Tag Archives: Airbnb

Airbnb announced that its global accommodation and experiences platform will be available in Arabic to enable its growing community across the Middle East and North Africa region to access an even more seamless travel experience. The localised web platform and iOS and Android apps are part of Airbnb’s ongoing commitment to the region and will further Airbnb’s mission to create a world where anyone can belong anywhere. All of the popular features of the Airbnb platform will be accessible in Arabic: listing pages with thousands of homes bookable for great stays, experiences around the world and lots of content on how to travel or host with Airbnb.  Airbnb has also released new data to show that across the Middle East and North Africa region more than 70,000 listings are now available to book on the Airbnb platform. As of 1 January 2019 in the UAE, 10,000 listings were available on the Airbnb platform and hosts in the UAE welcomed more than 145,000 guests from around the world – showing more than 63% year-on-year growth. Hadi Moussa, Regional Manager Middle East & Africa at Airbnb, said, “The Middle East and North Africa region is extremely important to us, so we are delighted to launch Airbnb in Arabic today. People from across the region have been using Airbnb since it was founded ten years ago to book magical travel experiences. We want to create a true sense of belonging for them by ensuring they can do so in their native language going forward.” Issam Kazim, CEO of Dubai Corporation for Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DCTCM), said, “Our ongoing partnership with Airbnb helps Dubai maintain its global competitiveness in a highly digitised marketplace …

HotelTonight and Airbnb announced that the acquisition bringing the two companies together has closed. In the first quarter of 2019, the number of room nights booked via HotelTonight increased more than 41 per cent, year-over-year. Airbnb is working to reimagine travel by building an end-to-end travel platform that combines where you stay, what you do, and how you get there, all in one place. HotelTonight is a hotel-booking service focused on making last-minute trips easy and fun, offering travelers seamless, on-demand booking for boutique and independent hotels. Together, HotelTonight and Airbnb will offer guests more choices and make it easier for the world’s best boutique and independent hotels to connect with Airbnb’s global network of guests. The HotelTonight app and website will continue to operate as they do today. Sam Shank, co-founder and CEO, HotelTonight, will lead the boutique hotel category at Airbnb. “When we founded HotelTonight, we sought to reimagine the hotel booking experience to be more simple, fast and fun, and to better connect travellers with the world’s best boutique and independent hotels,” said Shank. “We are delighted to take this vision to new heights as part of Airbnb.” “We want Airbnb to be the place where travellers plan all of their trips, whether they are booking one year or one day in advance,” said Greg Greeley, President of Homes, Airbnb. “The HotelTonight team has a tremendous passion for helping guests and rich industry expertise. We are more than thrilled to have them on board.” The HotelTonight app was designed to delight customers with a truly unique booking experience. The app recently added Daily Drop, a personalised daily deal offering that has been loved by guests and will …

Wego and Airbnb have announced a partnership to include properties listed on Airbnb in Wego search results in a move to offer Wego users more accommodation choices. With the addition of listings on Airbnb, travellers using the Wego metasearch apps and websites will have easier access to a wide range of local homes and other unique types of accommodation in destinations worldwide. Wego users simply have to enter their destination city and dates of travel, and to follow the recommended filters to search for a wide array of Airbnb vacation rentals. This announcement comes at a time when MENA based travellers and inbound visitors to the MENA region, have demonstrated an appetite for innovative travel experiences and cost-effective holiday options. As the leading travel metasearch player across the MENA region, Wego helps users to quickly compare the widest possible range of accommodation options available in the marketplace, including hotels, serviced apartments, homes and villas and to compare rates across local and global travel agencies, hotel direct websites and other merchants. Anna Trushkina, Director, Hotels at Wego, commented, “We are excited to be entering into this partnership with Airbnb which will significantly expand the supply of alternative accommodation on Wego and which is perfectly matched with types of demand we see from Saudi Arabia and the other GCC markets. Analysis of search and booking data from across the 60 countries worldwide that Wego operates, shows that users from GCC countries have the longest length of stay, highest spend per night and most frequent instance of multiple room bookings to accommodate family groups. We also know that many families from the GCC place a premium on privacy when travelling.”

The Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi (DCT Abu Dhabi) and Airbnb have teamed up to promote the UAE capital’s offerings. DCT Abu Dhabi’s already established Emirati Experiences initiative offers visitors to the emirate a selection of 20 different tours and experiences designed and led by Emirati nationals which provide firsthand insight into Emirati culture, heritage and history. These tailor-made experiences are echoed by Airbnb’s own ‘Experiences’ – unique excursions and activities designed and led by local hosts – which Airbnb offers across 800 cities worldwide. This new joint initiative means all 20 Emirati Experiences will now be included on Airbnb’s popular global platform for the first time. “This collaboration with our friends at Airbnb to showcase Emirati Experiences on their hugely popular service makes perfect sense and is in line with our mandate to promote our emirate to the widest possible audience. Each year, millions of tourists come to Abu Dhabi to experience our history, traditions and heritage and there is no better way for visitors to experience the uniqueness of Abu Dhabi and its districts, and to learn about our rich history than by spending time with an Emirati tour guide, which is what Emirati Experiences offers. With this new initiative, the demand for these unique experiences should increase as more potential visitors are exposed to the wonderful things on offer in Abu Dhabi. This co-operative initiative will no doubt result in greater visibility of our emirate to an international audience, which can only positively impact visitation numbers going forward,” said HE Sultan Al Mutawa Al Dhaheri, Executive Director, Tourism Sector, DCT Abu Dhabi.

A special report by Chestertons MENA focussing on Airbnb highlighted the growth and popularity of the online platform with investors and holiday makers in Dubai since 2015. Revenues for properties listed on the online hospitality platform during August 2015 and August 2017 increased by 421% to top US$3.3million, with listings nearly tripling to 3,249, as released by a special market report by Chestertons MENA, a leading international property agency. Chestertons research has revealed, rather than competing with Dubai’s hospitality sector, the Airbnb concept is complementing the hotel offering within the emirate by providing an alternative travel experience, with average occupancy levels topping 57% during Dubai’s peak season. “In April 2016, a new Executive Resolution No. (1/2016) concerning the second edition of ‘Dubai Holiday Home Rental Regulations’ was introduced, resulting in the relaxation of the rules surrounding holiday home rentals. This has, in turn, increased the number of listings and created alternative accommodation options to achieve the emirate’s 2020 objectives,” said Ivana Gazivoda Vucinic, Head of Advisory and Research, Chestertons MENA.

Dubai’s Department of Tourism & Commerce Marketing (Dubai Tourism) and Airbnb, the community-driven hospitality company, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to help promote responsible hosting and help grow and diversify tourism in the emirate. It follows the introduction of enhanced regulations last month that make obtaining a ‘holiday home’ license more streamlined for individual tenants and homeowners who want to rent their homes to guests.The MoU will bolster collaboration between the two parties and help enhance and diversify the emirate’s holiday home sector, boosting competition through a safe and transparent holiday home segment. Under the agreement, Airbnb will cooperate with Dubai Tourism on preventing breaches of the regulation by informing all host members of the Dubai Tourism regulations via its website and through email reminders of the rules. The two parties will also explore joint marketing and promotional activations for Dubai as a tourism destination. The MoU agreement states Dubai Tourism and Airbnb will work together to help grow and diversify tourism in Dubai, and promote innovative forms of tourism; Airbnb will raise awareness on the positive impacts of the Airbnb community by sharing aggregated, anonymised data about short term rental hosts; Airbnb will help promote responsible sharing of holiday homes by creating a “Hosting Page” on its platform, informing hosts of the rules and linking to official information and Airbnb will send regular reminders to its hosts in Dubai to remind them of the rules around responsible home sharing Airbnb is an increasingly popular way for guests from around the world to experience Dubai by staying with local hosts. There are almost 3,500 Airbnb listings in Dubai. This number and the number of guests choosing Airbnb when …