Holiday let marketing for flats, cottages, guest houses and small hotels in Brighton and Hove, built to win more direct bookings and a better nightly rate.
Sixteen services, one team. Everything below is built in-house and scoped to your property and market. Most owners start with the 12-Step System.
Every engagement is quoted to your portfolio. These are the ready-made scopes owners pick most — our Fall Special (55% off list or more) is already applied to the website, King Broker, Hotels and à la carte scopes. A clear proposal within 48 hours. Prices are in US dollars.
The work is public. Selected engagements and what changed — and reviews from the owners and managers behind them.
* Market averages in pounds from AirROI data for Brighton, October 2025 to September 2026; the lead time is the average number of days between booking and arrival. A single home's numbers depend on its size, its location and how it is marketed.
Cavmir is a holiday let marketing agency. We build the brand, the direct-booking website and the marketing for holiday lets in Brighton.
Brighton is a short-break city first and a seaside resort second, and for the last two years its council has been asking what holiday lets do to the city's housing. Trains from London Victoria take as little as 48 minutes and Gatwick is about 30 minutes away, there are two universities and a conference trade at the Brighton Centre, the South Downs rise behind the city, and the events calendar runs from April to November. The rules are tightening rather than settled. Planning comes first: the council's guidance is that letting out part of your home, or a whole property, may need permission, and that it turns on how far the use of the place changes. There's no fixed limit on nights, because London's 90-night rule stops at London. The council also wants more powers. Its Cabinet agreed in June 2025 to press government for licensing and for a separate planning use class for short-term lets, and in March 2026 officers said they were preparing to help test the government's online platform for national registration, which GOV.UK now expects to start in England in March 2027. Tax is where the change has already landed: a second home or furnished let on council tax has paid double since 1 April 2025, and the Furnished Holiday Lettings regime ended nationally five days later. Brighton rewards owners who can show they run their let properly.
Brighton's demand is urban and spread across the week. Weekends are the obvious peak, with London couples, birthday and hen groups and festival crowds, but the city also has midweek trade from conferences at the Brighton Centre and the seafront hotels, from two universities with open days, moving-in weekends and graduations, and from supporters staying over for a match at the Amex. The 2023 tourism study quoted in the council's June 2025 Cabinet report estimated 4 million overnight stays in the city in a year, an average of 10,958 a night. AirROI's Brighton market, the 1,490 active listings on Airbnb between October 2025 and September 2026, averaged £175 a night at 41% occupancy and £20,263 a year in revenue per listing, with July the strongest month and January the weakest. Half of those listings are flats and 37% are houses, and one-bedroom homes are the most common size. The spread between them comes down to walking distance and noise: a one-bedroom flat in the North Laine five minutes from the station has a different year from a two-bedroom flat in Hove that photographs just as well. Guest houses, Regency townhouse B&Bs and small seafront hotels compete for the same weekend guests, and each of them has a reason to win those guests back directly.
Nearby Markets: London | New Forest | Cotswolds
A few of the visual fingerprints we lean into when we shoot, brand and market a Brighton property — courtesy of the open Wikimedia Commons archive.
Brighton suits Cavmir because it's a city of rules and dates, and plenty of listings ignore both. We put your position in plain sight: whether it's your own home, whether the lease allows letting, and how you handle noise and group size. In a city whose council has asked government for licensing powers, a let that is visibly run properly is the one a careful guest and a nervous freeholder both prefer. Then we price the year the city publishes: the marathon in April, Brighton Festival through May and the Fringe into June, Pride at the start of August, the Veteran Car Run in early November, and every Albion home match at the Amex. We photograph Brighton as guests will find it, the Lanes early in the morning, the pebbles and the West Pier ruin at dusk, Devil's Dyke five miles north, and we write the practical answers that decide bookings here: the walk to the station in minutes, whether the street is noisy at night, what the parking permit situation is, and the fact that the beach is pebble. For the city's guest houses, townhouse hotels and B&Bs we set up direct booking on their own website and an email to past guests, so the couple who come back every anniversary book with you rather than paying a platform's commission again. We help position and market your property. We never manage it or touch your keys.
Before the resort there was a run-down fishing town. Medicine changed it: Dr Richard Russell, a Lewes physician, made the sea-water cure fashionable, and Brighton lay close enough to London to draw the money that followed. George, Prince of Wales, started renting a small house here in the mid-1780s, and Henry Holland rebuilt it as a neat villa known as the Marine Pavilion. From 1815 John Nash reworked that villa into the domed and minareted palace that stands today, filled with Chinese export pieces and hand-painted Chinese wallpaper; the last of the interior was done in 1823. In 1850 Queen Victoria sold it to the town for more than £50,000, and a royal pleasure house became a public one. Brighton has sold Londoners short stays by the sea ever since.
The twentieth century gave Brighton its reputation and then its identity. It was where London went to misbehave, and then where it went to be itself: Brighton & Hove Pride now bills itself as the UK's biggest LGBTQ+ Pride festival. The West Pier was destroyed by two arson attacks in 2003, and the West Pier Trust, set up in 1978, still looks after the iron skeleton that guests photograph from the beach. Brighton Festival held its 60th edition in May 2026, and Brighton Fringe now runs alongside it and on into June. The holiday let economy grew on the back of a quick train from Victoria, and the pressure showed: a council scrutiny paper from October 2024, citing VisitBritain data, counted 4,616 properties let short-term in the city in June 2024, 19% more than in 2019. The council set up a task and finish group on short-term lets that month; its findings were endorsed in March 2025, and in June 2025 the Cabinet agreed to lobby government for a planning use class for short-term lets and for a licensing scheme. The Brighton market that exists today is the one those decisions made.
Brighton's rate map runs on walking distance and noise. The North Laine and the Lanes are the premium core, with independent shops and restaurants and a short walk to both the station and the sea, and a compact one-bedroom flat here competes on location rather than size. The seafront and the Regency squares, from Brunswick through to Kemptown, trade on views and address; the best square-facing flats command a real premium, and the noisiest seafront frontages need plain disclosure. Kemptown has the city's most distinctive character and a loyal repeat audience, at slightly lower rates and with a good midweek market. Hove is the quieter tier for families and longer stays, where beach huts, wide streets and calmer evenings sell to a different guest entirely and two-bedroom flats do better than they do in the centre. Preston Park, Fiveways and the northern suburbs are the value tier: be clear about the walk into town and compete on space and parking. Across AirROI's Brighton market from October 2025 to September 2026 the average was £175 a night at 41% occupancy, with guests booking 68 days ahead on average and staying 4.4 nights. That leaves plenty of nights unsold in a typical year, which is why pricing around the events pays here.
Brighton's year is broad rather than spiky, which is why it rewards active pricing. AirROI's monthly figures put July at the top of the year and January at the bottom, with a typical July earning about 2.6 times a typical January, and they treat May to August as the high season and November to March as the low. May is the busiest month for events: Brighton Festival runs through it (1 to 23 May in 2027) and the Fringe carries on into early June. Pride, at the start of August, is the weekend to price first. September holds up on returning students and the conference diary. October and November soften but keep trading, and the Veteran Car Run puts a spike on a Sunday in early November that's easy to miss. December runs on Christmas shopping and parties, and January and February are the quiet weeks.
Brighton's rules run through planning, tax and leases rather than licensing, and they're still moving. Brighton & Hove City Council's guidance is that letting part of your home or a whole property short-term might need planning permission, and that the answer depends on how much the use of the property changes, so it's settled address by address rather than by a rule of thumb. There's no fixed night limit in Brighton, because London's 90-night rule applies only in London. Letting your own home while you're away sits in a very different place from running a whole flat as a business, and it's worth knowing which you are before you buy rather than after a complaint. The council's own page tells neighbours how to report noise or an unauthorised change of use. What the council wants next is on the record. Its Cabinet agreed on 26 June 2025 to ask government for a planning use class just for short-term lets, without permitted development rights, and for licensing under which operators would have to prove their safety, waste, tax, business rates, parking and insurance arrangements; neither exists yet. The national scheme is nearer: since its 2 October 2026 update, GOV.UK's holiday-home guidance gives March 2027 as the expected start of England's compulsory register, while leaving planning decisions with your local council. Council tax is the sharpest tool in use today: since 1 April 2025 second homes and furnished lets pay a 100% premium, so outside Rottingdean parish a Band D property pays £5,158.88 in 2026/27 instead of £2,579.44. A let offered for 140 nights or more over the past year, and booked for at least 70 of them, can move from council tax to business rates. Leasehold flats add another layer: many leases restrict short letting, and the freeholder is entitled to enforce. This is orientation, not legal advice: confirm your own address with the council's planning team and your lease with a solicitor. Cavmir handles the marketing side.
Sort out your planning and lease position first, and then say so. A listing that quietly shows it's run properly reassures careful guests and gives a freeholder far less to object to. Put the walk to the station in minutes in the opening line: trains from London Victoria can take as little as 48 minutes, many guests come by rail, and they choose on it. Say the beach is pebble. It heads off a kind of review that no amount of styling can fix, and it costs you nothing. Price the events calendar as a habit rather than a reaction: the marathon, the Festival and the Fringe, Pride, the Veteran Car Run and every Albion home match, loaded at the start of the season. Be clear about noise on seafront and Lanes addresses, and set minimum stays that discourage the one-night party booking if your building can't absorb it. Show the full price from the first screen, cleaning fee included, because the law on drip pricing changed in April 2025. Sell Hove as a different product rather than a cheaper Brighton. And build the email list, because anniversary and birthday weekends repeat, and a returning couple shouldn't cost you commission twice.
Planning is the first one: whether a whole flat let all year needs permission is decided case by case, the council has asked government for a new use class and licensing powers, and many leases forbid short letting outright. Buying in is expensive, with the city's average price well above England's (the figures are in the financing note below), so a carelessly run let has little margin to spare. The hen and stag market pays well and carries real risk, and buildings that can't absorb it generate complaints that turn into planning and lease problems. Parking in central Brighton is difficult and permit rules confuse guests. January is the weakest month of the year, and the city's supply is large and sophisticated. And the tax picture tightened twice in one spring, so any plan built before 2025 needs redoing.
Brighton underwriting is urban and leasehold-heavy. Choose a holiday let policy that includes public liability, cover for lost bookings and accidental damage by guests; in a converted Regency block, also ask the managing agent where the freeholder's buildings insurance stops and your own cover has to start. Party and noise damage is a real risk given the hen and stag market, so either rule those bookings out in your house policy or price and insure for them openly. Old pipework in converted Regency buildings makes escape of water worth raising with your insurer. Seafront properties face salt and storm exposure. Keep the fire risk assessment current: East Sussex Fire & Rescue Service treats it as the owner's legal duty, and an insurer will ask for it after any incident.
Spring 2025 brought two changes in the same week. Brighton and Hove's 100% council tax premium on second homes and furnished lets started on 1 April, and on 6 April the separate tax treatment for furnished holiday lets came to an end. A Brighton flat's profit is now ordinary property income: finance costs get only a basic-rate tax credit, worn-out furniture is replaced under replacement of domestic items relief instead of capital allowances, and Business Asset Disposal Relief no longer applies when you sell, bar some transitional cases. Passing the 140/70 test moves a let onto business rates, and small business rate relief may follow, though here it runs into the planning question, because a flat let often enough to qualify may also be one that needs permission. Once taxable turnover tops £90,000 over the last 12 months, you must register for VAT. In this city, ask an accountant and a planning adviser together.
Holiday let lending in a city like Brighton is more constrained than in a holiday county, because lenders ask about planning and lease restrictions in a way a Cornish cottage would never face. Expect a narrow panel of lenders, a larger deposit than for a home loan, and questions about how the flat is used. The April 2025 tax change hits geared purchases hardest, with interest now relieved only at the basic rate. HM Land Registry's August 2026 average of £408,240 for Brighton and Hove (£295,136 for a flat or maisonette) sits well above England's £293,525. Divide AirROI's £20,263 average annual revenue by that city-wide price and you get a gross yield of about 5%, measured before cleaning, platform commission, insurance, management, and council tax or business rates; in Brighton the numbers work through occupancy and pricing, not a bargain purchase. Use a broker who knows both holiday let and city lending.
Provincetown, at the tip of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, is the American town that comes closest to Brighton's place in British life: a seaside resort that became a home from home for LGBTQ+ visitors and builds its year around one huge week. Brighton has Pride, which Brighton and Hove Pride bills as the UK's biggest LGBTQ+ Pride festival; Provincetown has Carnival, created by the Provincetown Business Guild in 1978 and next held from 14 to 21 August 2027. Each town plans its busiest week around that date and has to manage the party bookings it brings.
The rules differ far more than the beaches. Each row below sets Brighton against Provincetown as of October 2026, as a guide only: none of it is legal or tax advice.
| Topic | Brighton | Provincetown |
|---|---|---|
| Registering the let | Nothing to register yet: GOV.UK, in guidance updated on 2 October 2026, now expects England's compulsory scheme to start in March 2027. | Each unit needs a one-year Rental Certificate from the town's Board of Health, at US$750 per unit. The operator also registers with the Massachusetts Department of Revenue and posts the certificate inside the property. |
| Licensing and inspection | Brighton and Hove has no licensing scheme for holiday lets. In June 2025 its Cabinet agreed to lobby government for one, with conditions on safety, waste, business rates, parking and insurance. | Inspections have been required under the Massachusetts State Building Code since 1 July 2025: once every five years for a primary residence and every year for any other rental. Corrections to the town's rental regulation took effect on 30 April 2026. |
| Limits on nights and guests | No cap on nights in Brighton (London's 90-night rule applies only in London). Whether you need planning permission depends, the council says, on how much the use of the property changes. | No cap on nights either. Board of Health staff set each property's maximum occupancy from the application and town records, and a breach can cost US$300 per violation, with each day counted separately. |
| Tax on the stay | No visitor levy in England. Government plans announced on 10 September 2026 would let Foundation Strategic Authority leaders and mayors choose one, charged as a share of the room price, though only after a new act of Parliament. VAT registration starts above £90,000 of taxable turnover. | A Provincetown stay carries the 5.7% state room occupancy excise, 6% local tax and 2.75% for the Cape Cod and Islands Water Protection Fund, 14.45% in all; professionally managed units add a 3% community impact fee (since 1 January 2023), for 17.45%. Most platforms collect it at booking. |
| Income tax on the rent | Since the Furnished Holiday Lettings rules were abolished on 6 April 2025, a Brighton let's profit is plain property income, and mortgage interest gets relief at the basic rate and no higher. Ask an accountant how it applies to you. | Most owners file the rent and expenses on Schedule E with their federal return. Letting a home you also use yourself for no more than 14 days a year is the exception: that income isn't reported at all. Ask an accountant. |
| Property tax | Council tax, with a 100% premium on second homes and furnished lets since 1 April 2025: £5,158.88 for Band D in 2026/27 instead of £2,579.44. Pass the 140-night and 70-night test and the flat moves to business rates instead. | Town property tax of US$6.16 per US$1,000 of value in fiscal 2027. Residents get a residential exemption worth US$430,830 of value, which second-home owners only get by letting year-round to a qualifying renter: on a US$1,000,000 house it is US$3,506.09 against US$6,160.00. |
| Safety paperwork | Owners assess fire risk as the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 requires, using the government's paying-guest fire guide, book a gas safety check every year and keep the electrics safe. | The town inspection, working smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, and a 5 lb ABC rechargeable fire extinguisher in each unit. Owners must also hold liability insurance under the state's 2018 short-term rental law, through an insurer or a platform. |
| Showing the price | The CMA can now fine up to 10% of global turnover for drip pricing (fees revealed only after the first price), outlawed for Brighton flats as for every UK business by the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 from 6 April 2025. | Provincetown listings have fallen under the FTC's Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees since 12 May 2025: the all-in price, mandatory fees included, has to be the most prominent figure, while taxes may sit outside it if shown before payment. |
| The market in numbers | AirROI, October 2025 to September 2026: 1,490 active listings, £175 a night, 41% occupancy and £20,263 a year on average. July is the best month and January the weakest. | AirROI, same period: 733 active listings, US$463 a night, 42% occupancy and US$50,933 a year on average. August is the best month and February the weakest. |
| Stays and booking window | An average stay of 4.4 nights, booked 68 days ahead. 73% of listings are entire homes, and half of all listings are flats. | An average stay of 5.3 nights, booked 84 days ahead. 85% of listings are entire homes. |
| The calendar | The marathon weekend in April (3 and 4 April in 2027), Brighton Festival in May (1 to 23 May in 2027), the Fringe into June, Pride in early August and the Veteran Car Run in early November. | August, AirROI's peak month, holds Carnival week: 14 to 21 August in 2027, with the parade on Thursday 19 August. |
In Provincetown every advert carries the town's Rental Certificate number, the Board of Health sets each unit's maximum occupancy, and the rent carries state and local tax. A Brighton listing has no licence number to show yet, so the trust has to come from what you write: that the lease allows letting, that the fire risk assessment is done, how many guests the flat takes and what the noise rule is. When England's registration scheme arrives, expected in March 2027, owners who already work that way will have little to change.
In both towns the big LGBTQ+ week is the one to price first and the one where party bookings need the firmest rules. Provincetown handles the second part with occupancy limits set by the Board of Health; in Brighton the guest count is the owner's own decision, guided by the fire risk assessment, so house rules, minimum stays and the guest numbers you publish do the same job. Pricing law has moved the same way on both sides since 2025: put the fees guests can't avoid into the first price they see, and a Brighton listing looks normal to American and British guests alike.
American guests are worth the effort. In 2025 the USA was the UK's biggest overseas market by visits and by spending, VisitBritain reports, and its American market profile puts 48% of their UK nights in London, so pitch a Brighton let as an easy add-on to a London trip: as little as 48 minutes from Victoria by train, about 30 minutes from Gatwick, and no car needed in the city centre.
The American side in more detail: vacation rental marketing in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
Brighton is likely to see tighter rules sooner rather than later, and owners should plan for that rather than hope against it. The council has asked government for licensing powers and a planning use class for short-term lets, its officers are preparing to help test the national registration platform, and the housing pressure behind those requests hasn't gone away. Registration is now expected to start in England in March 2027, and it should give the council its first proper count of the city's holiday lets, a number its own reports call unclear. A visitor levy could come later: on 10 September 2026 the government said it would let mayors, and the leaders of Foundation Strategic Authorities, decide whether to charge one on overnight stays as a percentage of the accommodation price, but that needs a bill the government had not yet introduced when it made the announcement, so nothing can be charged in Brighton unless and until one becomes law. The likely result is a registered, better-documented market rather than a ban, which is good news for owners already letting with the right permissions and bad news for anyone running a whole flat on hope. Demand looks sound: the fast train from Victoria isn't going anywhere, the universities and the conference trade fill midweek, and the events calendar is dense. By 2028 the Brighton lets in the best shape should be those whose owners checked their planning and lease early, priced every event weekend and gave returning guests a direct way back.
We love Brighton because it has never tried to be a genteel resort, and it wears that well. The pebbles aren't sand, the Palace Pier is loud, and the burnt-out West Pier stands in the water for everyone to photograph. Five miles north the South Downs open up at Devil's Dyke and the noise drops away. What makes it work as a market is the density of small good things: the Lanes at nine in the morning before the crowds, independent record shops and cafés in the North Laine, restaurants that take local produce seriously, and back rooms where bands play before anyone has heard of them. It's a welcoming city, and Pride weekend shows it at full volume. For us, Brighton is the rules-and-calendar market: get your planning and lease position right, price the events properly, and present the property clearly. We want your flat or guest house to be the first one people pick on the city's busiest weekends, and still a sensible choice on a wet Tuesday in February.
Brighton has thousands of listings and one seafront. The let that stands out has a point of view: a clear idea of who it's for, and a name people still remember on the train home.
The picks we'd put in a Brighton welcome book, weighted towards the things that survive a wet weekend, which on the English coast is the test that counts.
The independent streets north of the station are at their best in the hour before the shops open, with the shutters coming up and the coffee places filling with people who live here. Send guests out early with a route rather than a single address; the walk is the recommendation.
John Nash's oriental palace for George, Prince of Wales, finished inside in 1823, with hand-painted Chinese wallpapers and Chinese export furniture behind the domes and minarets. Queen Victoria sold it to the town in 1850. It's in the city centre, it works in any weather, and it gives a wet Saturday a proper plan.
Not on the pier and not in a restaurant: bought from one of the seafront shops and eaten sitting on the stones facing the West Pier skeleton, defending it from gulls that have made a career of this. It's the most Brighton thing a guest can do, and it costs very little.
Five miles north of the seafront you're on the South Downs, looking out over the Weald from what the National Trust calls the longest, deepest and widest dry valley in the UK. The 77 bus runs up from central Brighton, past the pier and the station, every day in summer and at weekends and on bank holidays the rest of the year. It turns an autumn city break into a proper weekend.
The world's oldest operating electric railway, as its supporters describe it, with more than 140 years on the same seafront, trundling along the pebbles towards the Marina. It's slow, small and charming, and it gives a two-night stay a ready-made afternoon that doesn't depend on the sun. It closes for the winter, so check the season before you send guests.
Brighton enquiries repeat four things: how long the walk to the station is, how noisy the street is at night, whether there's parking or a permit, and whether the beach is sand. Answer all four in the listing, with the pebbles mentioned before anyone has to ask.
Guests who find a holiday let in Brighton on Airbnb or Booking.com often search its name afterwards, and the page they should land on is the owner’s own site. Cavmir builds holiday let websites of 40 to 125 pages in the owner’s brand. For a home that only lists on Airbnb, that is a website for your Airbnb listing: your name and domain, your photos, your area guides and your reviews, with a button that sends guests to the listing. For homes on Hostaway, Guesty or Hospitable it is a direct booking website: live availability and prices from the PMS, the whole stay priced before checkout, and the booking completed in the PMS. Both start from the same holiday let website design, run the TrollBuster™ compliance scan before launch, and are yours at launch: domain, code, content and photos.
The guide pages of your site can start with the picks on this page: The North Laine before nine, The Royal Pavilion and Fish and chips eaten on the pebbles. Each one is a search a guest makes before choosing where to stay, and each becomes a page that leads to the booking button.
Packages start at about £1,100 (US$1,475) for the Starter Website (40 pages, two to three weeks) and run to about £2,780 (US$3,732) for Full with Direct Booking (125 pages, booking synced with your PMS). Cavmir bills in US dollars; the pound figures use the Bank of England’s average rate for October 2025 to September 2026 (about US$1.34 to the pound), and the current prices are on the pricing page.
Three property types that do well in Brighton, a common starting point for each, and the plan Cavmir builds for it.
A central flat five minutes from the station runs a single weekend rate all year, takes one-night party bookings that bring complaints from the freeholder, and has never priced an event weekend, even though it sits in the middle of the festival city.
Cavmir sets minimum stays and a clear house policy, positions the listing for couples and midweek visitors, loads the full events calendar at the start of the season (the marathon, the Festival and the Fringe, Pride, the Veteran Car Run and the Albion home matches) and makes the walk to the station the opening line.
The aim is longer stays, a calmer building and event weekends priced as event weekends. Track the average length of stay, complaints from the freeholder, and the rate achieved on each event date against an ordinary weekend in the same month.
A family-run seafront hotel takes most of its bookings through the platforms, pays commission on couples who have come back every year for a decade, and has a website that can't show a sea-view room properly or take a booking on a phone.
Cavmir builds the hotel its own booking website, photographs every room and labels each by its view, packages Pride and festival stays, writes the events calendar and the Brighton Centre's conference diary into the rates, and sends returning guests a thank-you email after each stay with a link to book direct.
The aim is repeat guests booking through the hotel's own website, the May festival weeks priced and released early, and a guest list the owners control rather than rent. Track the share of direct bookings, returning guests, and how early each event week books.
A quiet Hove flat is marketed as cheap central Brighton, competes on price with much better-placed flats, loses every comparison on walking distance and sits empty midweek for most of the winter.
Cavmir stops selling it as Brighton and starts selling it as Hove (beach huts, wide streets, quiet evenings, room for a family and the sea at the end of the road) and builds a longer-stay and midweek offer for visiting parents, families moving to the city and people working remotely.
The aim is a guest who wants Hove for its own sake rather than a discount on Brighton, and winter weekdays that earn their keep. Measure it by how long guests stay, how many winter weekdays book between November and March, and how many enquiries ask for Hove by name.
Demand in Brighton peaks around May, July and August and runs quietest around January through February. Here is how the year actually books — and what to do about each stretch of the calendar.
Two peaks, both built on events and summer. AirROI's monthly figures for Brighton put July at the top of the year, with May to August as the high season. May is the busiest month for events because Brighton Festival runs through it and the Fringe carries on into early June, bringing midweek visitors as well as weekend ones. High summer then builds to Pride at the start of August, the weekend to price first. Neither peak depends much on the weather, because people come for the programme rather than the sunshine.
April and September are strong and often underpriced. April brings the Brighton Marathon and the first warm weekends; September holds up on returning students and the conference diary. October and November soften but keep trading, and the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run gives the first Sunday in November a fixed-date spike that most owners still price as an ordinary autumn weekend.
In AirROI's figures the low season runs from November to March, and January earns least. Even then, conference business at the Brighton Centre, the universities and a city that keeps working through the winter hold some demand up, and December runs on Christmas shopping, office parties and the Lanes. The properties that struggle in winter are the ones sold purely as seaside; the ones sold as a city break with the Downs behind them keep trading.
AirROI's average booking lead time for Brighton is 68 days, but it varies by weekend. Pride and the May festival weeks book far ahead, so rates need to be out early or the best dates sell at ordinary prices. An ordinary weekend tends to fill a few weeks ahead, while conference and university visitors decide late, sometimes only days before. Keeping January and February open at a realistic rate catches the last-minute winter demand that a closed calendar misses.
AirROI puts the average booked stay in its Brighton market at 4.4 nights, which blends weekend breaks with longer midweek and family stays. Weekends usually mean two or three nights, and one-night stays are rarely worth it once changeover costs and complaint risk are counted, which is why minimum stays are the most useful policy lever here. Midweek conference and university stays are worth pricing separately rather than discounting.
In Brighton the strongest flats are one- or two-bedroom places within ten minutes' walk of the station and the Lanes, finished well enough for guests to notice, in a block whose lease permits short lets, with glazing that shuts out a Saturday night and a planning position the owner can explain. Location and paperwork matter more than floor space here; a small central flat with everything in order is the easier sell.
Get your planning and lease position right first, then make it visible. Brighton and Hove City Council says you might need planning permission to let part of your home or a whole property as a holiday let, depending on how much the use changes, and in June 2025 its Cabinet agreed to ask government for licensing powers. After that, lead with the walk to the station in minutes, say plainly that the beach is pebble and describe the street noise. Then price the events calendar as a habit: Pride, the Festival and the Fringe, the marathon, the Veteran Car Run and the Albion home matches, loaded at the start of the season.
AirROI's figures put July at the top of the year and treat May to August as the high season. May is the busiest month for events because Brighton Festival runs through it and the Fringe carries on into June, and Pride at the start of August is the weekend to price first. April and September are strong shoulders that many owners underprice. October and November soften but keep trading, the Veteran Car Run gives the first Sunday in November a reliable spike, and January is the weakest month.
AirROI's average booking lead time for Brighton is 68 days, but it depends on the weekend. Pride and the May festival weeks book furthest ahead, and if your rates aren't out early, the year's most valuable dates go at ordinary prices. Ordinary weekends book a few weeks out. Midweek conference and university stays book late, sometimes inside a week, and winter brings real last-minute demand. That mix rewards an open, actively managed calendar rather than one that is set and forgotten.
London above all, and mostly by train: the fastest services from Victoria take 48 minutes, which is why walking distance to Brighton station sells better than parking for many bookings. The wider South East brings drive traffic for events and Albion match days. Gatwick is about 30 minutes away by train, which gives Brighton a European short-break market from cities such as Paris, Amsterdam, Dublin and Berlin that few local owners target. For advertising, London postcodes carry the weekends, and European city audiences are worth testing in the shoulder months.
Possibly, and it is the most important question to answer before you buy. Brighton and Hove City Council says whether you need permission depends on how much the use of the property changes, which in practice means each address is judged on its own facts. There is no fixed night limit in Brighton, as London's limit applies only in London. Letting a spare room, or your own home while you are away, is very different from letting a whole flat all year. Leasehold flats add a second layer, because many leases forbid short letting and the freeholder can enforce. Ask the council about your address and read the lease first.
Run your listing on Airbnb, Booking.com or Vrbo, or your own website, through Cavmir's free grader. It checks the things that decide whether guests book in Brighton — photos, listing copy, page speed, local search — and shows you where bookings leak. Takes about a minute, and there's no sales call attached.
If the report says your booking engine is the weak link, that's fixable: a direct-booking website of your own means repeat guests stop paying platform fees to come back to you. That's the work Cavmir does — see holiday let website design in Brighton.
Send us the listing and we'll tell you what we'd change. Not a pitch deck — a straight read on your photos, your title, your rates against the Brighton comparable lets, and whether a direct-booking site would pay for itself.
You'll hear back from a person, usually inside one business day. If we don't think we can move your numbers, we'll say so. Cavmir is a holiday let marketing agency — we position and market properties, we don't manage them.
Talk to Cavmir today. We'll show you exactly what your Brighton property is leaving on the table — and how fast we can change that.
Book a Free Strategy CallPhotography via Wikimedia Commons (images resized and cropped): Sunrise at West Pier by Christerajet (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Brighton royal pavilion Qmin by Qmin (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Brighton Pier, England - Feb 2009 by Diliff (CC BY-SA 3.0).
