# Modeling Public Transportation Use Among Short-Term Rental Guests in Madrid
## 1 Introduction  
Urban tourism [1] has undergone significant growth, driven in part by the rise in alternative accommodation models, particularly in European capitals. Among these, Airbnb (founded in 2008) has emerged as the dominant global platform, managing a substantial portfolio of short-term rental (STR) properties. Its success is largely attributed to the seamless digital interface it offers for host-guest interactions. As a result, empirical studies on the supply and demand dynamics of urban tourist accommodation frequently draw upon Airbnb data, often accessed via AirDNA. The growth of Airbnb listings worldwide in recent years is remarkable. In Madrid, there were 14,520 Airbnb listings in October 2018 [2], and this figure reached 25,288 listings in March 2025 [3], a growth of +74%. In this period, however, the hotel room supply experienced a +5% growth, from 44,229 to 46,474 rooms [4]. Specializing in STR market analytics for platforms such as Airbnb and Vrbo, AirDNA provides detailed insights and trend analyses for stakeholders, including property owners, investors, businesses, and policymakers involved in the holiday rental sector. Existingresearch based on this database has examined various aspects of the sharing-economy tourism model, including its competitive positioning against traditional hotels for specific tourist segments [5], its impact on hotel occupancy rates [6], sustainability issues [7], effects on housing prices [8], and second-home usage patterns [9]. However, some areas remain insufficiently explored, notably the relationship between the spatial distribution of STR properties and the mobility behaviors of their guests. Although major European tourist capitals are supported by dense and efficient public transport networks, short-term rental (STR) accommodations remain predominantly concentrated in central urban areas, frequently within historic districts. This spatial clustering imposes pressure on local residents and has, in some instances, provoked civic opposition, phenomena commonly associated with 'touristic gentrification' and 'touristicfication' [10]. Moreover, the centralization of STRs consolidates economic gains among hosts and businesses located in these core areas. Thus, redistributing accommodation options to peripheral districts may facilitate a more equitable distribution of tourism-related income, thereby promoting greater social and spatial cohesion within a sustainable tourism framework. Within this context, leveraging public transport to enhance the accessibility of peripheral STRs is vital for shaping regulatory strategies aimed at capping STR licenses in city centers. This decentralization of tourism could create employment in those peripheral areas while guests could re-spend their cost savings in local businesses, which is not an externality of conventional hotel tourism. In fact, an increase in the number of STRs in a census tract proved to increase the number of restaurants and tourist-related employees in that tract [11], which could be related to the idea of re-spending the cost savings on STR accommodation [12]. However, the decentralization should be aided by a sufficient and reliable public transport supply. Initial investigations into the relationship between short-term rental (STR) properties and access to public transportation have primarily used Madrid as a case study. In 2024, [PERSON] et al. [13] applied a hedonic pricing model, estimated using ordinary least squares (OLS), to examine how both accommodation attributes and location factors influenced tourist housing prices during peak (October 2022) and off-peak (February 2023) seasons. Their findings suggest that proximity to public transportation stations significantly affects guests' selection of STR properties, alongside intrinsic property characteristics, local environmental conditions, and overall lodging costs. Expanding upon this work, [PERSON] et al. [14] developed a methodology that correlates occupancy rates of tourist accommodations with the urban public transportation network.