July 29 (Reuters) - Europe's boom in short-term tourism

rentals shows no signs of cooling, with the number of nights

booked on leading online platforms jumping 28.3% in the first

quarter of 2024 from a year earlier, the EU's statistics office

said on Monday.

The Eurostat statistics, which compile booking data from

Airbnb ( ABNB ), Booking.com, Expedia Group ( EXPE ) and

TripAdvisor ( TRIP ), showed tourists in the European Union spent a total

of 123.7 million nights in such accommodation during the period.

January, February and March all clocked record numbers of

bookings for each of those months, and registered double-digit

growth for the third year in a row, showed the data, which

excludes hotels and campsites.

Europe's short-term rental boom has prompted tourism

hotspots such as Spain's Canary Islands, Lisbon and Berlin to

announce restrictions on such lets, which many local residents

blame for causing housing shortages and driving up prices.

In Spain, which ranks among the top-three most visited

countries in the world, protests were held in Barcelona and

Mallorca earlier this month, and the Catalan city has pledged to

ban short-term lets by 2028.

Other places have sought to regulate the fast-growing

sector. In France, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said last

year his ministry was working on plans to close a tax loophole

benefitting short-term furnished rentals, while Italy laid out

plans to hike taxes for those renting multiple flats.

According to a report released in May by the European Travel

Commission (ETC), occupancy rates in short-term rentals fell 3

percentage points in the first quarter of 2024 year-on-year.

Occupancy rates have started to fall as the supply of new

short-term rentals entering the market outpaces growing demand.

Big one-off events - including the Paris Olympics - have had

a big impact on the market for short-term rentals this year, the

ETC report said.

Another was the European leg of Taylor Swift's eras tour. In

Warsaw, the price for short-term rental bookings in August, when

the singer's concerts will take place, is more than twice the

average for the year, the report found.