Syracuse NY Report: AirROI Pins, Not Leftover Occupancy

Thomas Garner
Aug 12
11 min read

Updated: 2 days ago

Aerial view of Syracuse, New York at sunrise

Syracuse's short-term rental market doesn't lead with a big number, and the honest version of this report shouldn't either. A market-data pull from AirROI puts Syracuse at per year in average revenue, named-town occupancy pins as of 2026-07-31, a $152 average daily rate (ADR), and $65 RevPAR (revenue per available night). A separate pull sourced through Rabbu's AirDNA-fed data shows a meaningfully different picture: named-town occupancy pins as of 2026-07-31 at a $127 ADR and roughly in average monthly revenue. Those two numbers don't reconcile cleanly, and this report states both rather than picking the one that sounds better , treat any single blended annual figure you see elsewhere as a starting point to verify, not a guarantee.

What's more useful than either headline number is what sits underneath it: a bedroom-count breakdown that's unusually granular for a market Syracuse's size, and a genuine two-engine demand calendar that most single-city market reports never name specifically.

Why the Two Data Sources Actually Disagree

The AirROI and Rabbu/AirDNA numbers aren't just two vendors rounding differently , they measure occupancy against a different denominator, which is the real source of the gap. AirDNA-sourced occupancy figures (which is what feeds the Rabbu pull) are calculated as reserved nights divided by “active listing nights” , a night that isn't blocked by the host and has seen a reservation within the past 28 days, per AirDNA's own published methodology. Days a host blocks off for personal use, maintenance, or reduced availability get excluded from the denominator entirely, which pushes the reported occupancy percentage up relative to a simpler calendar-days measure. AirROI, which draws on a larger listing pool with a different filtering approach, appears to count a broader set of days in its denominator, consistent with why its named-town occupancy pins as of 2026-07-31 reads meaningfully lower than the Rabbu/AirDNA-sourced 56%. Neither number is wrong; they're answering slightly different questions. A host modeling their own revenue should ask any data source which denominator it's using before comparing across providers, and should weight their own booking-calendar data over either public estimate once they have a season of history to draw on.

A Practical Way to Use Both Numbers

Rather than picking a side in the AirROI-versus-Rabbu/AirDNA gap, a host can use both as bookends for underwriting. AirROI's read , /yr at named-town occupancy pins as of 2026-07-31 and a $152 ADR , sits at the more conservative end. The Rabbu/AirDNA-sourced read , named-town occupancy pins as of 2026-07-31 at a $127 ADR, roughly /yr on a monthly-revenue basis , implies faster turnover at a lower nightly rate, and a lower annual total than AirROI's despite the higher occupancy, which underscores how much the underlying denominator drives the final number more than either figure alone. The practical takeaway for underwriting a specific property: don't average the two into a single blended figure and treat it as reliable. Build a downside case around the lower of the two annual totals, an upside case around the higher, and replace both with your own listing's actual first 90 days of live booking data as soon as you have it , neither public estimate should still be driving your pricing decisions six months into operating.

The Bedroom-Count Breakdown That Matters More Than the Headline

Syracuse's ADR scales sharply with bedroom count: roughly $73/night for a one-bedroom unit, climbing to $267/night at the five-bedroom tier. Supply doesn't scale the same way. One-bedroom listings dominate at 96 active units (about 39% of the market), followed by 67 two-bedroom and 46 three-bedroom listings. The 4- and 5-bedroom tiers are a different story entirely: just 13 active four-bedroom listings and 10 active five-bedroom listings citywide, despite commanding the highest per-night rates in the market.

That's a specific, actionable supply gap , a meaningfully thinner competitive field in exactly the segment with the highest revenue per available night. This cluster'sinvestment deep-dive on the 4- and 5-bedroom segmentwalks through what that gap means for an investor with access to (or capital for) a larger property.

Framed as revenue per available night rather than raw ADR, the gap is even starker: a five-bedroom unit at a $267/night core rate outearns a one-bedroom several times over per booked night, while facing a fraction of the competition for search visibility. For a host who already owns a larger property, or who's deciding between finishing a basement into an extra bedroom versus leaving it as storage, that's a direct, dollars-and-cents argument for adding sleeping capacity rather than continuing to optimize an already-crowded one-bedroom listing.

The supply concentration makes the gap even clearer. Of the 232 active listings this breakdown covers, one-bedroom units account for roughly 41% of supply, two-bedrooms about 29%, three-bedrooms about 20%, four-bedrooms about 6%, and five-bedrooms just 4%. A five-bedroom Syracuse listing is competing for search placement against roughly a tenth of the listings a one-bedroom competes against , a meaningfully easier discovery problem sitting on top of the higher nightly rate.

Two Engines, Not One: Commencement and the State Fair

Most single-city STR markets run on one seasonal driver. Syracuse genuinely runs on two, and they sit on opposite ends of the calendar. Syracuse University's Commencement Weekend , school and college convocations May 7-9, 2026, with the university-wide ceremony on Sunday, May 10 at the JMA Wireless Dome (the arena's current name; long-time locals may still know it as the Carrier Dome) , is, per the university's own visitor guidance, the single biggest hotel-demand weekend of the year in Central New York. Family travel groups book six to twelve months out, and area hotels routinely sell out around it.

Layered on the calendar's other end is the Great New York State Fair, running August 26 through September 7, 2026 at the New York State Fairgrounds , a 13-day run drawing roughly one million visitors. The Fair's 2026 Chevrolet Music Series features nearly 40 national acts, with confirmed headliners including The All-American Rejects, Sean Paul, Melissa Etheridge, Ashanti, ZZ Top, and Trace Adkins, plus Flo Rida and Third Eye Blind. Some earlier trade coverage of the 2026 lineup also referenced acts like The Commodores and Quiet Riot; hosts should check the Fair's own published schedule at draft time for the final confirmed bill, since concert lineups are added on a rolling basis.

This is a genuinely dated, high-confidence, two-peak calendar most vacation-rental markets don't have. This cluster'smonth-by-month pricing calendarandguest-persona breakdownboth build directly on these two windows.

What Commencement Weekend Means for a Host

The practical implication of a six-to-twelve-month booking window is that a host who waits until spring to price Commencement Weekend has already lost the earliest, highest-willingness-to-pay bookings to hotels and to whichever short-term rentals opened their calendars first. Because families frequently book multi-night stays bracketing the ceremony itself , arriving Thursday or Friday ahead of Saturday and Sunday convocations , a minimum-night requirement of three to four nights during Commencement Weekend is realistic and commonly supportable, rather than leaving single-night gaps a hotel-seeking family won't book anyway. Listings within a short drive of the JMA Wireless Dome and downtown hotel row see the most direct demand pull; a host farther out can still capture overflow once nearby hotel blocks and closer STRs sell out, provided their calendar is open and priced appropriately by early winter.

What the State Fair Means for a Host

The Fair's demand curve behaves differently from Commencement's. Attendance is spread across all 13 days rather than concentrated in a single weekend, and a meaningful share of visitors are day-trippers who don't need overnight lodging at all , so the STR opportunity concentrates on the weekends within the run, on the days a headline concert is scheduled, and on visitors traveling from outside a comfortable day-trip radius. Unlike Commencement's long lead time, Fair-adjacent bookings skew later and more price-sensitive, rewarding a host who holds firm on rate through midsummer rather than discounting early, then adjusts pricing dynamically in the two to three weeks before the Fair opens as the confirmed concert lineup and daily attendance patterns become clearer. Listings that can accommodate a group booking around a single concert night carry particular leverage during this window.

The Seasonality Curve: August Outearns January Nearly 4-to-1

The two-peak structure shows up cleanly in the monthly revenue data: August delivers roughly in average monthly revenue versus about $785 in January , nearly a 4-to-1 gap. The June-through-September stretch accounts for the bulk of Syracuse's annual STR earnings, with March reading as the softest month in the available data. A host pricing reactively rather than proactively around the two known peaks is leaving real, quantifiable revenue on the table.

The Shoulder Months and the Winter Trough

The shoulder months tell their own story. June and July build steadily as the academic year ends and summer travel begins, without yet touching either peak. September holds up reasonably well immediately after the Fair closes before tapering into October, when the region's leaf-peeping traffic offers a modest, less dependable secondary bump. The real trough is November through March: with students in dorms rather than needing off-campus short-term housing, no major citywide draw on the calendar, and Central New York's genuinely difficult winter weather suppressing casual travel, this is a stretch where a host should plan around break-even or loss-leader pricing rather than expecting the June-through-September run rate to hold. Building a cash reserve during the peak months to cover this five-month lull, rather than assuming revenue is roughly flat year-round, is the single most common planning mistake this research pass sees repeated in new-host projections.

Who's Already Operating in Syracuse

This research pass confirmed Vacasa is active in the Syracuse market, offering both full-service management (including help with local permitting and occupancy-tax compliance) and a lighter self-service tier for DIY-leaning hosts. Regional and local operators are also present , Crossett Properties (through its Crossett Hospitality division) manages short-term rentals in the area , alongside national aggregator/marketing services like Awning. That's a real but not dominant property-management presence: enough competition to take seriously, not so much that a differentiated, well-positioned listing can't still win.

What that competitive mix means practically for a new host: Vacasa's presence sets a service-quality and pricing-sophistication floor a self-managed listing has to clear to compete on search placement, since professionally managed listings typically maintain more consistent calendars, faster guest-message response times, and dynamically adjusted pricing than an individual host running things manually. Crossett Properties and similar regional operators tend to compete more on local knowledge and personal relationships than on technology , a gap a self-managed host with strong local ties can close. Awning and comparable national aggregator/marketing services generally function as listing and marketing intermediaries rather than full operators, meaning they add search-visible competition without necessarily adding operational sophistication behind it. None of this adds up to a market a new, well-positioned host should avoid , it's a market where professional photography, accurate pricing informed by the bedroom-count gap above, and responsive guest communication is enough to compete credibly, rather than needing to out-market a saturated field.

What This Means for a Syracuse Host

Treat the revenue estimates as a range, not a number.AirROI's /yr and the Rabbu/AirDNA-sourced $127 ADR at named-town occupancy pins as of 2026-07-31 don't fully agree , price and plan around the range, then verify against your specific property and comps.
Price the two peaks aggressively and separately.Commencement Weekend (May 7-10, 2026) and the State Fair (August 26-September 7, 2026) reward early-locked multi-night minimums and late-breaking rate discipline respectively , see theregulations guidefor compliance basics and thepricing calendarfor month-by-month detail.
Consider the 4- and 5-bedroom gap if you have (or can access) a larger property.Just 13 four-bedroom and 10 five-bedroom active listings citywide is a real, underserved segment at the market's highest per-night rates.
Register before you list.Syracuse requires a Rental Registry Certificate regardless of STR or long-term use, on top of New York's statewide STR registry mandate , full detail in theregulations guide.

Verifying These Numbers Against Your Own Property

Every figure in this report is a market-level average, and Syracuse's market is heterogeneous enough that the average won't describe most individual properties well. Before underwriting a specific address, pull comparable listings within a half-mile radius on Airbnb and Vrbo directly, filtered to the same bedroom count, and look at their review counts and posted calendars rather than their asking rates alone , a listing with a high asking rate and a mostly-blocked calendar is not evidence of achievable revenue. Cross-reference against the two-peak calendar above: a comp with strong reviews but flat pricing through Commencement Weekend or the State Fair is very likely underpricing its own peaks, not evidence that the market doesn't reward pricing them aggressively. Once a listing has been live for a full peak season, its own occupancy and ADR , not any market report, including this one , should become the primary planning input.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does an Airbnb make in Syracuse, New York?

Estimates genuinely disagree. AirROI's data pull puts Syracuse's average daily rate at $152 with $65 RevPAR; a separate Rabbu/AirDNA-sourced pull shows a $127 ADR at 56% occupancy. Neither source's report offers a confirmed blended annual revenue figure worth repeating here. The ADR figures alone differ meaningfully, so treat any single blended number a third-party tool offers as a starting point to verify, not a settled figure.

What drives short-term rental demand in Syracuse?

Two dated, high-confidence windows: Syracuse University's Commencement Weekend (May 7-10, 2026, with families booking six to twelve months out) and the Great New York State Fair (August 26-September 7, 2026, roughly one million visitors over 13 days). Together they give Syracuse a two-peak calendar most single-driver markets don't have, which makes pricing more plannable than a market that depends on one blurry tourism season.

Are 4- and 5-bedroom rentals underserved in Syracuse?

Just 13 active four-bedroom and 10 active five-bedroom listings exist citywide, despite ADR climbing to $267/night at the top end versus $73/night for a one-bedroom, a meaningfully thinner competitive field in the market's highest-earning segment. That's a specific, actionable supply gap for an investor with access to, or capital for, a larger property.

Does Vacasa manage properties in Syracuse?

Yes. Vacasa is confirmed active in the Syracuse market, offering both full-service management, including help with local permitting and occupancy-tax compliance, and a lighter self-service tier for DIY-leaning hosts. Regional operators like Crossett Properties and national marketing and aggregator services like Awning are also present, so it's a real but not saturating professional-management presence.

Is Syracuse a good market for a new short-term rental listing?

It's a legitimate, modest-revenue market with a real, specific opportunity in the underserved 4- and 5-bedroom segment and two genuinely dated demand spikes to underwrite around. It is not a high-ADR luxury market, and the gap between the AirROI and Rabbu/AirDNA figures should be weighed honestly rather than optimistically before committing to a purchase or listing strategy.

How far in advance should I price for Commencement Weekend and the State Fair?

Commencement Weekend books six to twelve months out, so calendars and multi-night minimums, three to four nights is realistic, should be set by early winter. The State Fair books later and more price-sensitively across its 13-day run, rewarding a host who holds rate through midsummer and then adjusts dynamically in the two to three weeks before the Fair opens as the concert lineup and attendance patterns firm up.

Why do the two Syracuse market-data sources disagree so much?

AirROI draws on a larger listing pool with a different filtering approach and appears to count a broader set of days in its occupancy denominator, which is consistent with why its occupancy reading comes in meaningfully lower than the Rabbu/AirDNA-sourced 56%. Neither source is simply wrong, they're measuring a market with a genuinely different methodology, which is exactly why a host shouldn't lean on one number alone.

How is Syracuse's active listing supply split by bedroom count?

Of 232 active listings in this breakdown, one-bedroom units account for roughly 41% of supply, two-bedrooms about 29%, three-bedrooms about 20%, four-bedrooms about 6%, and five-bedrooms just 4%. That heavy concentration in the smaller tiers is exactly what makes the thin four- and five-bedroom field a real, checkable opportunity rather than a guess.

What does Vacasa's presence in Syracuse mean for a self-managed host?

Vacasa's presence sets a service-quality and pricing-sophistication floor a self-managed listing has to clear to compete on search placement, since professionally managed listings typically maintain more consistent calendars, faster guest-message response times, and dynamically adjusted pricing than an individual host running things manually. Matching that baseline, even without a management company, is what keeps a self-managed listing competitive in search results.

Work with Crest & Cove Creative

Syracuse's AirROI and AirDNA occupancy numbers disagree because they measure against different denominators, so a listing that quotes just one of the two figures is picking a side without saying so.

We help Syracuse hosts read both data sources as bookends and write listing copy that does not lean on a single cherry-picked number.

Reach out at crestcove.co or (256) 998-7502.