Dubai Airbnb Investment in 2026: Where Short-Term Rentals Perform, by Neighborhood

Dubai Airbnb performance by neighborhood, August 2026

August 2026, performing listings (booked at least 10% of the month’s nights). Occupancy = median share of August nights booked; nightly rate = median advertised rate for August stays; revenue = the median of each listing’s estimated August gross (its own occupancy × its own advertised rate × 31 nights), USD — usually a little below the two median columns multiplied together; listings = performing listings measured.

What the data says

• August is Dubai at its weakest. Across the city, performing listings booked 74% of August nights at a median advertised $157 a night; on the same listings, asking rates for December stays are 2.3 times August’s. An August figure is a floor for the year, not an average — and one summer of night-by-night history cannot yet say how full the winter gets.
• Downtown is both the deepest and the strongest neighborhood: 812 performing listings, 77% occupancy and a $244 median rate — about $5,600 estimated for the median listing in August, the highest in the city.
• In August the waterfront commanded no premium. Palm Jumeirah ($159 at 71%) and Dubai Marina ($152 at 77%) priced below Downtown and Al Sufouh, and JBR ($179) sat mid-table. We will re-read the waterfront once the archive covers a winter.
• The volume communities sit at the bottom on rate — Damac Hills ($98), JVC ($101), Sobha Hartland ($104), JLT ($110) and Business Bay ($124) — and in JVC one listing in five barely booked in August, one of the largest dormant tails in the city.
• Tax advantage compounds everything. Dubai charges no personal income tax, so an owner keeps more of the rental revenue than in almost any comparable market — though the DET holiday-home permit, service charges and management fees still apply.

How this is measured

Brixfox tracks 1.8M+ short-term-rental listings across 50+ countries and territories. For the listings whose Airbnb calendars it reads, it keeps each night’s final booked-or-open state in a night-by-night archive that began on 22 July 2026, and occupancy is measured from that archive rather than taken from host estimates. Nightly rates are the hosts’ asking rates for those stays: Airbnb does not publish what a night actually sold for, so every rate and revenue figure here rests on asking prices. Figures cover Dubai listings with a full August 2026 calendar (25 or more nights observed), the first complete month the archive covers. A listing counts as performing if it booked at least 10% of the month’s nights; occupancy and nightly rate are medians across performing listings, and estimated revenue is the median of each performing listing’s own estimate — its occupancy × its advertised rate × 31 nights. That is not the two medians multiplied together (the median occupancy and the median rate rarely belong to the same listing), and it usually sits a little below that product. A night closed on the calendar counts as booked, so some owner-blocked nights remain in the figures; calendars closed almost entirely with no detected booking are excluded as unverifiable, and listings our data engine flags as likely owner-blocked are left out of the medians. In August nearly three in ten Dubai listings with a full calendar (2,317 of 8,195) were closed almost end to end with no detected booking — blocked, or booked away from Airbnb — and are left out. Neighborhoods with fewer than 100 performing listings are left out too; the December-versus-August ratio compares the same listings’ advertised rates for the two months. Informational, not investment advice.