Airbnb is predicted to go head-to-head with portals such as Rightmove and Zoopla.
The home hosting platform announced last week that it received $1bn of private equity funding from Silver Lake and Sixth Street Partners, some of which will be used to offer long-term listings.
Airbnb said: “We will focus on longer-term stays.
“From students needing housing during school, to people on extended work assignments, Airbnb is a place where many have found longer-term housing.
“In the future, dreams of living in another community will become a growing reality—in homes that come with the benefits of Airbnb.”
A spokesman told The Telegraph that the long-term listings would be discounted and displayed on its homepage.
Airbnb defines long-term stays as those lasting more than 28 days.
It comes as Airbnb tries to make up for lost income due to the coronavirus outbreak limiting travel, although it would have to operate within local limits such as in London where hosts can only rent out their homes for up to 90 days a year.
The platform also, however, blocked bookings last week until at least April 18th, except for those offering free stays to NHS staff and subsidised places for key workers.
A spokesman for Airbnb confirmed to EYE that long-term stays are now one of its three main focuses alongside more tools for hosts and offering experiences to users.
Comments (3)
So the owners of Zoopla invest a billion quid into Airbnb to either shoot themselves in the foot or merge the two? Anyone want to take a guess how the latter plays out for Agents?
Business Rates ….
https://www.gov.uk/introduction-to-business-rates/self-catering-and-holiday-let-accommodation
…it will first need to change their algorithms first for this to work in London. Contrary to the report above, people CAN let for more than 90 days in London (e.g. ‘normal’ 6 month ASTs).
The restriction is that hosts can’t offer more than 90 SHORT LET nights in London. The law defines a short let as a let of up to and including 90 days. So if you let to the same person for 91 consecutive days, it is not a short let, and you will still have your 90-day short let allowance.
The problem, with Airbnb’s site (as at 2 Jan ‘20), is that if you offer your property for a minimum of 91 days (because in my case, the freeholder explicitly prohibited short lets), Airbnb won’t list the place until you reduce your min nights to under 90. If however, you’ve used up your shortlet allowance, they will let lookers know your property can be booked for a minimum of 91 days etc.
So good luck to them in capturing the market they are targeting, and I hope they succeed as I would definitely use them if they got their act together on this (as I tried to)!