Calgary has 3,911 licensed short term rentals on the City's register, while AirDNA counts about 8,359 available listings in the Calgary market. At roughly 60 percent occupancy and a $112.60 average nightly rate, a typical unit turns over often enough that the turnover, not the nightly rate, is where operating margin is won or lost.
Two Counts, Two Different Questions
Ask how many short term rentals Calgary has and you get two answers, because two organisations are counting two different things.
The City of Calgary publishes its licence register as open data. Read on October 31, 2026 it holds 3,911 licensed short term rentals. That is a legal count: properties that applied, passed a fire inspection and hold a current licence.
AirDNA, which scrapes the booking platforms, reports roughly 8,359 available listings in the Calgary market over the same period, at an average daily rate near $112.60 and occupancy around 60 percent.
The honest reading is that these are not the same universe. A market area on a listing tracker is not the same boundary as the city limits, one property can carry more than one listing, and a listing that has not been booked in a year still shows up as available. So the gap is not a clean measure of unlicensed operators, and anyone who tells you it is has not read either source carefully.
What the two counts together do tell you is that the licensed market is large, real, and nowhere near the ceiling of what is advertised.
What 60 Percent Occupancy Actually Means for You
Occupancy is the number most hosts quote and the one that matters least on its own. Sixty percent occupancy is roughly 18 booked nights a month. The question that decides your workload is not how many nights, it is how those nights are grouped.
- Eighteen nights in three night stays is about six turnovers a month.
- Eighteen nights in week long stays is about two or three turnovers.
- Eighteen nights in a run of one and two night weekend stays can be eight or more.
Same occupancy, same revenue, three completely different operations. A host chasing short stays for a higher nightly rate is quietly buying themselves triple the turnover load, and the cleaning line is where that shows up.
Running the Math on a Cleaning Fee
At a $112.60 average nightly rate, the arithmetic gets concrete. A three night stay grosses about $338 before fees. A one bedroom turnover from CleanStays starts at $95.
If you charge a cleaning fee that covers the turnover, your margin is intact and the guest sees a total that is still competitive. If you discount the cleaning fee to look cheaper in search, you are paying for the clean out of the nightly rate, on every single stay, forever. On six turnovers a month, a $30 shortfall is $180 a month and $2,160 a year, taken straight off the top.
The trap is that the discount does not win the booking. Guests compare the total, not the nightly rate. We have written about setting a cleaning fee that actually covers the turnover and about what turnover cleaning costs in Calgary by unit size.
Who Actually Owns This Market
The City’s register splits the 3,911 licences into 2,211 non primary residence and 1,700 primary residence. Just under 57 percent of Calgary’s licensed short term rentals are run by someone who does not live in the building.
That is the structural fact of this market. The majority of operators cannot walk downstairs and check. They are relying on a photograph, a text message, or nothing at all, and they find out a turnover was missed when a guest tells them.
It also explains why the cleaning conversation in Calgary is really a reliability conversation. A host who lives on site can absorb a cleaner who is forty minutes late. A host managing from across the city, or from another province, cannot.
What the Property Mix Tells You
The licence data breaks down by property type, and the shape is not what most people assume. Legally registered suites are the largest single group at 1,093, ahead of detached houses at 980 and apartments or condos at 828.
Suites change a turnover. Shared entries, shared laundry, a mechanical room that belongs to the main dwelling, and a boundary that has to be written down rather than assumed. A quote given over the phone without knowing it is a suite is a quote that will be revised.
The Operating Read
Put the numbers together and the picture is consistent. A sizeable licensed market. Occupancy that puts most units through several turnovers a month. A nightly rate that leaves real margin, but only if the cleaning fee is set to cover the work. And a clear majority of operators who are not on site to catch problems themselves.
None of that is solved by cleaning harder. It is solved by a turnover that runs the same way every time and proves it did.
Licence counts from the City of Calgary Open Data short term rentals dataset, read October 31, 2026. Listing count, average daily rate and occupancy from AirDNA’s Calgary market overview, read October 31, 2026. Market figures move; treat them as a snapshot. CleanStays rates are our own published starting rates.
