium-term stay for professionals who, thanks to a pandemic-prompted explosion in remote work, can now do their jobs from anywhere.

In December 2018, The Ticker reported that Grand Traverse County had “logged $8 million in Airbnb host income and welcomed approximately 53,200 Airbnb guests” throughout the course of that year. Those numbers were enough to make Grand Traverse County the state’s second most popular Airbnb destination, after Wayne County, which drew an estimated 80,000 guests and $9.2 million in host income in 2018.

2021 statistics spotlight both the massive across-the-board growth of Airbnb activity in Michigan and the increasing popularity of rural destinations. In the aforementioned January-through-September window, Airbnb data indicates that hosts in Grand Traverse County netted $20 million, compared to $12 in Wayne County. Other northern Michigan counties saw big numbers in that period, too: $11.1 million in Leelanau, $8.1 million in Charlevoix, $6.9 million in Antrim, $5.6 million in Emmet, $4.9 million in Benzie, and $1.3 million in Kalkaska.

In a press release sharing the data, Airbnb credited the widescale adoption of remote work as the factor that’s driving so many people to vacation rentals in rural areas. By freeing people from the need to be in the office every day, Airbnb says, the pandemic has brought “the biggest change to travel since the advent of commercial flying.”

“Because of this travel revolution, people are now traveling everywhere, spreading out to thousands of towns and cities, and staying for weeks, months, or even longer,” the press release stated. “100,000 towns and cities around the world have had an Airbnb booking during the pandemic, and 6,000 places had their first-ever Airbnb booking. This has created particularly significant opportunities for rural communities, allowing many to directly benefit from the tourism economy by hosting on Airbnb. From July to September 2021, domestic nights booked by U.S. guests on Airbnb for stays in rural areas grew 85 percent, compared to the same period in 2019.”

On average, rural Airbnb hosts in Michigan earned $10,700 between January and September of last year. Those hosts are majority female (61 percent), and a quarter of them are over the age of 60.

The data aligns with what Traverse City Tourism (TCT) reported last fall, which is that the Traverse City region accounts for 22 percent of the state’s short-term rentals but only 1.5 percent of its population. TCT also found that, between 2020 and 2021, short-term rental supply in the area grew a whopping 30 percent, from 2,886 units to 3,739.

Though Airbnb proclaimed the heightened rural rental activity as a chance for rural parts of the state “to directly benefit from the tourism economy,” these data points are also arriving at a crucial moment in the short-term rental debate. Critics of short-term rentals say they threaten to devastate the character of popular tourism communities like Traverse City by taking away long-term housing and making affordable housing more difficult to find for the people who actually live and work in those communities.

That debate is currently playing out at the legislative level, where Michigan lawmakers are weighing whether to prohibit municipalities from regulating short-term rentals. If the legislation becomes law, it could lead to even more Airbnb activity in northern Michigan counties – and more worries about affordability for year-round residents. The bill passed in the Michigan House of Representatives last fall and is currently under consideration in the Senate.