Airbnb Finds ‘Jobs Via Laptop’ Enabling Long-Term Rentals

The shift to remote work during the pandemic still drives changes in the travel and hospitality industries.

For short-term rental platform Airbnb, customers’ ability to work remotely contributes to a trend in guests staying longer at their rentals, Airbnb Co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky said Thursday (Aug. 3) during the company’s quarterly earnings call.

“Millions of people remain flexible about where they live and work, and we see this reflected in our bookings,” Chesky said during the call. “In Q2, long-term stays remain 18% of total nights booked.”

The trend toward long-term stays accelerated throughout the quarter, Chesky added. With the ability to travel and work remotely, customers are adding an extra night or two to their typical weekend stays.

Together, these factors have made long weekend stays the fastest-growing type of trip on Airbnb for six quarters in a row, Chesky said. In addition, the share of Airbnb’s business made up of monthly stays has risen from 13% before the pandemic to 18% today.

Chesky attributed this trend to the flexibility people have after the pandemic, enabled by technologies like Zoom.

“I think the overall winds are towards longer and longer stays,” Chesky said. “The reason why is because, more than ever, in any time in human history, you’ve got hundreds of millions of people, and one day perhaps more than a billion people, that have a job via laptop that has some incremental flexibility that did not exist 10 or 20 years ago.”

PYMNTS research has found that work-from-home and hybrid work has increased despite the easing of COVID-19 restrictions.

While 53% of consumers worked in either an entirely remote or hybrid work environment in November 2021, 58% did so a year later, in November 2022, according to the PYMNTS report “12 Months of the ConnectedEconomy™.”

Chesky’s comments came during an earnings call in which Airbnb reported that its second quarter was its most profitable one ever, with booking growing in every region and more first-time bookers compared to a year ago. A rebound in urban and international travel drove this.