Airbnb’s CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky plans to live and work from Airbnb properties across the US, returning to his house in San Francisco every fortnight, the CEO tweeted on Tuesday.
Starting this week in Atlanta, Chesky will live as a digital nomad working and traveling from city to city, sleeping in different Airbnbs because “it’ll be fun, but more importantly it will help us improve the experience for people who can now live anywhere.”
Among many other data-backed predictions, the CEO forecasts that thousands of more workers will start living overseas, with some even giving up “their leases and becoming digital nomads.”
According to a Future Workforce Pulse Report, by 2025, the number of Americans who work from home will have increased from 16.8 million (pre-pandemic figures) to 36.2 million employees.
Data provided by Airbnb shows the pandemic has also transformed the way guests book accommodations.
In 2019, travelers typically rented Airbnbs for one to a few nights at a time. By 2021, some 20% of nights scheduled between July and September were 28 days or longer.
In addition, almost 100,000 Airbnb guests booked stays of three months or more. From summer 2019 to summer 2021, the number of family long-term stay nights increased by 75%.
In addition, from 2020 to 2021, the percentage of Airbnb long-term stay bookers who used Airbnbs to live a nomadic lifestyle increased from 9% to 12%.
Such percentage comes from an internal poll of 16,000+ respondents across Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Spain, and the US from December 9 to 14, 2021.
“We’re on the verge of a revolution in travel. The world is getting digitized. The world is getting smaller. It’s getting more global” Chesky said.
Supporting his claims, more than three dozen nations are changing or have already amended their visa and tax policies to include a digital nomad visa scheme.
It will be interesting to hear about the changes Airbnb’s CEO will implement after his digital nomad experiment. Time will tell.