Airbnb is gearing up for the travel restart. Matakana Fantail Retreat. Photo / Supplied, Airbnb
Airbnb is gearing up for the travel restart. Matakana Fantail Retreat. Photo / Supplied, Airbnb
When international travel is green-lit for New Zealanders they're likely to savour their new freedoms, Airbnb predicts.
Guests are staying longer in rentals, with a fifth of bookings spending a month or longer in listings. Although some of this data might reflect the ongoing pandemic disruption with guests having to adapt their accommodation plans, the website hopes it is part of a larger travel trend.
The travel company expects that travellers will be using flexible work arrangements to stay abroad for longer.
The website's users now include a population of 100,000 guests that live nomadically out of back-to-back bookings.
The study, commissioned from market research firm YouGov, showed Kiwi travellers, in particular, planned to use remote working to satisfy 20 months of unslaked wanderlust.
41 per cent of New Zealanders said they would like to live somewhere else if it weren't for the location of their work or office.
There is also a generation of New Zealanders who felt their opportunity to travel and live overseas was curtailed by the pandemic.
The booking business' latest round of tinkering has retooled the site to cater to these longer-term rentals. There are about 50 changes to the app's secret sauce, but there are a few updates aimed at getting international travel-ready.
Key to this is translation. The new translation engine, which will help guests and hosts switch between 60 different languages, is a vote of confidence for the return of international travel.
Although we're unlikely to see Airbnb in Te Reo Maori, area manager for New Zealand and Australia Susan Wheeldon has previously said it was a "not-never" for the site.
She said the changes were about reducing friction for overseas travel.
"When travel returns, Kiwis are set to embrace new ways of living, working and travelling," said Wheeldon.
"Most of these changes have been in response to what guests have been asking for."
It's not all about teleconferencing and remote desktops.
The search tools have been refined to help guests find more specific types of accommodation.
Launched in time for the Northern winter, the new "ski-in/ski-out" category is likely to be popular with snow bums.
Susan Wheeldon, Airbnb country manager for New Zealand and Australia. Photo / Supplied
Accessibility is perhaps the biggest change for the website. The website has allocated a team to review accessibility features for each listing. Asking hosts to submit photos of wheelchair access or accessible bathrooms for verification, it's a step away from the more "hands off" Airbnb model. Previously it has required guests to confirm their booking is as it claims, after they have checked in.
"This is not about catching out hosts lying about their amenities, but more about helping them make sure they meet accessibility standards," says Wheeldon.
"Airbnb is about helping anyone live anywhere," she says, getting accessibility right is a big part of that.
With huge amounts of pent up travel demand, Airbnb is eager to "get travellers back abroad as safely as possible", says Wheeldon.
A part of this might be helping guests and hosts understand the patchwork of post-Covid travel requirements needed for bookings.
In some markets, such as Malaysia, the proof of Covid vaccination is a requirement. Travel is likely to have changed a lot since New Zealanders were last abroad.
International travellers may not have reached New Zealand's shores just yet, but the website is hoping to convince more Kiwi homeowners to list their properties online.
Revised insurance for hosts dubbed "AirCover" includes US$1 million in damage protection and public liability as an incentive to get more New Zealanders listing on the platform.
While pandemic disruption is ongoing in many of the 200 countries the website operates, Airbnb is gearing up for a restart in international travel and "cross-border" holidays.
