Airbnb expects record-breaking bookings in SC for solar eclipse

If you’re still looking for a place to stay the night before the Aug. 21 solar eclipse, you may be running out of options.

As hundreds of thousands of people are expected to visit the Palmetto State for the eclipse, rooms are filling up all across the path of totality, where the moon will completely block the sun.

Hotel alternative Airbnb is expecting its biggest night ever for South Carolina on Aug. 20, with nearly 7,000 rooms booked across the state, according to The Post and Courier.

Bookings on the short-term rental site are already expected to be nearly five times higher than normal, due to the first solar eclipse in 38 years the following afternoon, a representative at Airbnb told The Post and Courier.

The company released figures showing the impact of the eclipse to demonstrate that allowing home rentals gives cities more flexibility to absorb a crush of visitors, according to The Post and Courier.

"Home sharing gives cities big and small the ability to scale up quickly for major events and creates opportunities for local residents to earn additional income by sharing extra space in their homes," Will Burns, Airbnb's director of public policy, said in a statement.

The debate over how to handle temporary rentals is particularly significant in Charleston, because the city is consistently one of Airbnb's busiest in South Carolina.

Charleston accounts for 2,500 of the houses booked on the weekend of the eclipse, more than Columbia and Greenville combined. Other cities in the tri-county area contribute 1,650 more, according to The Post and Courier.

Airbnb's competitor HomeAway has also seen an uptick in bookings, Philip Minardi, a spokesman for Expedia, its parent company, told The Post and Courier.

The weekend of the eclipse, business across South Carolina has risen 65 percent compared to last year, Minardi said.

This story was originally published July 25, 2017 at 4:23 PM with the headline "Airbnb expects record-breaking bookings in SC for solar eclipse."