Airbnb has released figures for its growing Airbnb for Work sector, with the number of business trips using the home-share accommodation service tripling in the last year.
The group rebranded its Airbnb for Business service as Airbnb for Work earlier this year, “to better encompass the unique benefits only Airbnb can offer today’s modern workforce”.
It said that employees from nearly 700,000 companies had now signed up and used the Airbnb for Work service globally, with over 43,000 of those companies being in the UK.
The top city for Airbnb for Work travellers coming to the UK, is, unsurprisingly, London, followed by Bristol, Edinburgh, Manchester and Birmingham.
Worldwide, London again topped the list for Airbnb for Work destinations, followed by Paris, LA, New York and Silicon Valley.
The group has also highlighted new “business travel corridors” – the key routes where customers are coming from and travelling to, with New York-Los Angeles, Melbourne-Sydney, London-Paris, San Francisco-Los Angeles, and New York-Boston being the top Airbnb for Work travel corridors over the last year.
Other trends highlighted in the new report include:
- Bleisure – Over 30 per cent of Airbnb for Work booking in the last year included at least one weekend night
- Shorter average stays – a year ago the average trip on Airbnb was six days. This has now fallen to five days, with the fatest growing segment being three nights or less. The group says this shows business travellers are increasing using Airbnb for shorter trips where they might previously have booked a hotel stay
- Collaboration – nearly 60 per cent of Airbnb for Work trips in the last year have involved more than one guest, with nearly 40 per cent having three or more guests
Airbnb said that in the last year 40 per cent of its professional community came from companies employing over 5,000 workers, with 20 per cent from mid-sized firms (251-5,000 employees), and 40 per cent from startups and small to medium sized businesses (1-250 employees).
The group said that it is introducing a new feature helping “companies streamline how their employees search for and book listings on Airbnb”, with the expansion of its Airbnb for Work Homepage, offering “a customizable search that can account for specific company policies and use cases”, including parameters for property types, nightly cap rates, etc.
