2025 was a year of much change for the group holiday rentals market in the UK and beyond. There was plenty to be pleased about; consumer demand appeared to be picking up, lead times and booking lengths shifted (more on that below), and some fantastic weather in Europe over the summer saw a surge in late demand for summer stays.
There were also plenty of challenges for holiday home operators, not least regulatory and fiscal headwinds, increased prices and commissions from the big OTAs and booking platforms, and a macroeconomic environment/consumer market that is still struggling post-COVID.
Despite all that, we have seen some strong growth at GroupAccommodation.com, welcoming hundreds of fantastic new venues to the website in 2025 and observing some very interesting data points, as shared below.
We’ve analysed our dataset of millions of historical booking requests and enquiries to show how guest behaviour is evolving.
Enquirers on the Rise and an August Surge
While we don’t share our raw enquiry data, we saw an 18% increase in enquirers on the website in 2025, which is very pleasing considering the macro environment. This was driven by a rise in SEO traffic, new traffic sources from AI and large language model tools (now accounting for 5 – 10% of our monthly traffic and growing every week), and plenty of repeat business from our existing database of users via our own marketing channels and database of guests.
We have also seen strong growth in first-time enquirers on GroupAccommodation.com for 2025, up 20% YoY vs 2024, meaning we’re reaching new audiences via the fantastic marketing work the team have been doing.
In terms of seasonality, we always see a strong surge in booking interest in late August and September as people book for Christmas, NYE and for summer the following year. This year, this surge started much earlier in August, as you can see with the August spike below.
Needless to say, the January peak persists in the group market with a huge proportion of the year’s enquiries being sent during that period.
Unique Enquirers by Month – 2024 vs 2025
Leads Times and Length of Stay – Mixed
One of the key signals we look at for consumer confidence is the lead time to booking and the requested length of stay.
Throughout 2025, we saw plenty of data in the industry that suggested both were decreasing. However, in the group market, we have seen a very slight decline in lead time, as below, and a small shift to the positive for length of stay (increasing).
Average Lead Time in Days by Year
Worth noting that there are some fairly extreme COVID anomalies in this data for 2020 – 2022, but outside of that, we have seen a general trend that lead times are increasing.
When it comes to length of stay, again, there are some COVID anomalies to be aware of here in 2020 and 2021, but pleasingly, we have seen our requested length of stay hit its highest number in a decade (outside of COVID), with an increase in average requested length of stay by +2.28% on the year prior.
Average Length of Stay by Year
Stags and Hens Get More Organised (But Hens Win the Day)
One group that has upped its game for 2025 is the stag and hen party organisers. Both have been booking a full 11 days earlier than the year prior – congrats to all the best men and maids of honour out there!
And playing true to the stereotype, the hens are much more organised than the stags, typically planning their trip 73 days further in advance of the stag groups. Well done, hens!
Average Lead Times for Booking – Stags vs Hens in 2024 and 2025
Heading into 2026
As we head into 2026, we’ll be monitoring all of these trends (and more!) and will share any datapoints here on the blog and with our subscribers. At the point of publication, we’re already seeing the January surge kick in for the year ahead – and even for Christmas and New Year 2027!
If you’re interested in listing your property on GroupAccommodation.com, please do get in touch via the link below.
List Your Property on GroupAccommodaton.com
We specialise in large group stays sleeping 8+ and pass all enquiries to you direct. No commission to pay.
*All data referenced is internal booking data from GroupAccommodation.com, based on analysis of over 1 million booking requests.
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