Airbnb on how the pandemic and the ensuing WFH changed where people live

For the past two years, as millions across the globe worked from home, Airbnb says this has brought about the biggest change to travel since the advent of commercial flying. 

Remote and hybrid work ensured that millions can now live anywhere. On the Airbnb platform, one out of every five gross nights booked in Q3 were for stays of 28 days or longer. Nearly half the nights booked in Q3 were for stays of at least seven days, up from 44 per cent in 2019. 

Between September 2020 and September 2021, more than 100,000 guests booked stays of 90 days or longer. An interesting finding for India was that more people were looking to stay in rural areas. As of Q3, Indians staying in rural areas was over 100 per cent higher than pre-pandemic levels. 

Last year, Airbnb had selected 12 people who would live in various Airbnb properties across the globe for a year. They would share their experience on the platform for better nomadic living. Airbnb got 314,000 applications for the 12 openings. 

Airbnb is bullish on the ‘Live Anywhere’ trend. During the pandemic, 100,000 towns across the globe had Airbnb bookings, of which 6,000 places had their first booking. Family long-term stay nights grew 75 per cent from summer 2019 to summer 2021. 

As per Airbnb, we will see three trends in travel: 

• People will continue to spread out to thousands of towns and cities, and they will stay for weeks, months, or even longer. 
• More people will start living abroad, others will travel for the entire summer, and some will even give up their leases and become digital nomads. 
• Cities and countries will compete to attract these remote workers and, it will lead to a redistribution of where people travel and live. More countries are changing their visa and tax rules, and more than three dozen countries including Estonia, Georgia and Portugal offering some sort of digital nomad visa scheme. 

Airbnb CEO and Co-Founder Brian Chesky recently announced that he too will live in an Airbnb. Starting this week in Atlanta, Chesky will stay in people’s homes in new towns every few weeks and return to San Francisco in the same way that many remote workers are returning regularly to the cities where their offices are to collaborate with colleagues. 

Chesky living in an Airbnb will help the company improve the design of the experience for people who can now live anywhere. 

Airbnb was born in 2007 and has since grown to 4 million hosts across the globe. More than 900 million guests have booked the services. 

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