Airbnb Pushes Traveling For Remote Workers With New Program
Airbnb will lean further into the remote work trend, announcing a partnership program aimed at remote workers with wanderlust.
The short-term rental platform has bet big on remote work, telling its 6,000 employees that they can work from wherever they want for as long as they want.
With the latest announcement, Airbnb is signaling its hope that remote workers will turn to Airbnb listings for de facto office space as they travel.
As part of its previously announced Live and Work Anywhere initiative, Airbnb will partner with 20 travel destinations worldwide, targeting what the company has identified as “remote worker-friendly destinations” — a list which includes Bali, Indonesia; Baja California Sur, Mexico; Malta; Mexico City, Mexico; Queensland, Australia; and Tampa, Florida, among others.
“In the two years since the pandemic began, a new world of travel has emerged in which many workers are untethered to an office. In collaborating with these 20 destinations, we want to make it easier for workers to enjoy this flexibility and support the return of safe and responsible travel,” Airbnb co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer Nathan Blecharczyck said in a statement.
A JLL report released in June noted a massive boom in short-term holiday rentals, with sites like Airbnb and Booking.com showing dominance in the "alternative accommodation" sector, with the segment showing earning potential of $60B globally.
Though the increase in remote work has been a boon to the short-term rental sector, the number of properties on the market being earmarked for companies like Airbnb and Vrbo, has exacerbated housing shortages in places like New York City, which have seen the supply of short-term rentals nearly tripling that of available rentals.
