Digital nomadism with Airbnb -from a product standpoint
There are over 35,000,000 digital nomads across the globe of varied nationalities, according to A Brother Abroad [1]. Only in the U.S. the number of digital nomads has more than doubled over the past couple years — from 4.8 million in 2018 to 10.9 million in 2020, as shown by Project Untethered [2]. The global digital nomad community’s economic value is $787,000,000 per year, calculated as the aggregate of digital nomad spending annually. If the global digital nomad community were a country, it would rank #41 by population size, just after Canada (37,742,154) and Morocco (36,910,560) [1].
I’m now one of them. Around October 2020, I was in my 646 ft2 apartment in São Paulo, Brazil, that barely received even a minimum amount of natural sunlight and trapped indoors for around 8 months because of COVID quarantine (but at least being able to work from home). I looked around and thought to myself, “Why am I still living here?”. My apartment’s lease contract would end in a couple of months and I had around $2000 in furniture that was somehow holding me back to move somewhere with more open space, nature and sunlight. Thus, I decided to sell it all, and after the contract was over, started (with my girlfriend who was also working remotely) to live a nomad life.
For the past 8 months we’ve been living in a different city (urban, rural, beach) every 5 weeks (so far that’s the length that has worked out the best for us). For us, the first search option that came to mind for hospitality in this case was Airbnb, and it has worked out. But as soon as we started moving to the first places, we started to understand that our needs for a place to stay wouldn’t be as simple (or just the same) as for when you are traveling for tourism. At this point, Airbnb was still working its way through its product to adapt to one of the trends that profoundly impacted their industry. So as a good Product Manager, I decided to use my skills to help find the gaps where Airbnb’s product could evolve to even better accommodate this market that probably won’t stop growing anytime soon.
One of the top 5 struggles for nomads on the road is availability of items that are commonly available at home. Also, Digital nomads prefer to work at their home or accommodation over anywhere else (23% of nomads surveyed). Digital nomads stated they were generally willing to pay a substantial additional charge for a guesthouse, BnB, hostel, or hotel properly equipped for work (fast, reliable internet, comfortable chair, desk, electrical outlets, atmosphere conducive to working). However, the host should ensure the amenities are properly advertised and then validated objectively in customer reviews for the property. In the absence of a sufficient workspace and fast, reliable Wi-Fi, this group of nomads then opted for either coworking space or a café [1]. For us, the pain points came down to these five below:
- Having intermittent internet connection or low speed, unable to do video calls.
- Missing out on some basic kitchen utensils for cooking at home.
- Not having ergonomic chairs and tables for working long hours.
- Not having an easy way to wash our clothes.
- Not having enough privacy for long periods of time (shared backyards, for example).
So, let’s do some benchmarking on Airbnb’s app:
#1 Having intermittent internet connection or low speed, unable to do video calls.
According to a FlexJobs survey, over half of digital nomads (52%) rated finding reliable Wi-Fi as one of the top challenges of the nomadic lifestyle [3]. Airbnb lets you choose homes that have Wi-Fi, but that’s not enough when you are working from home. For us, it was even more delicate because we do video calls during the whole day. We could ask the host for the Wi-Fi speed afterwards, but even that doesn’t solve the problem, because one thing is the speed you have hired from the internet provider, a second thing is the speed delivered (that can be checked by websites like fast.com). Also, sometimes the speed was good, but the internet was intermittent, which meant it would drop and come back many times during the day, which while you are in the middle of a meeting makes it very problematic.
PS: I’ve noticed Airbnb asks the reviewers to say if the internet was good for video calls, but they are not translating that in the interface yet.
One (of many) possible solutions: bringing the information provided by the guests when reviewing a house, about the internet being good enough to do video calls to the information section of the room page.
#2 Missing out on some basic kitchen equipment for cooking at home.
Cooking is a must for anyone who is staying longer periods in a place. Even if you are not the type of person who likes cooking, it can get very expensive to purchase every meal out. But for us, who are vegans and try to cook as much as possible, it’s a must for adequate prep and cooking space and equipment to be prepared for it. When I mean prepared, I don’t mean anything fancy, but it needs to have things such as: a blender, pots & pans, roasting pan, etc… Currently, in Airbnb you can say you want a place with a kitchen, but that is it. It’s very common to get to a place and have to either adapt around it (when possible) or having to buy or ask the host for more kitchen utensils.
One (of many) possible solutions: giving the option for the host to indicate the specific kitchen equipment and show it on the information section of the room page.
#3 Not having ergonomic chairs and tables for working long hours.
Working long hours on a wooden chair can cause a lot of discomfort and pain. There is a way to filter this out, which in theory should help, but in practice those two examples below are indicated as “dedicated workspaces”. It ranges from an ergonomic Herman Miller chair to a wooden stool.
One (of many) possible solutions, from the guest perspective (after the host input) is being able to search by the number of chairs and tables available for working on (like it’s already done for beds). Also showing in the information section of the room page if the dedicated workspace has proper chairs for working long hours.
#4 Not having an easy way to wash our clothes.
One thing that is really hard to work around is not having an easy way to wash our clothes. According to A Brother Abroad’s survey [1], 66% of digital nomads prefer to stay in a single place for 3 to 6 months. In our case, it’s 5 to 8 weeks, so it’s very complicated to bring enough clothes to last more than a couple of weeks. To help with this, there is a “washer filter” which works relatively well, but I say “relatively” because as we have noticed, many times we end up missing out on a place that does not show up in the results when the filter is on, when in practice there is a way to work it out with the host. For example: the host has a washer that is generally only available for the house cleaner, but they make it available upon request; they live nearby and can share their washing machine; or even using a third-party washing service that they already have a relationship with for the linens and towels. So in the end, we don’t use this filter frequently and end up having to ask every host before making a reservation, if there is a way to accommodate us (and many times there is a way).
One (of many) possible solutions: orient the host to indicate when it does not have an exclusive washing machine for the guests, but one that can be made available upon request, and allow for the property be included in the search when the “washer filter” is on.
#5 Not having enough privacy for long periods of time (shared backyards for example).
I can choose to have an entire place, but that doesn’t mean the place is going to be completely private. What do I mean for private? Basically, we stay in some homes “Entire place by Airbnb’s standards”, but where the host would share the same backyard, for example. Not being in a pandemic would be less of a problem, but during one it gets a bit annoying. We would have to wear masks every time we went to the backyard to get some sunlight. Or if the hosts had dogs, that meant having to give attention to their dogs when sometimes I just wanted to lay down and relax.
One (of many) possible solutions: give the option to indicate when it’s a shared backyard.
#6 (extra). There is an extra point which is, of course, pricing.
Even though Airbnb seems to be incentivizing the hosts to do discounts, from our experience most of them are still pretty far from a fair price for a longer stay (>4 weeks). There are several advantages to the host for offering a reduced price (intensified by COVID) for longer reservations:
- Reduce dependency upon oscillating tourism demand to achieve the desired occupancy rate.
- Reduce volume servicing multiple interested parties and bookings per month.
- Long stay guest are more prone to take care of the place, since they are staying longer in it.
- Reduce volume of check ins and check-outs.
- Reduce physical contact with multiple parties (COVID reasons).
And some of them just noticed the advantages when they do the math. So again, in practice, we end up having to negotiate the pricing of many stays until it gets to a price that makes more sense for a long stay. We have already got to almost 30% lower than the listed “monthly discount price”.
One (of many) possible solutions: show these advantages to lowering the price for longer stays to incentivize hosts doing a more aggressive pricing on monthly and longer stays.
Workaround solution: we created a Google Forms checklist (feel free to duplicate it and use it for yourself 🙂), that we share with the host, which covers most of these pain points that we (and probably many other Digital Nomads) have. But of course, it would be great to have an opportunity to work it out with the product team at Airbnb.
Next steps:
- If you are a digital nomad, feel free to reach for questions, tips or even to share your experience with us (and help us improve this checklist), that would be awesome!
- If you work for Airbnb, I’m very interested in going deeper into what our experience has taught us and help to improve the #1 product that is enabling these experiences in the first place!
- Ideally, I’d lead a Product Discovery process with other digital nomads to better shape a more scalable solution.
- Anyone else, would love to hear your comments, thoughts and insights.
[1] 63 Surprising Digital Nomad Statistics in 2021 — by A Brother Abroad
[2] 15 Digital Nomad Statistics and Exciting Trends [2021 Update] — by Project Untethered
[3] Digital Nomad Survey: Insights into the Remote Lifestyle — by FlexJobs
[4] Digital Nomad Statistics and Future Projections [Infographic] — by Nomadific
