Airbnb will have to add millions of new hosts to host guests as trips recover from the coronavirus pandemic, Brian Chesky told CNBC.
“To meet demand in the coming years, we will need millions more hosts,” Chesky said in an interview with Deirdre Bosa that aired Friday on CNBC’s “TechCheck”. The home sharing platform now has 4 million hosts.
“I think we’ll probably have a high-class problem where there will probably be more guests coming to Airbnb than we’ll have hosts, because … we think there’s going to be a bounce of travel that doesn’t look like anything we’ve ever seen,” he said. Chesky. “We are working hard to get more hosts on the platform.”
The travel industry is experiencing an increase in business as more Americans get vaccinated and state restrictions relax. But for Airbnb, which depends on people opening their homes to guests, the company will have to increase the number of hosts instead of building more real estate or adding flights to meet demand.
It’s a similar problem faced by other companies in the concert economy like Uber, which recently announced a $ 250 million stimulus in an effort to bring more drivers to its platform.
“As vaccination rates increase in the United States, we observe that consumer mobility demand is recovering faster than driver availability and that consumer delivery demand continues to exceed courier availability,” he said Uber in a paper filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Chesky said Airbnb is unlikely to offer “many incentives” to incorporate new hosts, as there is already high demand for service.
“I think all we have to do is keep telling our Airbnb story and the benefits of hosting. And we’re seeing a lot of interest,” he said.
As part of that, Chesky said, the company has launched its “made possible by the hosts” advertising campaign. The company posted several ads with photographs of Airbnb customers housed in homes around the world, in an effort to create a sense of nostalgia.
Correction: The article was updated to reflect that Chesky said the company would have a “high class problem.”
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