Airbnb's New Focus on Roaming

This week Airbnb dropped some exciting news for roaming enthusiasts and digital nomads of all kinds! Airbnb is evolving their platform to support the roaming lifestyle.

This isn't the first time we've heard this good news from Airbnb. Earlier in the year, Brian Chesky (Airbnb's CEO) was interviewed on the topic of long term rentals. Brian mentioned that because of the pandemic, more people than ever before were booking long term rentals due to their flexible work arrangements. Nearly 50% of Airbnb's bookings are for at least one week, 22% are for at least one month. In fact, Brian even mentioned that he has adopted the roaming lifestyle by transitioning to living in Airbnb's full time and is encouraging other Airbnb employees to do the same.

But this week Airbnb is following through on that promise by delivering the Airbnb Summer 2022 Release to their platform. This overhaul is the most significant redesign to their platform since its creation according to Brian. There are three significant changes being introduced:

• Categories

• Split Stays

• AirCover

The Categories feature is one I immediately became excited about as I opened the new Airbnb app. Instead of starting my search with a location and a date range, I now have the option of hunting for stays through a category that interests me. I found myself naturally drawn to the unique homes promoted under these categories and started understanding Brian's vision with this feature. One of the big challenges of the roaming lifestyle is trying to figure out where to go next. Christine and I have spent countless hours googling and hunting for the perfect destination to call home for a couple months. Often times we'll find an interesting location and then will search for Airbnbs available in that region. Sometimes we'll discover that there are not any Airbnb listings available that meet our criteria and then we have to start our search over from scratch. With the Categories feature, we can change how we're searching. We can start by telling Airbnb the type of home or area we're interested in and browse available Airbnbs that meet our criteria in a variety of locations. And from there, we can filter the locations to regions where we could roam. This new feature has me excited about finding our next stay!

Split Stays offers the ability to link two Airbnbs in a single reservation. Airbnb will offer these Split Stays in the search results and the idea is to make it easier to stay in an area for longer. If you try and book a month long stay in a popular area, your options could be quite limited. Split Stays could increase your options by providing a reservation of two Airbnbs that add up to the one month stay. Personally I won't use this feature too often because moving between stays can be a chore since we're traveling with our two cats. That being said I absolutely see the value in this feature - let me know if you're planning to take advantage of it!

Finally, AirCover is a new "insurance" feature added to the Airbnb platform. Every reservation will include it for no additional cost. AirCover guarantees your booking if the host cancels within 30 days, provides accommodation if you are unable to check into your stay, and (my personal favorite) guarantees that you get what you booked. If your stay was advertised to have A/C but it does not work, Airbnb will help find you a new stay. These guarantees are exciting for the roaming lifestyle! I can sleep better at night knowing that if our upcoming reservation were canceled at the last minute or is missing a critical item from the listing, Airbnb would help us find a new place to stay.

Overall these new features are exciting to me because it shows that Airbnb is recognizing the increasing number of people living the roaming and digital nomad lifestyle and are evolving their platform to make it easier for us to roam.

#roaming #digitalnomad #airbnb