Airbnb goes on a quest to the countryside!
The holiday rental platform Airbnb has suffered, like the entire tourism sector, from the health crisis linked to coronavirus. Far from being beaten, its leaders have decided to make a major move to adapt their offer to the main aspiration of French people who have experienced successive lockdowns: escaping to the countryside. A closer look at an uncommon development strategy that also makes for clever PR.
The holiday rental platform Airbnb has suffered, like the entire tourism sector, from the health crisis linked to coronavirus. Far from being beaten, its leaders have decided to make a major move to adapt their offer to the main aspiration of French people who have experienced successive lockdowns: escaping to the countryside. A closer look at an uncommon development strategy that also makes for clever PR.
A rural offering to develop
The findings are unequivocal: fewer than 7% of listings on Airbnb are located in rural areas. That is around 50,000 out of the 700,000 approved on the platform in France. Although their share has been growing strongly in recent years, the gap remains significant and could cost the company a great number of bookings lost to the competition.
The timing seems ideal for action: booking requests in rural areas are booming, from city dwellers looking to escape the cramped conditions of their urban homes, or from people seeking value-for-money weekend getaways and wanting to avoid visiting major cities due to health risks. Since the pandemic began, rural hosts registered on Airbnb have earned no less than 450 million euros.
Objective: 15,000 additional rural listings
Ambitiously, Airbnb intends to reach out to a wide range of owners, with the goal of increasing its rural offering by 15,000 listings in the countryside by the end of 2021. And the company is giving itself the means to achieve this, notably through a partnership with the Association of Rural Mayors of France (AMRF), aimed at coordinated development of tourism in rural areas.
And that’s not all! An online training platform is planned, the “Rural Bootcamp”, which will aim to ensure rental offering quality through numerous tips and tricks.
A 100-euro bonus for each rental listing
To encourage as many communes as possible to get on board, Airbnb has promised to pay a 100-euro bonus for each listing effectively published in rural areas. That’s a budget of one and a half million euros to be distributed if the 2021 target is met!
However, don’t get too excited too quickly: this bonus will not be paid to property owners but rather to the AMRF. The latter has announced, to collect these funds, the creation of a scheme called “Future Countryside”, dedicated to developing tourism in rural communes.
Like restaurants or culture, the holiday rental sector is showing commendable energy and determination to bounce back after a tumultuous 2020. Let us not render their efforts ineffective; let us go away for weekends and holidays as soon as possible. Let us hope that vaccination and the lifting of travel restrictions will allow all these players to experience a lasting improvement throughout 2021.
