Lagos & Abuja Shortlet Benchmarks 2026: What the Occupancy and Revenue Data Actually Says

The short answer: a consistently active Lagos shortlet books somewhere around 160 nights a year at roughly ₦110,000 to ₦135,000 a night. A casually listed one books closer to 50 nights. That single distinction explains almost every contradictory statistic you will read about the Nigerian shortlet market — and it is why quoted occupancy rates for Lagos range from 26% to 45% without either number being wrong.

If you are trying to decide whether to buy, furnish or keep a unit, the benchmark you choose changes the answer completely. So it is worth understanding what these numbers actually measure.

What the data platforms report

Two independent short-term-rental data platforms publish Lagos figures. They disagree substantially:

Metric	Source A (AirROI)	Source B (Airbtics)
Occupancy	31.8%	45% (median)
Average daily rate	~91 USD	~65 USD
Nights booked per year	Not stated	164
Annual revenue per listing	~4,510 USD	~10,000 USD
RevPAR	~28 USD	Not stated

A factor of more than two on annual revenue is not a rounding difference. Most Nigerian blogs pick whichever number suits their argument and present it as fact. Let us instead work out why they differ, because the reason is the single most useful thing in this article.

Doing the arithmetic that reconciles them

Start with Source A. An ADR of 91 dollars at 31.8% occupancy gives a RevPAR of about 29 dollars, which matches their stated 28. So those three figures are internally consistent.

But annualise that RevPAR — 28 dollars × 365 — and you get roughly 10,200 dollars, not the 4,510 the same source reports. The two figures inside one dataset appear to contradict each other.

They do not. Here is the resolution. Divide the reported annual revenue by the ADR:

4,510 ÷ 91 ≈ 50 nights booked per year.

And if 50 booked nights represents 31.8% occupancy, then:

50 ÷ 0.318 ≈ 156 nights available per year.

There it is. Occupancy is measured against nights the listing was actually available, not against 365. The average Lagos listing in that dataset is only on the market for about five months of the year. It fills a third of those nights, and grosses about 4,500 dollars.

Now run Source B the same way: 164 booked nights at 45% occupancy implies roughly 364 available nights. That dataset is describing listings that are available essentially year-round — a filter that excludes the dabblers.

So which number is yours?

Both are accurate descriptions of different populations:

	The casual lister	The operator
Available nights	~156 a year	~360 a year
Booked nights	~50	~164
Gross at ₦120,000/night	~₦6.0m a year	~₦19.7m a year
Typical profile	Blocks the unit for personal use, goes quiet after a bad guest, relists before December	Available year-round, multiple channels, responds in minutes, prices by season

The gap between those two rows is roughly ₦13.7 million a year on one unit, and almost none of it is explained by the apartment. It is explained by availability and responsiveness. That is the most important finding in the Nigerian shortlet data, and it is invisible if you only read the headline occupancy figure.

The other benchmarks worth knowing

• Realistic Lagos nightly rate: around ₦110,000 to ₦135,000 for a well-presented listing, with reported USD ADRs between 65 and 91 dollars depending on dataset and mix.
• Realistic Lagos occupancy band: most listings fall between 25% and 50%, with 35% to 43% a fair planning assumption for a competently run unit.
• Average stay: about 7 nights in Lagos. This is longer than hosts expect and it matters — a market with week-long stays rewards weekly rates and lower turnover cost, not aggressive one-night pricing.
• Minimum stay: roughly 56% of Lagos listings accept one-night bookings. That is your competitive context if you set a three-night minimum.
• Ikeja: around 31% occupancy at a 78 dollar ADR — lower rate than the island, similar occupancy.
• Abuja: materially softer. Around 26% to 28% occupancy at roughly a 60 dollar ADR, working out to about 8 to 9 booked nights a month. Abuja underperforms Lagos on every headline metric.

That Abuja gap is worth sitting with if you are choosing between the two cities. Abuja demand is real but it is thinner, more midweek, more government and contractor driven, and more seasonal around the political and conference calendar.

The availability finding has a practical edge to it. If your unit is dark for stretches because you are between channels, waiting on a cleaner, or unsure what to charge, that is occupancy you are giving away before any guest declines you — and it is the first thing one shared Nookpal calendar, with cleaning blocks generated automatically on checkout, puts back.

A warning about the numbers you will see elsewhere

Some Nigerian property blogs publish shortlet revenue figures an order of magnitude above what the platform datasets show — monthly revenue per listing quoted at levels that exceed the platforms' annual figures. Treat those with real scepticism. They usually describe a whole portfolio rather than one unit, a peak-December month annualised, gross before costs, or nothing at all.

Before you act on any published figure, ask three questions: Is this one unit or several? Is it gross or net? And is occupancy measured against available nights or against 365? If a source will not tell you, it is marketing.

How to calculate your own benchmark

Portfolio averages are a sanity check, not a target. Your own numbers, honestly kept, beat any published benchmark. Four figures, tracked monthly:

1. Available nights. Nights the unit was genuinely on the market. Cleaning blocks count as available; your family staying for a week does not.
2. Booked nights. Straightforward, provided every channel and every agent-sourced booking lands on one calendar.
3. Realised ADR. Total booking revenue divided by booked nights — at what you actually charged after discounts, not your list price.
4. RevPAR. ADR × occupancy. This is the number that stops you fooling yourself, because it punishes both an empty calendar and a full one you bought with heavy discounting.

RevPAR is the metric almost no Nigerian host tracks and the only one that settles arguments. A host at ₦150,000 a night and 25% occupancy earns ₦37,500 RevPAR. A host at ₦95,000 and 45% earns ₦42,750 — more money, from a cheaper apartment, and they will usually tell you the other host is doing better.

Then subtract what an occupied night actually costs you. Power alone runs ₦9,000 to ₦18,000 a night in Lagos, which we break down in what it really costs to power a Lagos shortlet, and platform fees and FX take another fifth of anything booked through Airbnb, covered in how Nigerian hosts actually get paid. Net RevPAR is the only number that tells you whether the unit is a business or a hobby.

Nookpal computes occupancy, realised ADR and revenue per unit from the bookings you are already recording, in naira, with agent pricing kept separate from host revenue — so the benchmark you compare against the market is your own, not an estimate.

The reason so few Nigerian hosts track RevPAR is not that it is hard, it is that computing it by hand every month is tedious enough to skip. Nookpal derives occupancy, realised ADR and revenue per unit per period from the bookings you are already entering, in naira, so the four figures above are a page you open rather than a spreadsheet you maintain.

What to do with this

• If your unit is available fewer than 300 nights a year, that is your biggest lever — bigger than photography, bigger than pricing, bigger than which platform you list on.
• Plan on 35% to 43% occupancy, not the 70% a selling agent will quote you.
• Model Abuja separately and more conservatively than Lagos.
• Track RevPAR monthly and judge pricing changes against it rather than against occupancy or rate alone.

Figures cited are from third-party short-term-rental data platforms as published in 2026 and represent market estimates, not audited results. Methodologies differ between sources; verify against your own performance before making investment decisions.