Over 164,000 people chose to make Boston their home — briefly — over the last year, through the short-term rental service Airbnb. As state legislators prepare to re-examine regulations for such services and the Boston City Council readies itself to wade into the discussion, Airbnb is highlighting its benefits for Boston residents in neighborhoods off the beaten hotel-destination path.

The perk of Airbnb, company officials say, is that renters tend to want to soak up local flair for a few days. This leads to increased spending in the area around a private residence and patronage of neighborhood businesses.

“Eighty percent of people who use our platform say they want to live like a local,” said Will Burns, the company’s director of Public Policy.

“And so going into a neighborhood like Dorchester really gives you the opportunity to view Boston from a very local perspective, and see how the everyday folks live, go to the regular restaurants, bakeries, and that sort of thing.”

Internal Airbnb data shows 4,000 current listings in Boston. The company reviewed host and guest trends in Dorchester, Jamaica Plain, Mattapan and Roxbury from Aug. 1, 2015 through July 31, 2016.

The four neighborhoods —the focus of a report released in October examining the impact of Airbnb in majority-minority communities— accounted for $5.5 million out of the $38 million brought in by home-sharing in the last year in Greater Boston. That’s a 54 percent year-over-year growth in guests, accounting for a fifth (30,000) of all Boston Airbnb guests.

“Compared to other Boston neighborhoods, Dorchester, Jamaica Plain, Mattapan and Roxbury have historically lacked in overnight travel accommodations,” Airbnb writes in the report. “Fewer than eight percent of the over 100 hotels citywide operate in these communities.”

The Pinnacle Advisory Group, a national hotel asset management firm, monitors the vast majority of the hotel stock within Boston. A Sept. 22 Pinnacle analysis of hotel trends in the city found that hotel supply was beginning to outpace a robust demand, in part due to new hotels in the already-saturated Seaport and Downtown areas.

Of the 82 operational hotels Pinnacle tracks in the city, five of them note Dorchester zip codes. In areas like Mattapan and spanning most of northwest Boston, there is a dearth of nearby hotel or bed and breakfast options.

Mattapan, still under-marketed and lacking a neighborhood information page, hosted 300 guests last year, up from under 100 guests the year before. Of the study neighborhoods, Jamaica Plain pulled in the most guests (12,600), but Dorchester grew by 58 percent over the year to host 9,600 people.

These neighborhoods also saw slightly longer individual stay times than the city average of 3.5 days, ranging from 3.6 to 3.9 days in Dorchester, Jamaica Plain, and Roxbury to a much longer 5.5-day stay average in Mattapan.

In part, Burns said the relatively cheaper price of an Airbnb to a hotel means people may stay longer in a short-term rental situation.

“What we know is, when our guests go to neighborhoods, they spend a large share of their revenue in those neighborhoods,” he said, “because that’s where they’re going to get a cup of coffee, or having a bite to eat… we find that more of those dollars circulate in the neighborhoods.”

Airbnb has fought other housing-strapped cities over wide-ranging regulations, including a cross-ward host registry in Chicago and a ban on multiple-listings in San Francisco.

Despite Airbnb lobbying for a hotel rental tax on their properties-- “we want to be taxed, we want to be regulated,” Burns said — state lawmakers in August dropped a proposal from an economic development bill that would have authorized local excise taxes for short-term residential renters. The matter of regulating short-term rentals services such as Airbnb, HomeAway, and VRBO is poised for a re-evaluation when the legislative session begins again in January.

The Boston City Council last week announced they would pick up the relay and discuss potential regulations and management for short-term rentals like Airbnb. Hearings will take place through the Committee on Housing and Community Development.

Councillors Frank Baker and Salvatore LaMattina requested a public hearing on short-term rentals, which LaMattina worried could negatively impact the city’s housing stock by incentivizing investors to purchase multiple units and use them for short-term rental spaces.

Burns said the current numbers in Boston do not appear to reflect that scenario. About 15 percent of the Boston listings are being rented out more than 180 days a year, and the average number of nights hosted for the typical host is 46, Burns said.

“You would see a much higher number both in terms of number of our listings that would be used for short-term rentals for more than 90 days, and certainly more than 180, and you would see a higher [number of] nights hosted by the typical host if this housing was being converted into short-term rental housing to the exclusion of long term residences,” he said.

The push-and-pull of taxation, regulation, property rights, and fiscal impacts consistently mark the short-term rental market’s expansion around the world. With Boston now the 7th most popular Airbnb destination and seeing a 73 percent year-over-year guest growth rate, the city and state are watching the burgeoning business model closely.