Sharebox Blog

Home sharing is growing fast

09-May-2019 10:46:56 / by Kjetil Faye Lund

Travelers are seeking authentic experiences and more people will be opening their homes tomorrow than today.

We have long seen how hosts on Airbnb who share their homes and boutique hotels can offer unique, memorable hospitality. As the sharing community continue to welcome boutique hotels onto the Airbnb platform, they are also seeing continued growth in the number of hosts who share their homes.

Others in the hospitality industry have also noted this trend and Airbnb says they are flattered that those in the travel sector who were once skeptical of home sharing now seek to replicate the Airbnb model. Many traditional hospitality companies and the organizations they fund have resisted home sharing, spending millions of dollars to campaign against people sharing their homes. Now the trend are that these organizations acknowledge that home sharing is an acceptable, and for many, preferred way to travel. While they were against it before they were for it, it is better to arrive late than never arrive at all.

Though Airbnb is a young company, home sharing is an old concept. For centuries, people have been sharing spaces for both short- and long-term stays.

Indiana University history professor Wendy Gamber estimates that ‘between one third and one half of nineteenth-century urban residents either took in boarders or were boarders themselves.

Airbnb was formally launched in 2008 during the midst of the Great Recession. The growth of Airbnb was fueled by hosts who sought to earn extra money and millennial travelers specifically seeking out authentic experiences. In 2018, 58 percent of Airbnb hosts and booking guests around the world were millennials. Millennials and Generation Z are projected to represent over 75% of the key consumer demographic by 2022 and will continue to shape the travel and tourism sector. The millennial populations of both India (410 million) and China (400 million) are larger than the entire population of the U.S.

These younger travelers have also helped spread the word about Airbnb to others. Today, over 400,000 senior citizens are hosting on Airbnb and more than 400,000 companies actively manage their business travel with Airbnb.

Look into the future, Airbnb states their mission is to create a world where anyone can belong anywhere. To advance their mission, they are focused on reimagining travel by building an end-to-end travel platform that combines where you stay, what you do, and how you get there, all in one place. To achieve this goal, Airbnb are investing in creating new businesses that will power their growth over the long-term.

At the center of everything Airbnb do is community. Their community of hosts is what delivers magical travel to the community of guests. For more than 10 years Airbnb have worked to build this community, which now includes hosts in nearly 100,000 cities.

As the work continues, they regularly survey Airbnb hosts and guests. Today, they are releasing new data regarding the community, along with findings from a recent survey of more than 230,000 hosts and guests around the world.

The findings offer key insights regarding Airbnb’s global network and expansion:

Listings in Nearly 100,000 Cities

The Airbnb community is global with listings in more than 99,800 cities around the world. Six guests check into an Airbnb listing every second.

Importantly, their listings are not concentrated in any one market. Over 900 cities have more than 1,000 listings. Today, less than 3 percent of all active listings are in New York City, London, and Paris. Five years ago, over 10 percent of all active listings were in those three markets.

No one city accounts for more than 1 percent of Airbnb listings worldwide.

Airbnb’s Global Network Generates More Places to Stay

The Airbnb community has created a truly global network. Guests who are seeking unique listings and experiences around the world find what they want at Airbnb. That demand generates greater opportunities for even more hosts and in turn, more options for guests. To date, there have been more than half a billion guest arrivals at Airbnb listings worldwide and hosts – who keep the overwhelming majority of what they charge for their listings – have earned more than $65 billion by sharing their homes on Airbnb. Communities benefit, too. Airbnb guests have spent billions in neighborhoods that may not have benefited from tourism in the past.

While other brands depend on multibillion-dollar marketing and acquisition programs, the Airbnb network, combined with the tools and services Airbnb offer, has proven to attract new hosts and generate more places to stay for guests.

When asked to identify the reasons motivating them to share their home, 22 percent of Host respondents said they first enjoyed being an Airbnb guest, then decided to host.

Hosts and Guests engaging with Airbnb after their stay also makes the network even stronger. Airbnb hosts and guests have left more than 250 million reviews, an accumulation of reviews that has created an amazing currency of trust.

Unique, High-Quality Accommodations and Services

The Airbnb community offers unique, high-quality accommodations and Experiences that have created a new way to travel that did not exist before and cannot be found anywhere else. For example, there are over 14,000 tiny houses listed on Airbnb, over 4,000 castles, and over 2,400 tree houses.

Often, accommodations available via Airbnb are more affordable than traditional hotels, but survey results show that low prices are only one reason why guests turn to Airbnb.

When Guest respondents were asked to identify factors that were “important” or “somewhat important” in their decision to use Airbnb:

  • 95 percent selected ease and security of payment. Unlike most other short-term rental platforms, Airbnb securely handles all payments and transactions.
  • 86 percent of Guest respondents said the location was more convenient, while 77 percent said they wanted to live like a local.
  • 64 percent of Guest respondents said home sharing is better for the environment. According to Airbnb´s analysis, in the last year alone, there have been 4.5 million guest arrivals at eco-friendly Airbnb listings.

Moving Forward

There are over 6 million Airbnb listings around the world—more listings than the six largest hotel groups have rooms, combined—and Airbnb are more than just homes: They are creating the place to plan every part of your trip. From offering more types of accommodations to investing in Experiences and transportation, they are making major investments in people, technology and systems that will power long-term growth in the future and they will continue to offer more updates regarding this work in the weeks and months ahead.

Topics: travel, host, airbnb, homerental, airbnb service, airbnb login, property, homeowners, holiday rentals, travelers, tourism, Sharebox, Airbnb for Works, Airbnb for Work, Sharing Economy, Platform Economy, utleie på Airbnb, Key management, manage access to keys, commercial fleet key management, key management solution, home-sharing, converging, hotel, hotel rooms

Kjetil Faye Lund

Written by Kjetil Faye Lund

Kjetil Faye Lund is CMO at Sharebox and writes blogs, press releases and texts.

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