Airbnb CEO to start ‘living’ in rentals

Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky on Tuesday announced that he will be “living” in Airbnb rentals, “staying in a different town or city every couple weeks.” 

Chesky said that he will start off by staying in Atlanta and then shift to different cities and towns every few weeks while often making his way back to San Francisco, where the company is headquartered. He said he is making the move to reflect how many people now work remotely, but still visit the office occasionally to touch base with colleagues. 

On Twitter, Chesky wrote that he believes “the pandemic has created the biggest change to travel since the advent of commercial flying,” and that “for the first time, millions of people can now live anywhere.” 

According to Airbnb’s data, 1 in 5 bookings on its website were for 28 days or longer and about half of its bookings were for stays that were over a week long, which is a 44 percent increase from 2019, before the pandemic spread worldwide.

In addition, more than 100,000 people in the past year booked stays that exceeded three months at a time on Airbnb. 

More than 300,000 people applied to Airbnb’s initiative for 12 people to “live anywhere” on Airbnb for a year so the company could develop ideas on how to make this a reality going forward in its business model. 

The company believes that “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,” and it wants to be the company that caters to those lifestyles.

Chesky tweeted, “This trend is kind of like a decentralization of living, and it’s changing the identity of travel.”