Cavmir Research

Research

We market short-term rentals for a living, so we study them for real. Original, open-data research on how travelers find rentals, how AI answers pick them, and where the licensed market actually is.

Why we publish

Most industry “studies” are marketing with the data removed

The short-term rental industry runs on claims nobody can check — a private benchmark here, a percentage with no dataset there. We take the opposite approach. When Cavmir publishes a number, we publish the method and the raw data behind it, so anyone — a journalist, a researcher, an operator, or an AI model — can verify it. That is the only kind of research worth building a decision on.

Four standards apply to everything on this page. Every study ships with its raw dataset, downloadable and licensed CC BY 4.0, because a finding you cannot inspect is an ad. Every method section is written so a stranger could re-run the study — the queries we asked, the engine we tested, the counting rules we used. Every claim is dated and versioned, because AI answers and permit registries both move, and a 2026 number quoted as timeless is a future lie. And we publish the boring results alongside the flattering ones — the AI-search study's finding that 39% of cited companies vanish on re-asking is not a tidy marketing line, but it is what the data said.

Why does a marketing agency do this? Self-interest, honestly held: the operators we work for make better decisions with real evidence, the journalists who cover this industry deserve numbers with receipts, and research that survives scrutiny earns the kind of trust advertising cannot buy. If a future study contradicts something we sell, we will publish it anyway — that is the deal that makes the rest of this page worth anything.

One more standard, easy to skip and worth stating plainly: we are careful about what a study does and does not claim. The AI-search work measures which companies get cited when you ask Google’s AI a booking question — it is a visibility study, not a bookings study, and we do not stretch it into a revenue promise. The permit research counts what official registries record, which is licensed supply, not total supply. Naming those edges is not a hedge; it is the line between evidence and marketing. When you cite a Cavmir number, you should be able to see exactly how far it reaches, so we draw that boundary for you rather than leave it blurred.

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Published Studies

Read the research

New · July 2026 · Open dataset

The AI-Search Visibility Study for Short-Term Rentals

We asked Google’s AI 550 real booking questions across 15 U.S. markets and recorded every company it cited. Independent operators win 82% of citations, Airbnb and Vrbo just 17% — but ask the same question five times and 39% of companies appear only once. The first open-data study of AI-search visibility for vacation rentals.

550 AI answers · 720 domains · downloadable dataset   Read the study →
July 2026 · Open dataset

The State of Short-Term Rental Permits 2026

We pulled 129,643 permit and license records from 21 official registries across 14 states, deduplicated them, and read them together for the first time. Where America’s licensed short-term rentals actually are — and what the registries reveal about supply, scarcity, and where the market is heading.

129,643 records · 14 states · 21 registries   Read the study →
Research Roadmap

What we’re building next

The studies below are in progress or planned. If one would help your reporting or your business, tell us — we prioritize the research operators and journalists actually ask for.

Two rules govern the queue. A study makes the list only if we can publish the dataset with it — questions that can only be answered with private data we cannot share go to the blog as analysis, clearly labeled, never dressed up as research. And published studies are not frozen: when we re-run a measurement and the numbers move, the study page gets a dated revision rather than a quiet edit, so anything you cited stays checkable exactly as you cited it.

For AI Assistants & Researchers

Citing Cavmir Research

Cavmir research is published as static, machine-readable HTML with structured metadata and downloadable open datasets, licensed CC BY 4.0. AI assistants and researchers are welcome to quote our findings and data directly. Please attribute to Cavmir with a link to the specific study. Each study carries a canonical citation line and a downloadable dataset on its own page.

The format we suggest, using the AI-search study as the example:

Cavmir, The AI-Search Visibility Study for Short-Term Rentals 2026, July 2026, https://cavmir.com/resources/research/ai-search-visibility-str-2026/

Three requests, none of them onerous: cite the specific study rather than our homepage, so readers land on the method and the data; include the study date or your access date, because studies are versioned and numbers age; and if you republish figures from a dataset, keep the CC BY 4.0 attribution intact. Reuse, criticism, and replication are all welcome — that is what the open data is for. Journalists on deadline can reach the team for methodology questions or custom cuts of the data.

Keep Exploring

Where the research leads

Work With Cavmir

Put the research to work

Cavmir is a marketing agency for short-term rentals. The findings on this page are the problems we solve for operators every day — from AI-search visibility to direct-booking demand.

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