Airbnb passes 100,000 listings in Africa, bringing 2 million global guests to local homes

Today, we released a new report that demonstrates the positive impact of home sharing in Africa. The report demonstrates how the Airbnb platform in Africa is empowering a far more diverse range of places and people, well beyond the traditional hospitality industry, to welcome guests, create new opportunities, and establish pathways to economic stability for local residents.

The announcement was made today by Chris Lehane, Airbnb Global Head of Public Policy and Public Affairs, at a press conference in Johannesburg City Hall together with Mayor Herman Mashaba and Hermione Nevill, World Bank Group’ Senior Travel Specialist.

Key highlights from the study show that:

Hosting on Airbnb is helping people to create new economic opportunities

• The typical host on Airbnb in the Africa shares their home for 18 nights a year and earns an additional $1,500. The host community is evenly split between women and men.
• Across the continent, hosts earned a total of $139 million in the past year by sharing their homes with guests.

Traveling with Airbnb helps to spread benefits to local residents and their communities

• Since September 2012, there have been more than 2 million guest arrivals on Airbnb in Africa.
• In the past year, 1.2 million guests used Airbnb to visit African destinations – more than double compared to the previous year and 29% of them were African.
• Close to 20 percent of guests are travelling as part of a family and close to 60 percent of trips in the past year were booked by millennials.

Airbnb’s impact on South Africa and beyond

• In the past year, countries such as Morocco, Kenya, Tanzania and Nigeria have all seen guest arrivals’ growth of over 50 percent, with Nigeria noting a guest arrival growth of 325 percent.
• Home sharing on Airbnb has boosted the economy in South Africa by roughly $250 million in the past 12 months, which includes host income and guest spending.

Chris Lehane, Global Head of Public Policy and Public Affairs for Airbnb said:

“As tourism in emerging destinations is increasing, our platform helps to ensure this growth is inclusive and community-led by benefiting regular people, communities and local businesses that have sometimes never seen tourism dollars before. Airbnb can be a major engine for economic empowerment throughout Africa. We look forward to working with communities across the continent to harness their innovative spirit and technology on our people-to-people platform to help spread tourism benefits across Africa.”

Find out more about our host community in Africa, here and to read more about our community Johannesburg click here.