Airbnb CEO predicts guests will stay 'weeks, months, or even entire seasons at a time'
100,000 Airbnb guests booked stays of at least three months in 202, CEO Brian Chesky said
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky projected that consumers will expand their travel to "thousands of towns and cities" in 2022 with some guests booking their stays for upward of an entire season.
He also made it clear that he'll be one of them.
| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ABNB | AIRBNB INC. | 137.34 | +4.08 | +3.06% |
"In 2022, I think the biggest trend in travel will be people spreading out to thousands of towns and cities, staying for weeks, months, or even entire seasons at a time," Chesky said in a Twitter thread Tuesday.
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Over the course of 2021, Chesky said 100,000 Airbnb guests had booked stays of at least three months.
Airbnb Chief Executive Brian Chesky poses in Los Angeles, California, Nov. 17, 2016. (Reuters/Phil McCarten / Reuters Photos)
"From July to September, 1 in 5 nights booked on Airbnb were for stays of a month or longer, and nearly half of nights booked were for stays of a week or longer," he tweeted.
The chief executive said the trend was exacerbated by remote work, which he says "untethered many people… from the need to be in an office every day."
In fact, the San Francisco-based home-sharing company earned a record $834 million in revenue during the third quarter of 2021 as an increasing number of consumers were vaccinated and regained confidence with traveling.
The company told investors during an earnings call last November that it believes the trend of work flexibility will accelerate.
A woman browses the site of U.S. home-sharing giant Airbnb on a tablet in Berlin on April 28, 2016. (Ohn MacDougall/AFP via Getty Images / Getty Images)
"This newfound flexibility is bringing about a revolution in how we travel because for the first time ever, millions of people can now travel anytime, anywhere for any length, and even live anywhere on Airbnb," Chesky said. "And we believe that this trend toward more flexibility will only accelerate."
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Chesky tweeted Tuesday that he's joining the trend this year with plans to stay in a different town or city every couple of weeks.
Chesky plans to keep going back to San Francisco, where the company is based, "but for now my home will be an Airbnb somewhere," he tweeted.
"Why am I doing this? I think the pandemic has created the biggest change to travel since the advent of commercial flying," he added.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.