Airbnb: Travelers return to city breaks - Demand for bookings over 28 days grows

The proportion of travelers returning to cities has almost reached pre-pandemic levels, Airbnb reported, according to travelweekly.co.uk.

The online accommodation booking platform noted the number of nights booked in urban locations nearly matched levels last seen in the final quarter of 2019.

“Guests are returning to cities and planning more travel despite variants and surges,” Airbnb pointed out. “Our host community continues to thrive and is larger than ever, with six million active listings at the end of 2021.”

The impact of Omicron on bookings and cancellations was lower than experienced with the Delta variant last summer, “which was also significantly lower than the impact of the surge in Covid cases in EMEA, in particular, in Q4 2020,” the firm added.

“Specifically, gross nights booked in December 2021 grew more than 40% from 2020, and the cancellation rate for December trips was lower than a year ago.

“And despite the continued near-term uncertainties, we see evidence of strong pent-up demand: as of the end of January 2022, we had over 25% more nights booked for the summer travel season than at this time in 2019.”

The projection came as Airbnb unveiled a record profit of $55 million for the final three months of 2021, a $406 million improvement year-on-year as quarterly revenue climbed by 38% to $1.5 billion over the same period in pre-pandemic 2019 and almost 80% up on the 2020 equivalent.

Long-term stays of 28 nights or more remained the fastest-growing category by trip length and accounted for 22% of nights booked in the quarter, up 16% from the last three months in 2019.

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