The hardest-working luxury villa markets

A high nightly rate is a headline, not an income. The markets that pay their owners best are not always the priciest per night. They are the ones that sell through the calendar. This ranking measures exactly that: how much annual income each market earns for a given nightly rate, which comes down to one honest number, nights sold.

#	Destination	Nights sold a year
1	Bali	220
2	Phuket	200
3	Koh Samui	200
4	Dubai	170
5	Mauritius	165
6	Miami	170
7	Maui	160
8	Sri Lanka	150
9	Big Island	150
10	Algarve	150
11	Los Cabos	135
12	Barbados	145

Ranked by how hard each market works: annual income earned per unit of nightly rate, which comes down to nights sold. A high nightly rate that sells one season loses to a modest rate that sells all year. Where we hold too few observations to be honest, we publish nothing.

Why a year-round market beats a trophy season

A Mediterranean trophy can quote a spectacular nightly rate and still be outearned by a Caribbean or Hawaiian villa at half the price, because the second one works two hundred nights and the first works fifty-five. Rate flatters. Nights sold pays. When you divide annual income by nightly rate, the seasonal glamour markets fall and the year-round workhorses rise.

The trap in every occupancy estimate

This is also why occupancy percentages mislead. A figure like fifty percent hides whether those nights are one dense summer or a steady year, and the two produce completely different incomes at the same rate. We count nights, then multiply. It is the only method that survives contact with a seasonal market. The full logic is in how many nights a villa actually rents.

Read it against the rate ranking

Put this list next to the most expensive destinations and the point lands: the top of one is rarely the top of the other. If income is what you care about, the hardest-working market beats the most expensive one. See where your own villa sits, free, in three questions.

Published 19/07/2026. Figures generated from our live benchmark data and updated on recalibration.