Should You Put a Christmas Tree in Your Airbnb?

A holiday trip is a strange thing. People travel at Christmas to be with family, to escape the cold, to ski, or because it's the only week everyone has off. Whatever the reason, they are spending the most traditional days of the year away from their own home, their own decorations, and their own routines. Some of them feel that more than they expect to.

A rental without a tree is a rental like any other week of the year. A rental with a tree says three things before the guest has put down their bags. It says the holiday happens here too. It says somebody prepared for them. And it gives them a place to put the gifts, which sounds small until you are a parent who drove eight hours with presents hidden under the luggage.

The numbers explain why this reaches so many guests in the US. Pew Research Center found that about nine in ten Americans celebrate Christmas, and that about eight in ten non-Christians in the US celebrate it too, most of them as a cultural holiday rather than a religious one. Pew also found that roughly a third of American Jews had a Christmas tree in their home. For most of your US guests, the tree is a family tradition before it is anything else.

And a lot of people are on the road. AAA projected 122.4 million Americans would travel at least 50 miles from home over the year-end holidays in 2025, from December 20 to January 1, a record. Every one of those travelers left their own tree behind for part of the season.

Now think about what a guest writes in a review. They write about the things that surprised them. Clean sheets and fast wifi are expected, so they rarely get mentioned unless something is wrong. A tree, lit and waiting when a family walks in on December 23rd, is a surprise. That is why it shows up in the comments, and it's why we tell every client with holiday bookings to do it.

There's a bigger point here too. A lot of guests feel that Airbnb has become more transactional: long checkout lists, extra fees, and homes decorated to look good in photos more than to feel good in person. Guests notice the difference between a place that was set up for them and a place that was set up for the algorithm. A holiday tree is one of the clearest signals of the first kind. It's personal, it's seasonal, and it only exists because a host decided to make the effort.

Our experience comes from the US and Latin America, and that is where I'm confident. Outside those, I'll tell you what I know and where the uncertainty is.

The United States

In the US the tree is close to universal. The American Christmas Tree Association's 2025 survey, run by Ipsos in October 2025, found that 83% of households planning to display a Christmas tree would choose an artificial one. The season starts earlier every year. Many families put the tree up on Thanksgiving weekend, which falls on November 26 to 29 in 2026, and take it down in the first days of January. For a rental, that timing lines up with your calendar: the tree is up for the whole run of December bookings and comes down before the January lull.

Latin America

Latin America loves Christmas, and the season often runs longer than in the US. The dates vary by country, so match your setup to the local calendar, and to where your guests come from.

The practical lesson for Latin American rentals is to leave the tree up through January 6. A host who takes it down on December 27 because that's what they would do in the US is taking it away from guests in the middle of their season. In beach markets like Brazil, where the holiday is a summer holiday, the tree still matters. It just shares the room with ceiling fans and open doors to the balcony.

Europe and the rest of the world

Here I'm careful, and I want to be exact about why. It's not that Europeans don't have Christmas trees. The modern Christmas tree grew up in Germany in the 1500s; there are records of a tree in Strasbourg's cathedral in 1539, and it spread to Britain in the 1800s after the royal family's tree was published in the Illustrated London News in 1848. Europe invented this.

What we don't know is how European guests feel about finding one in a rental, because we haven't seen enough of it to have an opinion we'd stand behind. Customs vary a lot: in some countries the tree traditionally goes up on Christmas Eve, and in others the decorating is tied to specific family rituals that a host's tree could feel like it's stepping on. Expectations of what a rental should provide differ too. And in much of Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, Christmas may be a minority holiday, a commercial one, or not observed at all.

If you host outside the US and Latin America, my advice is to test it, keep it neutral and tasteful, and read the reaction. Ask a few guests directly. Watch the reviews. If you host many guests from one country, find out what that country does in December before you decide.

Guests who don't celebrate Christmas

Some of your holiday guests won't celebrate Christmas, even in the US. In 2026, Hanukkah runs from the evening of December 4 to December 12, overlapping the start of the tree season. A few simple habits keep everyone comfortable. Keep the decorations seasonal and warm rather than religious: lights, greenery, winter colors, and no nativity scene unless your market expects one. Mention the tree and the decor in your listing, so guests know before they book. And if a guest asks you to take it down or move it to a corner, say yes. It's their holiday.

At home, real versus artificial is a matter of taste. In a rental it's a matter of who takes care of it, and the answer is usually nobody. That settles it for me.

A real tree is a cut plant that needs water every day to stay fresh. At home, somebody tops up the stand each morning. In a rental, the guests don't know to do it, the cleaners are there once between stays, and there can be days with nobody in the house at all. A real tree in a rental will dry out, and a dry tree is a fire risk.

Christmas tree fires are rare, but they are serious when they happen. The National Fire Protection Association says US fire departments responded to an average of 155 home fires a year that started with a Christmas tree from 2018 to 2022, causing an average of four deaths, seven injuries, and $15 million in direct property damage each year. Electrical distribution or lighting equipment was involved in about two in five of those fires. The NFPA's core advice is to keep the tree at least three feet from any heat source, including fireplaces, radiators, heat vents, and candles; to add water to a real tree's stand every day; to use lights listed by a recognized testing laboratory; to turn the lights off when leaving home or going to bed; and to get rid of a real tree once it's dry.

Look at that list from a host's point of view. Two of those five rules, daily watering and switching off the lights, depend on someone in the house doing a chore every day. You can't count on guests to do either. An artificial pre-lit tree removes the watering problem, and a timer, which I cover in the next chapter, removes the lights problem.

When you buy an artificial tree, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission recommends looking for the "Fire Resistant" label. It doesn't mean the tree can't burn; it means it resists catching fire. For a pre-lit tree, look for a certification mark from a testing lab such as UL or ETL on the lights and the power supply. And choose LED lights, which run much cooler than old incandescent strings.

	Real tree	Artificial pre-lit tree
Daily care	Water every day, or it dries out	None
Fire risk in a rental	Rises as it dries between turnovers	Lower, with a fire-resistant label and certified LED lights
Mess	Needles, sap, tree water	Minimal
Pets	Tree water can make pets sick (ASPCA)	No water to drink
Cost	Every year; the average real tree was estimated at about $84 in 2025	Once, reused for years
Setup and teardown	Buy, haul, set up, dispose	Unpack and fluff; pack away
Scent	The real thing	None, unless you add it

The one thing an artificial tree doesn't give you is the smell. Guests who love that fir scent will notice. You can get close with a few fresh fir or cedar branches in a vase away from any heat, or a subtle fir-scented diffuser, but keep the scent light. A lot of guests are sensitive to strong fragrance, and a heavy one bothers more people than it pleases.

If you still want a real tree, and some markets expect one, set it up properly. Buy it fresh. Make a fresh cut on the base before it goes into a stand with a large water reservoir. Make watering part of the cleaner's checklist at every visit, and add a line to your welcome message asking guests to top it up. Keep it well away from heat. And take it out the moment the needles start dropping or snapping, whatever the date.

Once you've chosen the tree, where it goes and how it's secured matter more than how it's decorated. This is the part guests never see and the part that protects your property.

Choose the spot

Start with your listing photos. The tree should sit where it will appear in the main living-room shot, because that photo is what sells your December nights. Usually that means a corner of the living room visible from the seating area, or beside a window where it can be seen from outside at night.

Then check the spot against three rules. It must be at least three feet from anything that produces heat: a fireplace, a wood stove, a radiator, a baseboard heater, a heat vent, or a space heater. It must not block a door, a hallway, a staircase, or any route out of the house. And it must be near an outlet, so no extension cord runs across a walkway where someone can trip on it at night. If the only spot that looks good in photos breaks one of those rules, choose a different spot. A rental with a fireplace is exactly where hosts get tempted to put the tree beside the hearth for the photo. Don't.

Choose the size

For most living rooms with standard eight-foot ceilings, a six-and-a-half to seven-and-a-half-foot tree is right. Leave room at the top for a tree topper without it touching the ceiling. In a room with high ceilings, a taller tree makes a big impression, but it's also heavier to store and harder for one person to set up, which matters when your cleaner or handyman is the one doing it. For small apartments, a slim or "pencil" tree gives height without eating the floor. For a studio or a small condo, a good tabletop tree on a console is enough to make the point.

Anchor it

Families with small children and guests with dogs and cats are a big share of holiday bookings. Children pull on branches. Cats climb. Big dogs with happy tails knock things over. The ASPCA's advice for pet owners is to secure the tree so there's no chance it can tip over and hurt an animal, and the same logic applies to children.

Use a heavy, wide stand rated for the tree's size, then tie the tree back to the wall. A small screw eye or a removable adhesive hook near the top of the tree, with a length of clear fishing line or thin wire around the trunk, is enough, and nobody notices it. If your walls are plaster or you can't make holes, anchor it to a heavy piece of furniture behind it instead.

Lights, outlets, and timers

The CPSC's advice is never to string together more than three sets of incandescent lights and never to overload outlets. With a pre-lit LED tree, the lights are built in and draw far less power, but the rule about outlets still applies: plug the tree into a wall outlet, not into a chain of power strips, and don't share that outlet with a space heater.

Then put the tree on a smart plug or a simple timer. This solves the NFPA's "turn off the lights when you leave or go to bed" rule without relying on guests. Set it to come on in the late afternoon, so the tree is glowing when guests arrive and when they come back from dinner, and to switch off around midnight. With a smart plug, you can also switch it on remotely right before a check-in, so the first thing a family sees when they open the door is a lit tree. That moment is worth the $15 the plug costs.

1. Stand: heavy, wide, and rated for the tree's height.
2. Anchor: clear line from the upper trunk to a hook in the wall or a heavy piece of furniture.
3. Clearance: three feet from any heat source; no blocked doors, halls, or stairs.
4. Power: directly into a wall outlet; no cords across walkways; no shared outlet with a heater.
5. Timer: smart plug or timer set to switch the lights off at night.
6. Extinguisher: a working fire extinguisher in the kitchen, and working smoke alarms, which you should have anyway.

Decorating a rental tree is different from decorating your own. At home, the tree holds forty years of family ornaments. In a rental, it has to look good in photos, survive toddlers and pets, get packed away by someone who isn't you, and please guests with very different tastes. That points to a clear approach.

Match the tree to the house

Choose two or three colors that belong in the room. A coastal rental in whites and blues looks right with ivory, silver, and pale blue ornaments. A mountain cabin in wood and leather looks right with deep red, forest green, and natural wood. A modern home in neutrals looks right with sage, cream, and a single deep accent like plum or rust. The goal is a tree that looks like it belongs to the house, so it photographs as part of the design instead of an afterthought.

Warm-white lights look good in almost every room and every photo. Multicolor lights have a nostalgic charm, and some families prefer them, but they fight with most interiors and photograph less well. If you want the nostalgic feel, get it from the ornaments instead.

Make it safe for kids and pets

The finishing touches

A tree skirt or a woven tree collar hides the stand and gives gifts a place to sit. A simple topper, like a star or a bow, finishes it. And a few wrapped "gifts" under the tree, boxes wrapped in paper that matches your color scheme, make the photo and the arrival feel complete. Make sure guests know they're decorative, so no child is disappointed; a small card or a line in your welcome message covers it.

One idea we like: leave a small box of plain, unpainted wooden or felt ornaments and a couple of markers, and invite guests to make one of their own to hang on the tree and take home. It costs almost nothing, it gives kids something to do on the first evening, and a family leaves with a small reminder of the trip. If you do it, include it in your welcome message so guests know it's for them.

Stockings and the rest of the house

A tree is enough, but a few more touches tie the house together. Stockings hung on hooks (never on a mantel above a fire that guests will light), a wreath on the front door, a garland on the stair rail if it's safely secured, and a bowl of pinecones or clementines on the dining table. Keep it restrained. The house should feel festive and still look like itself.

The tree only helps your bookings if guests know it's there before they book. That means photos and a line in the listing, and it means getting the timing right.

Update the listing for the season

Shoot the tree lit, at dusk, when the room's lamps are on and there is still some blue in the windows. That light makes a tree look its best, and it's the shot that stops people scrolling in November. Add it as one of your first few photos for the season, with a caption that says what it is: "Living room with Christmas tree, set up from late November through early January."

Add one line to your description or your listing's seasonal notes: when the tree is up, and that the house is decorated for the holidays. Guests who want a Christmas trip will book you for it. Guests who don't celebrate will know before they arrive, which avoids surprises.

Then take it all down on schedule. Listing photos should show what a guest will find. A guest who books in January because of a tree photo from December has a fair complaint when there's no tree. Put a reminder in your calendar for the day the tree comes down to remove the holiday photo and the holiday line.

When to put it up and take it down

Market	Tree up	Tree down
United States	By Thanksgiving weekend (Nov 26 to 29, 2026)	First days of January, after New Year's guests check out
Argentina	By December 8	After January 6, Three Kings Day
Mexico	By early December, ahead of December 12	After January 6; nativity scenes often stay until February 2
Brazil	By the first Sunday of Advent (Nov 29, 2026)	After January 6, Dia de Reis
Rest of Latin America	Early December	After January 6, unless local custom says otherwise

Plan the setup around your bookings. The best time is a gap between stays in the last week of November, with enough time to shoot the photos before you update the listing. The teardown goes into the first gap after the season ends. If there is no gap, the tree can be packed during a normal turnover, but it adds an hour or more to the clean, so pay your cleaner for it and plan the timing.

Book the help early

Your cleaners and handymen are busy in December and many of them take time off at the end of the month. Book the setup, the teardown, and any extra turnover time in October. Agree on who does what: who unpacks, who decorates, who photographs, who reports broken lights. Pay for the extra time. A cleaner who has to squeeze tree assembly into an already tight turnover on December 20th will not do their best work, and your guests will see it.

The tree is the part guests remember. These are the parts that make the stay work. Most of them should be done by early November.

Pricing and minimum stays

Christmas week and New Year's are peak dates in most US markets and in nearly all of Latin America's beach and mountain destinations. Set them as peak in your pricing tool well in advance, and look at when your market's holiday bookings arrived last year. Families plan these trips early, and a calendar that is still wide open in November at normal prices usually means the prices were too low in the summer, not that demand isn't there. Our dynamic pricing guide goes through how to set event and holiday dates.

Minimum stays matter as much as price. Families traveling for Christmas usually stay several nights, and a minimum of three to five nights over December 23 to 27 protects you from short stays that block the week. New Year's is a different problem: short stays around December 31 carry the highest party risk of the year. Many hosts set a higher minimum across New Year's for that reason alone. Our guide to minimum-stay strategy covers the trade-offs.

New Year's Eve screening

Airbnb runs anti-party technology every New Year's Eve. For the 2025 holiday it activated heightened screening in the US, including Puerto Rico, Canada, the UK, France, Spain, and Australia. Airbnb says the system uses machine learning to assess hundreds of signals, then either blocks a booking it sees as higher risk or points the guest to a private room or a hotel room instead. Local news coverage described the targets as certain one- to three-night entire-home stays. Airbnb said that the previous New Year's Eve, similar measures stopped more than 20,000 people in the US and more than 3,000 in Canada from booking an entire home.

That covers Airbnb bookings. For bookings on your own website or other platforms, you are the screening. Use a real rental agreement, a security deposit, ID verification, and a clear no-parties rule, and look hard at local, last-minute, one-night requests for large homes on December 31. A noise monitor that measures decibels without recording audio is a good addition where it's legal and disclosed. Indoor cameras are not: Airbnb banned indoor security cameras in listings in 2024. Our guest screening guide covers this in detail.

The kitchen and the table

Holiday guests cook. The family that eats out every night in July makes a full Christmas dinner in December, and in Latin America the big family meal is on Christmas Eve. Check that your kitchen can handle it.

Winter preparation

In cold markets, have the heating serviced in the fall, check that pipes in exposed walls and crawl spaces are protected, and book snow removal for the driveway and walkways before the first storm. Leave a clear note on how the thermostat works and what temperature to keep the house at if guests go out for the day. Stock extra blankets. If you have a fireplace guests can use, have the chimney inspected, leave clear instructions, and keep the tree well away from it.

The guidebook and the welcome

Update your guidebook for the holidays. Grocery stores, pharmacies, and restaurants often change their hours on December 24, 25, and 31 and on January 1, and guests who arrive on Christmas Eve need to know what's open. Add holiday events in your area: light displays, markets, concerts, New Year's fireworks and the best place to watch them. Add places of worship with their holiday service times for guests who want them.

A small welcome gift goes a long way at this time of year: hot chocolate and marshmallows, a box of local cookies, or a panettone, which is a Christmas staple in Brazil and Peru and loved across Latin America. Send a warm message a day or two before arrival that mentions the tree, the timer on the lights, and anything seasonal about the house.

The cost of doing this well is small compared with a single December night in most rentals, and most of it is a one-time purchase. Prices vary a lot by quality, size, and where you buy, so treat these as the categories to budget for rather than exact numbers.

Item	One-time or yearly	What to look for
Artificial pre-lit tree	One-time, reused for years	Full and realistic, warm-white LEDs, "Fire Resistant" label, lab-certified lights
Ornaments and ribbon	One-time, with some replacements	Shatterproof, two or three colors, a few larger pieces for the lower branches
Stand, collar or skirt, anchor	One-time	Heavy stand, woven collar, clear line and a wall hook
Smart plug or timer	One-time	Scheduling, and remote control if you want to light it before check-in
Storage	One-time	A zippered tree bag, ornament boxes with dividers, cards or reels for any loose lights
Labor	Every year	Setup, teardown, and extra time on turnovers; paid at your cleaner's normal rate or better
Real tree (if you choose one)	Every year	About $84 on average in 2025, plus delivery, disposal, and daily watering

I won't promise you a number of extra bookings from a tree. It doesn't work that way, and anyone who tells you it does is guessing. What we see is that it improves the stay, the stay improves the review, and good holiday reviews and holiday photos help the next December. For the price of a small fraction of one peak night, that's a good trade.

Storing it so next year is easy

Most of the pain of a rental tree happens in January, when it gets packed in a hurry, and shows up the next November, when half the lights are tangled and nobody can find the stand. Avoid that with a simple system.

1. One place. Everything lives in one locked owner's closet or storage area in the property, not spread across three.
2. One bag for the tree. A zippered tree storage bag keeps sections together and dust off the lights.
3. Divided boxes for ornaments. Ornament boxes with dividers stop breakage and make it obvious when something is missing.
4. A photo inside the lid. Tape a printed photo of the finished tree inside the ornament box, so whoever sets it up next year can copy it.
5. A test before storage. Plug in the pre-lit tree before it's packed and note any dead sections, so you can fix or replace them in the fall, not on November 27th.

Here is the whole job in one list. Tick through it this fall and your guests will walk into a house that feels like the holidays.

• In October
• Set Christmas and New Year's as peak dates, with minimum stays.
• Book setup, teardown, and extra turnover time with your cleaners.
• Service the heating, protect pipes, and book snow removal in cold markets.
• Buy or check the tree, lights, ornaments, stand, anchor, and smart plug.
• Setting up
• Artificial, pre-lit, labeled fire resistant, with lab-certified LED lights.
• At least three feet from every heat source, and clear of doors, halls, and stairs.
• Anchored to the wall or heavy furniture.
• Plugged into a wall outlet, cords tidy, lights on a timer.
• Shatterproof ornaments, no tinsel, simple lower branches, no real candles.
• Telling guests
• Dusk photo of the lit tree added to the listing, with a dated caption.
• One line in the description saying when the tree is up.
• Guidebook updated with holiday hours, events, and services.
• Welcome message mentions the tree and the light timer.
• After the season
• Holiday photo and listing line removed the day the tree comes down.
• Lights tested before packing; dead sections noted.
• Everything packed in one place, with a photo of the finished tree inside the lid.

That's our take, and it's based on what we've seen: when there's a tree, guests say so, and what they say is overwhelmingly good. It makes them feel at home. It shows them someone cared about their trip. And it's one of the few things you can add to a rental that costs little, lasts for years, and changes how the whole stay feels.

If you want help getting your listing and your own website ready for the holidays, from the seasonal photos to the pricing to the guest messages, talk to us at Cavmir. And if you're thinking about the rest of the house too, my guide to interior design trends for 2027 is a good place to start.