Airbnb’s CEO and co-founder says he’ll work remotely and move from city to city every couple of weeks — staying, appropriately enough, at a different Airbnb rental.
“Starting today, I’m living on Airbnb,” Brian Chesky tweeted on Tuesday. “I’ll be staying in a different town or city every couple of weeks.”
Chesky, whose net worth is estimated by Forbes to be around $12.5 billion, plans to migrate from one Airbnb to another.
The San Francisco resident, who insists he will return to the Bay Area “often,” tweeted his plans to decamp to Atlanta this week before going on to other destinations.
Chesky, 40, said he’s doing it because “it’ll be fun, but more importantly it will help us improve the experience for people who can now live anywhere.”
He cited his company’s own data showing a sharp increase in the number of long-term rentals since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.
“From July to September, 1 in 5 nights booked on Airbnb were for stays of a month or longer, and nearly half of nights booked were for stays of a week or longer,” Chesky tweeted.
He added: “In the past year, 100,000 Airbnb guests booked stays of 3 months or longer.”
“I think the pandemic has created the biggest change to travel since the advent of commercial flying,” he tweeted.
Chesky predicted that this year will see people “spreading out to thousands of towns and cities, staying for weeks, months, or even entire seasons at a time.”
“More people will start living abroad, others will travel for the entire summer, and some will even give up their leases and become digital nomads,” he tweeted.
“Cities and countries will compete to attract these remote workers, and it will lead to a redistribution of where people travel and live.”
The latest data appears to support Chesky’s claims. The number of Americans who will be working remotely is expected to nearly double from pre-pandemic levels of 16.8 million to 36.2 million by the year 2025, according to Future Workforce Pulse Report.
The constant movement is likely to be accelerated by the “Great Resignation” which saw more than 20 million Americans quit their jobs in the second half of 2021, according to government data.
Airbnb has capitalized on the trend. Last November, the company reported record-high profits as the number of bookings surpassed its pre-pandemic figures.
The company reported revenue of $2.2 billion in the third quarter of 2021 — a 36% increase from the same period in 2019.
Last May, Chesky told shareholders that employees won’t need to return to the office until September 2022 or beyond.
In November, he said that Airbnb will institute a permanent “flexible” policy allowing employees to work remotely.
Shares of Airbnb fell by 3.4% on Tuesday after the Gordon Haskett research group downgraded the company’s stock.
Chesky co-founded the company in 2008 with his former roommate, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharczyk, who each own smaller stakes.
In December 2020, the short-term rental platform went public, sending Chesky’s net worth surging by $6.5 billion.
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