Airbnb is moving to prevent a shortfall in rental properties as global travel rebounds, rolling out a suite of new tools including AI-driven listing curation to encourage more hosts to advertise their properties on its site.
The short-term rental platform had about 4m active hosts, it said on Monday, but the number of active listings on the site had been flat over the past six months, as many continued to live and work in properties they might otherwise have rented out.
Now, with lockdown measures easing and travellers getting vaccinated, Airbnb faces a supply crunch in popular destinations, as an influx of guests risks outnumbering hosts.