Airbnb is making a renewed push into renting single rooms in a nod to its beginnings and a realization that renting a whole house is just too expensive for a lot of travelers, especially younger ones.
The short-term rental company rolled out a latest offering Wednesday that it calls Airbnb Rooms. Guests can rent a room in the identical house or apartment as their host at prices that Airbnb says will average $67 an evening.
“It’s an admission that travelers care more about affordability than they did a 12 months ago,” said CEO Brian Chesky.
Airbnb has all the time listed single rooms in houses and apartments. The corporate said the brand new offering will give more biographical details about hosts, and consumers can sort listings to learn details including whether their bedroom door locks and the toilet is private or shared.
It’s a throwback to the unique concept that Chesky and Joe Gebbia — now chairman of Airbnb — had in 2007, once they took guests of their San Francisco apartment to assist pay the rent. Since then, Airbnb listings have shifted toward whole houses, and costs have soared, to a mean every day rate of $153 late last 12 months.
“That is going to be especially popular for the following generation of travelers,” Chesky said of the brand new offering. “The common Gen Z traveler desires to pay lower than $100 an evening.” (Generation Z is generally defined as people born between roughly the mid-Nineties and 2010.)
It’s an interesting gambit. Throughout the pandemic, Airbnb took business from hotels because travelers wanted rentals where they might avoid contact with strangers. Rival Vrbo, owned by Expedia, continues to be running advertisements bragging that it only rents whole houses.
Airbnb made $1.9 billion last 12 months — the primary full-year profit in its history — on higher bookings and revenue. Analysts expect the San Francisco company to be much more profitable this 12 months.
Airbnb has had its stumbles too. Resistance to high cleansing fees led the corporate to change the best way prices are displayed in November, which it says will rein in runaway fees. Airbnb declined to supply figures when asked if fees have dropped.
And social media posts about long checkout instructions went viral. Some hosts asked guests to perform tasks comparable to taking out the trash and laundering the sheets — though the guests were paying a hefty cleansing fee.
Airbnb said it can let consumers see checkout lists before they book. It’s also tweaking the hosting side of the applying to nudge owners against adding chores that could lead on to poor reviews and get them booted off the platform.
“In six months to a 12 months, there ought to be a fabric reduction in onerous checkout tasks,” Chesky said. “This could hopefully not be a meme anymore.”
