BANGKOK, Thailand, 27 January 2022: Remote and hybrid work have untethered many people from the need to be in an office every day, driving the biggest change to travel since the advent of commercial flying Airbnb reports in its recent market observations.
For the first time, millions of people can now live anywhere, and the Airbnb’s platform’s data points to one out of every five gross nights booked in Q3 2021 were for stays of 28 days or longer.
Nearly half of the nights booked in Q3 were for stays of at least seven days, up from 44% n 2019.
In the 12 months through September, more than 100,000 guests booked stays of 90 days or longer.
More than 300,000 people applied for 12 openings to live anywhere on Airbnb for a year and are providing insights to help inform the company’s product development and upgrades.
Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky announced recently that he too will live on Airbnb. Starting this week in Atlanta, Chesky will stay in people’s homes in new towns or cities every few weeks and return to San Francisco in the same way that many remote workers are returning regularly to the cities where they work in order to collaborate with colleagues.
This Live Anywhere trend is like decentralization of living, and it’s changing the identity of travel. Among the trends Airbnb expects to see grow:
People will continue to spread out to thousands of towns and cities, and they will stay for weeks, months, or even longer.
Over 100,000 towns and cities around the world have had an Airbnb booking during the pandemic. long-term stays on Airbnb make up at least 50% of recent bookings.
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.
People want to explore new countries: Before the pandemic, international arrivals exploded from 25 million in 1950 to more than 1.4 billion in 2019, according to UNWTO.
On Airbnb, long-term stay nights booked by families grew 75% from summer 2019 to summer 2021. The share of Airbnb long-term stay bookers who used their stays to lead a nomadic lifestyle grew from 2020 to 2021 — from 9% to 12%.
Cities and countries will compete to attract these remote workers, leading to a redistribution of where people travel and live.
More countries are changing their visa and tax rules, and more than three dozen countries currently offer some digital nomad visa schemes.
(Source: Airbnb)
