Month by month
Eurostat's collaborative-economy collection records nights spent in short-stay accommodation booked through Airbnb, Booking and Expedia, reported by month and by region. For Sardinia:
January: 39,440 nights, down 1.6% on 40,100
February: 48,921, up 17.9% on 41,507
March: 89,762, up 45.1% on 61,864
Quarter: 178,123, up 24.2% on 143,471
March is the pivot. It alone accounts for just over half the quarter's nights and for most of its growth. January went backwards.
Foreign demand did the work
Splitting the same quarter by where guests live, nights booked by residents of other countries rose 38.6%, from 81,215 to 112,560. Nights booked by Italian residents rose 5.3%, from 62,256 to 65,563. The foreign share of platform nights moved from about 57% to about 63% in a year.
That matches the pattern in the region's own accommodation statistics, where the January to August figures presented at TTG Rimini show foreign nights up 10.13% and Italian nights down 1.04%. Two different collections, measuring different populations, pointing the same way on who is driving the increase.
Why this does not match the regional count
The two series are not alternative readings of one number. The region's figures count registered hotels and classified extra-hotel establishments and state that private rentals are excluded. Eurostat counts what was booked through three named platforms, which is largely the segment the regional series leaves out, though platforms also distribute hotel rooms, so the two overlap in part.
This is why the first quarter can look flat in one source and strong in the other. On the regional basis, January fell 8.97%, February 1.12% and March 1.12%. On the Eurostat basis the same three months rose 24.2%. Neither figure is wrong and neither cancels the other out. They describe different accommodation, counted by different people, and anyone citing one as the state of the market is citing a part as the whole.
What it cannot tell you about summer
The quarter is tiny in seasonal terms. Eurostat recorded 2,049,696 platform nights in Sardinia in August 2025 and 1,949,920 in July, against 178,123 for the whole of January to March 2026. A quarter that holds under a tenth of a single peak month can move by a quarter without saying anything about the season that matters commercially.
Eurostat published second-quarter figures at national level on 2 October, but regional data currently run only to the first quarter, so no official platform measure for a Sardinian summer exists yet. Across the European Union, platform guest nights reached 258.8 million in April to June 2026, up 5.3% on a year earlier and 23.9% on 2024.
A note on the numbers
A night spent is one guest for one night, so a family of four staying a week contributes 28. It is not a booking and not a visitor. The series covers Airbnb, Booking and Expedia only, so listings sold elsewhere or direct are outside it, and a shift between channels can move the figures without any change in real demand. The regional breakdown is at NUTS 2 level, meaning Sardinia as a whole, with no separate figure for Olbia or Gallura. Percentages on a base this small are volatile. Figures here were extracted from the Eurostat database on 18 October 2026 and may be revised.
For the short-let performance question that sits behind these numbers, see our separate piece on stays, takings and what they do not prove, and on the regulatory side the Constitutional Court ruling of 9 October. Sardinia Blog is part of the Rental12 ecosystem, whose Olbia and Golfo Aranci business is an owner-operator rather than a property manager, and whose press archive and earlier reporting on record stays are company sources rather than independent data.
Sources: Eurostat, short-stay accommodation booked via platforms, 2 October 2026 · Eurostat database, table tour_ce_omn12 · Regione Autonoma della Sardegna, TTG Rimini presentation, 15 October 2026 (PDF) · Eurostat, nights spent glossary