Hey, everyone. Thanks for joining. I've got some exciting things to show you today. We just completed the most comprehensive update ever to the Airbnb service. We've done this to get ready for some of the biggest changes that we see coming in travel.
So first, let me take a minute to give you a brief history of travel. The word travel comes from travail, which means a painful or laborious effort. And for most of history, travel was a struggle. It was work, not fun. But this changed in the 17th century with the grand tour.
It was a multiyear educational journey limited to privileged sons of European nobility, so privileged you could sit back while others travail for you. This is how travel was for nearly 200 years until the invention of the steam engine. Now, Regular people could travel by train, then came cars and airplanes, and travel took off. In 1950, 25,000,000 people crossed the border to travel. By 2019, it reached 1,470,000,000 people.
And then Suddenly, it all collapsed. With the global pandemic, international travel plummeted. But what's remarkable is what we saw next. After months of being stuck at home, millions of people got in their cars, and they traveled nearby to small towns and rural communities, staying in Airbnbs. Now I want to pause for a moment and speak directly to our host.
I've heard from many of you around the world. I know how uncertain and challenging it is. But I want to share my optimism with you. Know that it will get better. People are getting vaccinated.
Travel restrictions are lifting. People want to connect. And so travel is coming back. In fact, we believe this will be the biggest travel rebound in a century. But travel will be really different than before because people have newfound flexibility.
As they're adopting remote work, They're less tethered. And because of this, we're seeing 3 fundamental trends in travel. First, people can travel anytime, and we're seeing it on Airbnb. We tried an experiment and built an expanded dates feature, and here it is. You'd expand your dates by 1, 3 or 7 days.
Since January, it's been used 100,000,000 times. 2nd, people are traveling everywhere. Now growth in low density urban areas, Suburbs and small towns has been accelerating from 26% in 2018 to 35% so far this year. And 3rd, people are staying longer. Nearly a quarter of our nights booked in Q1 were for long term stays, which are stays of longer than 28 days.
You see, people aren't just traveling in Airbnb. They're now living on Airbnb. In Seattle, 40% of upcoming nights booked for this summer are now long term stays. We're seeing similar trends in other urban destinations, 43% in Los Angeles and 62% in New York City. You see, people are now traveling anytime, everywhere and staying longer.
Travel has changed, and we have too. So what we've done is a top to bottom update to the Airbnb service. This is the Airbnb 2021 release, with over 100 upgrades, delivering a better guest experience and a better host experience. Let's start with a better guest experience. People are flexible about where and when they travel.
But being flexible makes searching on Airbnb really difficult. So let's say I want to go to wine country. I type in Sonoma, and I add dates, and then I get results. And if I don't find exactly what I'm looking for, and I'm flexible, I search for a few other dates, and I get a lot more results. But let's say I'm open to any weekend this summer, and I'm open to going anywhere in California.
I could literally search every city in California and end up with 27,000 searches. Some would be over before I'm done searching. So we think we have an answer to this. It's a whole new way to search an Airbnb. It's called I'm Flexible.
And it works in 3 ways flexible dates, flexible matching, and flexible destinations. Let me start by showing you flexible dates. It's been designed for guests with flexibility around when they travel. All right, let me open the app and give you a demo. And let's say I'm going to Sonoma.
I just tap on Sonoma. And this is the calendar. Now the calendar is great for when I have a specific date in mind, but I'm flexible. So I'm just going to tap I'm flexible. And now I can search any weekend, week, or month anytime.
I'm going to choose a weekend this summer, And I'm going to search. So now what I've just done is I've just searched for every available home in Sonoma any weekend, all summer long. And what you end up with is a whole bunch of options you have never seen unless you've done multiple searches. So this one is available June 11th to June 13th. This is available August 6th to August 8th.
So if I had done a search like August 25th to 29th, I wouldn't have seen any of these. So I'm going to add some filters. I'm going to refine this down. So let's add a price filter and I'm going to add some amenities. So I'm going to add Wi Fi, pool, and let's go with the hot tub.
And I'm going to bring my dog, just not in the hot tub with me. But now I've just filtered from hundreds of listings down to 4. So what I just did was over filter and ran out of options. Now, this happens a lot, but we found a solution for this, too. It's called flexible matching.
And let me show you how it works. So let's pick up where I left off. I over filtered, and it only yielded 4 exact matches. This is the problem with fixed search. With flexible matching, We show you 186 results now.
So you have a lot more to choose from. So how do we do it? Well, flexible matching includes listings that lie just outside my search parameters, like Richard and Wendy's place here. Now, this has everything I searched for, but it's missing a hot tub. We still show you this result now.
Or this country retreat. It's just a little above the price filter. So that's flexible matching. It shows you more options that are just outside of your search parameters. Now for host, this will be great because It will surface your listing more frequently to guests.
Now, we also know that some guests are flexible not only about when they are going, but where they're going. So today, we are introducing flexible destinations. It's a new way to discover unique stays you didn't even think to search for. So I'm going to open the app and below where are you going, we have this new button, I'm flexible. So let's go to I'm flexible.
This is a completely new way to explore Airbnb. And now you're going to notice here at the top, we organize not by location, but by category homes. So you have tree houses and farms, amazing pools. You can see there's so many up here. Let's just start.
Let's browse a few of these. So these are tree houses, and you're going to notice that we actually organize the tree houses This is by location. So this one is 55 miles away. This one's 680 miles away. If you want to go a little further, you can go here at British Columbia.
We have boats. Literally live on the water. Look at these. These are some incredible boats, like this one in Washington. We have cabins.
We actually have tens of thousands of cabins on Airbnb. They've got really cool architecture. We've got an entire collection of a frame homes like this one in Oakhurst, California. We have tiny homes. We have yurts.
I didn't even know What a yurt was, I thought these were just fancy tents, but yurts are these really cool, like, kind of mini architectural wonders. They're really a lot of them are handmade, and they're really, really cool. So we have barns. You could stay in a desert. Oh, look at this, islands.
Boom. Look at that. Private islands. You could have your own private island on Airbnb. And one of the things you're going to notice is all the photos Our of private islands, these are all actually private islands.
Now we use structured data to organize our listings into these categories to ensure they're accurate. And this is really it's really cool. You can explore all over the world. We have castles, lighthouses. You can literally live off the grid if you want to live in a lake house, a vineyard.
We have caves, who doesn't want to live in a cave or a shipping container? You never walked by one of those and said, I want to live there. So so where are these islands? Well, I'm just going to tap on the map and here they are. You can see these private islands are all over North America.
So the really cool thing about Flexible locations is it uses a combination of your location data and structured data, serves the best listings in each category. And you're going to notice that The map radius changes as I tap. So when I go here to beachfront, look what happens. It shows homes just on the water and it picks the coast of California because it knows I'm in California. But if I go to Nature Lodges, it takes a wider radius.
So now we're going back to North America. Amazing pools goes even narrower. And farms. Farms takes kind of a northwestern kind of radius. So I'm going to take a look at some of these farms, and you're going to see, again, these are all based on my location.
Thanks to location data and structured data, if you're in South Africa, You'll see a totally different collection of farms. The categories change too. If you're in Spain, you see castles. In the UK, you see lighthouses. In Japan, you see Rio Cons.
In Portugal, you see windmills. In Italy, You see TRULO's. And eventually, on Mars, we'll show you biodomes with sunset views and free parking. All right. So I'm going to go back to the farms near me, and I really feel like spending the summer with some alpacas.
So I'm going to tap on this Alpaca Farm and Gardens Retreat. And, it's hosted by Julie here. She's a super host. And let's just scroll down. I want to take a look at the reviews.
4.99. I mean, this is basically almost a perfect rating at a 155 reviews, and we've made it even easier to book. So I'm going to reserve this. I just tap here and I'm going to basically live with some alpacas this summer. Flexible destinations will be live June 30th.
So that's why I'm flexible, with 3 new ways to search on Airbnb. And now these are just 3 of dozens of upgrades that we've made for our guests. Now I'd like to show you how we've improved the host experience. Our hosts are everyday people. Nearly 90% of our 4,000,000 hosts are individuals, not professionals.
55% of them are women. They're global and diverse, and they come from all walks of life, from students to retirees, they're artists, nurses, and teachers. We made it even easier for anyone to become a host. Now this is going to be really, really important as travel rebounds and many people try hosting for the first time. And it starts with an all new host welcome page.
It's a simple, clear introduction to hosting. So now Let me show you just how easy it is to list your space. I'm going to start by listing a house. Now I'm not going to list the house I live in now. I think I'm going to list my parents' house in Niskayuna, New York.
I don't think they'd mind. And I think more people should visit Niskayuna. You know, a lot of people are saying that Niskayuna is the new Paris. And so I'm going to take you back to the late 90s, 25 years ago, to my childhood house, and you can relive my childhood. So let's list my house.
Here we are. We allow you to pick what kind of home you live in. Now, it's not a shepherd's hut exactly, definitely not a chalet. Now look up here. If I need help at any point, I can just Click on Help, and this drawer opens up.
I can learn from a super host with an online class or have a 1 on 1 session. We'll just go with residential home. I'm going to list the entire home. I'm sure they won't mind moving out for a little bit. So so now let's add my address, 2321 River Road, Niskiuna.
Niskiuna is, some people call it Niski for short, looks good. And here we are, right on River Road, intersecting this wonderful stream. It's destination for travelers. And here we are. Now look what just happened.
This imported the right number of bedrooms and baths. And the reason we were able to do this is we were able to take publicly available real estate data and import them to Safe Host extra steps. And it adds the amenities in my house. We have a pool. Now it's not heated, so any pool in this giun is really an ice bath, but it's good if you have swelling in your body.
Here we are, indoor fireplace, a kitchen. I'm going to add Wi Fi. We we kind of have Wi Fi. We have free parking. We have air conditioning, we have smoke alarm and, yeah, I had a lock on my door.
You needed that growing up. Now this is cool. I'm gonna add some photos. So hold on. Let me let me show you this.
Let's take a look at some of the photos of me growing up. So this is my this is my family room. You got some nice memorabilia. The living room, 3 rocking chairs, so the whole family could rock together. Here's my childhood bedroom.
You're going to see my drafting ding table where I used to draw and design on the right. Here's the view of my bed. That's the bed that you'll sleep in. It's actually a bed that was made for a tiny child. Alright.
And here we go. You can have the great one, my idol growing up, Wayne Gretzky, looking over you while you sleep, and some old rusty skates. You probably can't fit your feet in them, but Here you are. We're going to drag them, drop them. Now this next thing is pretty cool because what we do is we use machine learning to automatically analyze each photo for quality, and then we placed them in the optimal order to boost their appeal.
So here we go, so look at this. It knew to put the triple rocking chair photo, And we knew they'd make that one the primary photo. So now I'm gonna keep going, and I'm gonna come up with a title. Now we pre populated a title here. It said cheerful 4 bedroom residential home with a pool.
So we really try to come up with a title for you, but I think I can be a little more Creative. And I think the word cheerful, I don't want to overpromise. So let's see. Nisky Una, we're known as Nisky. I think I might go with Nisky Business.
Let's Go with Niski Business. There we go. I think it's gonna be nice. Mom and dad are gonna love this. Now, we can choose Attributes, this helps you write a description.
So I'm going to go with unique and, you know, I'm going to say stylish. I think I think that certainly had some style. Now, we have a place getting started. I'm gonna honestly, let's see, come stay in Niska, Yuna, Some say the new Paris, where my mom can Make you a quiche in the morning and yell at you at night to do your homework. Alright.
There we go. And now, last thing is we offer a price criteria. I'm going to I'm going to try to get some business. I really want to fill this house for my parents. They're going to love all these guests.
And a few more questions. We have a security camera. We don't have any weapons. We do have a golden retriever. I don't think she counts as a dangerous animal.
So I'm going to publish the listing. And so here we go. Here's the preview, Niski Business in famous Niski New York, the soon to be international travel destination, And I'm gonna publish it. And here we are. And boom, here we are.
And welcome. Congratulations, Brian. I congratulate myself. Awesome. And here I am with my parents' dog, Sandy, and that's it.
So once you list, it's very likely that you'll get booked. In fact, for new listings that were activated and booked in Q1 2021, half received a reservation within 4 days of activation. For existing hosts, we've created better tools to help them succeed. We've made dozens of upgrades. Let me just show you a few.
Now here's the updated host side of the app. And let me start by showing you the new tabs. Profile is now menu. Performance is renamed Insights. Now, listings was not commonly used by host, so we put listings under menu.
With Inbox, it's now up to 10 times faster and completely redesigned with features like scheduled messages and quick replies. And finally, we freed up some space for a brand new feature we call the Today tab. The Today tab shows hosts what they need to do today in one place. For new hosts, we help you prepare for your guest and customize your calendar and pricing and set other controls you need. You'll also find relevant articles, and you can learn from Superhost in an online class or 1 on 1 session.
For existing hosts, the Today tab personalizes for them as well. Oh, look. It tells me I have a reservation. Is is that Wayne Gretzky who just booked my Nisky business? Alright.
Well, I guess he's going to be staying in my tiny childhood bedroom. And we have a next steps for you section where you can track local trends and fine tune your pricing. And we also customized articles and videos for existing hosts. Not only how we improved our tools for our hosts, we've also improved community support. We've heard from our hosts.
Last year, our community support wasn't where it should be. After our business dropped, We reduced the size of our community support team, and we did not have enough agents to be prepared for the rebound. So this year, We have doubled the number of support agents. This allows us to be faster and more responsible when you need help. We've also more than tripled the number of languages we provide support in.
Before, you could get support in 11 languages. Now you can get support when you need it in 42 languages. We heard you, Iceland. Finally, for our best host, we are introducing dedicated Superhost support with priority service from our most experienced support agents. This means fewer transfers, fewer escalations, and more authority to resolve issues for you.
This will be available to all Superhosts in North America by September 30th and will be available worldwide to Superhost December 15th. So those are just some of the highlights from the Airbnb 2021 release, and you'll find them all listed on our website. And here they all are flexibility designed for the new world of travel, a simpler and more inspiring guest experience. I mean, literally, there's dozens of upgrades just for guests here. Easier ways to host from sign up to Superhost with a new welcome page, become a host in 10 steps and the Today tab.
And finally, world class support for our global community with upgrades like the redesigned help center, dedicated SuperOps support, and expansion to 42 languages. You can learn more about each of these upgrades on airbnb.com/2021. Now, we've just talked about 100 new upgrades that will make Airbnb better. But the one thing that makes Airbnb really magical hasn't changed a bit. I'd like to end with a story, a story about a boy named Rio.
Rio likes cowboys. And thanks to Rob, Rio gets to be a cowboy, at least for the weekend, because Rob is a host who owns a tiny house on a gigantic ranch in Sandy Valley, Nevada. And for the next few days, Ria will roam the open frontier. He'll tame wild stallions, Prospect for gold and chase down the bad guys. He'll even learn that being a cowboy It's pretty hard work.
The days are long. The nights are cold. And the best way to stay warm is to stay together. Rob and his tiny house made it possible for Rio to find his Wild, Wild West. In every day, guests all around the world are also experiencing new possibilities, thanks to their host.
Possibilities for connection, for discovery, for joy, for love. Yes, travel is changing. But what people have always needed, those things will never change. And they'll always be made possible by Host.