Airbnb is announcing a new partnership with the Women Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP), a registered international non-governmental organization based in Brussels, and advocating on behalf of women entrepreneurs across Europe.
The partnership aims to support and promote women entrepreneurship across Europe and is part of Airbnb’s vision to spread the benefits of tourism and engage a new wave of entrepreneurs in a more inclusive and diverse way.
The partnership was announced yesterday at a joint event by WEP and Airbnb in Brussels, hosted by Member of the European Parliament, Claudia Tapardel. It followed the presentation of new numbers demonstrating how women make up nearly 56 percent of all hosts on the Airbnb platform and have earned over €28 billion on Airbnb since the company was launched in 2008 – $10.5 billion of that in the past year alone.
The parity between men and women on Airbnb sharply contrasts with some of the disturbing realities in Europe today; women earn on average 16% less than their male counterparts and only one third of all the self-employed in Europe are women. We look forward to working with Airbnb to break down the barriers to entrepreneurship for women and ensure a supportive ecosystem for female entrepreneurs.
Charlene Lambert, Secretary General of WEP
Under the new partnership, Airbnb and WEP will organize multiple workshops across Europe to share resources and toolkits to better support female entrepreneurs who are interested in using the Airbnb platform to start or grow their businesses.
The workshops will focus on Airbnb Experiences, a platform through which people list unique activities and can share their projects, interests and passions with visitors from around the world. Since its launch in 2017, Airbnb now counts over 25,000 unique, handcrafted Experiences run by hosts across more than 1,000 cities around the world, with half of them being hosted by women.
I’m very excited to see Airbnb and the Women Entrepreneurship Platform come together to support female entrepreneurs in Europe. We as a society need to do more to support women in business. It’s only by listening – as politicians, as civil society, as companies – to our female entrepreneurs that we can hope to address some of the gaps that still exist for women wishing to launch and grow their businesses in Europe today.
Claudia Tapardel, Member of the European Parliament
Countless inspiring women around the world are using the Airbnb platform to support their self-made livelihoods and we are pleased to be partnering with WEP to reinforce that trend. While we know that Airbnb cannot single-handedly break down the barriers that many women face both in the workplace and in everyday life, we are proud to support women’s economic empowerment through our platform.
Georgina Browes, EU Public Policy Manager at Airbnb
When Airbnb Experiences started I thought ‘this is for me’. Now I live for Experiences. I was claustrophobic; now I am a guide in the catacombs in Rome. There are so many things that women can do using their energy and love.
Debora Lanini, Airbnb Experiences host in Rome
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