US: Airbnb is updating its landing page and introducing new features aimed at longer-term stays.
The changes were introduced days after the company announced it had raised $1 billion and laid out plans to direct its attention and new funds toward three core products: hosts, long-term stays and Airbnb experiences. The $1 billion fund raise took the form of debt and equity from private equity firms Silver Lake and Sixth Street Partners.
Airbnb’s shift towards a longer-term strategy is motivated by a 20 per cent increase in extended-stay bookings on its platform compared to the same period in 2019. As more hosts warm to the idea of longer-term stays, the company has launched a number of new tools, including a new alert and on-boarding process to make their listings more widely available to long-term guests and new visibility settings when it comes to displaying local listings in the search results.
Around 80 per cent of Airbnb hosts now accept longer-term stays and about half of the company’s active listings now provide discounts for stays of one month or longer. The company said that one in every seven nights booked in 2019 was for a longer-term stay.
The company said it’s seeing more people, such as students, doctors and nurses in residency, or others in long term work assignment turning to Airbnb to find housing for six- to nine-month stays. Already in 2020, it said it has seen bookings for more than 600 days; the longest booking made so far this year was more than 700 days.
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