About 150 properties are listed on the international accommodation website designed to encourage people to lease their homes to holiday makers on a short stay basis.

Nelson Bay’s Peter Tranter has had 12 bookings since he adopted the service in July. He has leased his self-contained downstairs living quarters out to guests for much of the school holiday period based on their profiles and positive reviews.

Guests have come from as near as Maitland and as far away as Poland.

“When I look at people that want to stay here they have to have good ratings from previous hosts,” Mr Tranter said.

This cautious approach came about after a string of bad guests through a traditional holiday broker. Fixtures were broken and in one case a television was ripped off the wall.

The guest accommodation market has enjoyed strong bookings these school holidays. Winning Holidays had enjoyed a 27 per cent increase in bookings for December. 

Nelson Bay Breeze Resort said it was possible that high occupancy rates had masked any impact that Airbnb might have had on the market.

“We’re up considerably since June... the low Australian dollar has made overseas travel less popular,” manager Les Merrett said.