An Airbnb landlord in London made £11.9 million in a single year, renting out 881 properties, according to new research.

That figure represents the most made in revenue by any owner in the world in the last 12 months, but another landlord was not too far behind, raking in £11.8 million through 504 properties in Bali.

Top owners in cities including Cape Town, Paris and Barcelona all banked at least a million pounds through dozens of flats, rooms and houses.

The data from Airbnb analysts AirDNA shows how the accommodation website has shifted from flat-sharing to property management, with single operations turning over huge sums of money.

“Airbnb is no longer a community just for individuals renting out their space or properties on their own,” said AirDNA CEO Scott Shatford.

“We’re seeing traditional property management companies operating as many as 1,000 listings.

“These numbers don’t show a multimillionaire sitting on a gold mine. These are businesses that have emerged in this new economy, with hundreds of employees, managing other people’s second homes.”

Tokyo had the second highest average earning for an Airbnb host Credit: Getty

The figures released to Telegraph Travel show that earnings are highest in Bali, the Indonesian holiday island, where average revenue per user is £31,294, but a typical landlord in Tokyo is still making £27,581 and in London the figure is £16,003.

A spokesperson for Airbnb said that the typical host in the UK earned £3,000 and hosted for three nights a month, adding that the AirDNA data is not official as it has been “scraped”.

Shatford said the way Airbnb listings are managed is shifting.

“It’s not a good trend for people who use Airbnb for unique accommodation as an alternative for a traditional hotel,” he said. “These people want to meet people, and for them it’s getting harder and harder to decipher what is a corporate rental hotel against the one where Jane is going to meet you at the door and tell you all about the cool things to do in town.”

AirDNA says that 65 per cent of global hosts are still individuals, while 35 per cent are management companies, but says that ratio is shifting quickly in favour of the latter.

Airbnb says that 80 per cent of its UK hosts are “sharing space in their primary home”.

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The spokesperson said: “The vast majority of Airbnb hosts are regular people who share their homes - typically their greatest expense - to boost their income and support their families.

“The Airbnb model is unique and empowers regular people, boosts local communities and is subject to local tax. It also makes Airbnb fundamentally different to companies that take large sums of money out of the places they do business.”

The company also pointed to the hosting limits it has implemented in London this year, with the support of the mayor, which stipulated that entire home listings not be “shared for more than 90 days”.

Last month, Iceland’s tourism statistician revealed that its most prolific landlord earned £1.7m in 12 months, with five individuals making more than £700,000.