NEW ZEALAND: Airbnb In New Zealand

The number of Airbnb listings in New Zealand has doubled to more than 15,000 with hosts earning on average $3800 a year.

The home sharing company says that while this may not sound like a lot, the impact can often be "life changing."

It says they use this income to help pay off their mortgage, pay the bills and afford groceries.

Airbnb today revealed the average host age in New Zealand is 47 years old and almost half are over 50.

New Zealand hosts rented out their houses or rooms for an average of 26 to 27 nights a year. They were evenly split between entire houses and single rooms in a property.

There are around 4000 listings in Auckland and the most popular suburbs in Auckland are: Auckland Central, Grey Lynn, Ponsonby, Newmarket and Mount Eden.

The top five international markets Airbnb travellers to New Zealand originate from are Sydney, Melbourne, London, Singapore and Brisbane.

The top five destinations New Zealanders are travelling to on Airbnb are London, Melbourne, New York, Paris and Sydney.

Airbnb has listings in 191 countries and over 34,000 cities around the world and there are more than two million Airbnb listings worldwide.

Since the company was founded in 2008, there have been over 80 million guest arrivals at Airbnb listings worldwide.

Bloomberg reports Airbnb has secured a US$1 billion debt facility from some of the largest US banks to help grow even more.

The financing gives Airbnb more money to spend on global growth strategies and expansion beyond home-sharing. The San Francisco-based company is building add-on travel services

Overseas and in this country its running big advertising campaigns to recruit more hosts.

While Airbnb hasn't announced plans for an imminent initial public offering, investment banks often arrange debt facilities for successful private companies in hopes of building relationships to win future business like underwriting an IPO. Facebook got an US$8 billion package of financing from a group of banks in 2012, some of which helped take the social network operator public two months later.

Airbnb, last valued at US$25.5 billion, has watched Uber raise more than $11 billion in cash and debt. That number could climb by at least $1 billion when Uber, worth almost $68 billion, closes its latest debt financing.

The Airbnb data comes as the hotel industry says 2015 was an exceptional year for properties in New Zealand.

Tourism Industry Aotearoa's 140 member hotels which enjoyed an average 78.8 per cent occupancy in 2015, up 3.1 points on 2014, TIA Hotel Sector Manager Sally Attfield says.

This was the highest occupancy rate in five years.

The average daily rate (across all star grades) rose to $157, up $12 on the previous year, and also a five year high. This generated total revenue of $1.17 billion, up from $1.05 billion in 2014.

The strong performance is a result of improvements in the New Zealand economy and an increase in international visitor arrivals. New Zealand welcomed more than 3.1 million visitors in 2015 - 9.6 per cent more than in 2014.