Rental app Airbnb has reportedly seen a huge surge in demand for short vacations as travel restrictions due to the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic are lifted.
Bloomberg reports that the popular vacation rental listing app Airbnb has reported that it’s been booking more local getaways following the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. Airbnb’s CEO stated recently that the number of nights booked at U.S. listings between May 17 and June 3 was greater than the same weeks from the previous year and similar increases in domestic holidays have been observed across countries such as Germany, Portugal, South Korea, and New Zealand.
At the beginning of May, Airbnb was forced to lay off 25 percent of its staff as business slowed due to the coronavirus pandemic, now it appears that the holiday market is beginning to see an increase in business.
“People, after having been stuck in their homes for a few months, do want to get out of their houses; that’s really, really clear,” Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said in an interview. “But they don’t necessarily want to get on an airplane and are not yet comfortable leaving their countries.”
Other holiday companies such as Expedia Group’s Vrbo and Booking Holdings have seen a jump in domestic vacation-rental reservations. Chesky stated that while before the pandemic, international travel was extremely popular now it’s more common for a New Yorker to go to the Catskills for a month instead of spending a week in Paris. “Work from home is becoming working from any home,” he said.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com