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Airbnb is moving to avoid a rental property deficit as global travel recovers, deploying a set of new tools, including AI-based listing healing to encourage more host to advertise their properties on their site .
The short-term rental platform had about 4 million active hosts, it said Monday, but the number of active listings on the site had been flat over the past six months as many continued to live and work on properties that otherwise they could have rented.
Now, with the reduction of blocking measures and the vaccination of travelers, Airbnb is facing a shortage of supply to popular destinations, as the influx of guests exceeds the number of hosts.
The company said it had decided to reduce the deficit by simplifying the process of adding properties to its website. New features include allowing hosts to use public records data to automatically populate their listings with relevant information and determine appropriate prices for the area.
It is also introducing artificial intelligence tools, such as image recognition, to automatically organize images in ways most likely to attract potential customers.
The move comes as analysts anticipate significant accumulated demand as pandemic sidewalks loosen. On Monday, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said the company was expecting “the biggest” [travel] bounce in a century ”. In April, he told CNBC that his company needed “millions more hosts.”
“It simply came to our notice then [Airbnb] focus on acquiring hosts, “said Steven Jankowski, of short-term rental analysts AllTheRooms.” Even before Covid-19 arrived, its host growth was slowing and still it seems pretty flat as the virus recedes and we reopen it. “
Richard Clarke, a Bernstein travel analyst, said Airbnb also had more competition from both online travel agencies like Expedia and Booking.com as well as regional players and hotel companies that had invested in kitchen rentals during the emergency. of the coronavirus.
He also noted that in the early days of the pandemic, Airbnb had forced hosts to reimburse guests affected by travel bans, causing “an element of concern” among owners. “People are afraid that they run the risk of canceling more than on other platforms because [Airbnb] it has very flexible terms, ”Clarke said.
The average daily rate for an Airbnb stay during the first quarter of this year rose to $ 160, 35% more than the same period in 2020, according to company statements.
Since the start of the pandemic, many of Airbnb’s reserves have migrated to destinations outside dense urban areas, which were previously the basis of its business. For example, the company said that by 2021 there had been more searches on Airbnb to find accommodation in Cornwall than in London.
The nature of Airbnb’s stays had also changed, the company said. The number of longer stays (28 days or more) had increased to 24% of all stays during the first quarter of this year, compared to 14% in 2019. As of April 30, 2021, Airbnb said that 62% of all bookings in New York City were for long-term stays.
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