As travel businesses struggle to find employees, Airbnb is offering people 90 days of work in another country. As Luke Clark of CP5 writes, it’s one of many calculated bets that Airbnb has made to carve out a new niche for the long-stay worker-traveler.
Steven Liew, Director of Public Policy, APAC for Airbnb, spent eight years at eBay and then set up an investment company called Cosmic Cafe with his wife. Now he is enjoying the life of a digital nomad while carving out a brave new segment for the company.“I think Covid did a lot of strange things to people,” says Liew. “The other panelists talked about soul searching. I did quite a bit of soul searching for the two years that we were stuck in Singapore.” Having made 14 start-up investments, he says the investment game “was fun”. Yet COVID put paid the hangout time with founders and co-investors. Soon, he began to look for something more stimulating.
The Airbnb travel opportunity
The Airbnb opportunity looked fascinating. “There are very few companies at this stage of his growth cycle, which are still run by the trio of original co-founders, and are still very much values-driven.” Liew was speaking in Singapore, having recently spent two and a half months in Japan – testing its potential as a digital nomad destination. Which clearly, as WiT founder Yeoh Siew Hoon noted, is a great excuse to travel.
Airbnb announced in mid-2022 that employees could take up to ninety days per year off to work elsewhere, provided they had permission to do so. “I took that opportunity to enjoy the benefit on one hand – and the other side of it, really test-drive this thesis that people should be able to live and work anywhere.”
So having covered Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Kanazawa, Nagano, Fukuoka, and Hirado Nagasaki, is Japan ready for digital nomads from everywhere? Having covered 11 Airbnb listings across 7 cities, Liew learned a lot about a dwelling’s capacity to support living and working. Needs of his market include a dedicated workspace, reliable wifi – and plugs to be visible and close at hand. “For a destination interested in digital nomads, remote workers, entrepreneurs and gig workers who want to spend longer time in a destination, there are few things that we need to look at,” said Liew.
Critically, these travelers require a digital nomad visa. In Europe, Malta and Estonia are doing this, while in Asia-Pacific, Thailand and Malaysia have announced it, while Australia has a working holiday visa. Meantime, Japan and other North Asia markets have not yet introduced one. Liew observed that recently, Indonesia’s tourism minister had confirmed that with the country’s tourist visa, you can now work in Bali for two to three months and renew this once. Secondly, tax treatments have to be simplified and clarified. “If I want to spend nine months in Bali for example, how do you treat that? So these are the questions that we are spending a lot of time trying to figure out.”
Having recently attended several gatherings of tourism ministers in Bali, he sensed a greater willingness to be flexible. “My take is that I think a lot of governments are trying to rebuild the economy, rebuilding tourism, and just looking for any new solutions that can help them.” Recovery was especially tough on the supply side. “They are all suffering from difficulty getting staff to come back. Two years is a long time,” Liew noted. “One of the industry association representatives share us that 1 in 10 jobs worldwide are still not filled.”
As Lu Dong, CEO and Founder of TakeMe Co, pointed out during the WiT panel titled Changing Things Up, On The Ground, one of his goals is “for travellers to live like locals anywhere.”But really, should destinations revamp infrastructure and tax policies to go after this digital nomad market?
Liew noted that as many employers face challenges in getting their employees to return, this type of policy could be seen as a real retention incentive. “When Airbnb announced that we would have permanent jobs from anywhere, our careers page was viewed a million times overnight,” he said. “So I think there is a demand for this.”
He said the long stay segment was during the second quarter of 2022, the fastest growing category for Airbnb, with 25% year-on-year growth, compared to 2019 pre-Covid numbers, “This is 90% growth: it’s a very fast-growing segment for Airbnb. We believe this is a segment worth investing in,” he noted. “We are assisting hosts to make sure they have the right kind of amenities on their properties. And we’re working with destination marketing organizations to ensure they have the right infrastructure to receive these guests.”
Furthermore, as Japan, Taiwan and South Korea continue to open slowly after Covid, the extended stay segment could also be a good market to test the reopening; Fewer travelers staying longer can be considered safer and more sustainable.
As Liew equated, 1 million people coming to a destination for just a day will cause more health and environmental issues than 100,000 each spend 10 days. “The choice is yours. For those markets that are only now opening, our recommendation is you could view this particular segment as a controlled experiment – to see how travelers coming in will then interact with the local community.”
Hi, I’m Oren, founder at BIGINTRO, a content strategy agency that helps B2B companies drive growth. We develop search, social, PR, and content marketing strategies tailored to business goals. I also have a dog named Milo.