Airbnb, Inc. (NASDAQ: ABNB) is striving hard to convince its users to go on a trip without having a specific destination in mind, as the world is returning to normal after experiencing the huge impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
CEO of Airbnb has disclosed that recently the firm has experienced a change in the way people used to search on the platform. Earlier, before using the services of ABNB people used to have a specific destination in their mind that’s why the firm has created the search bar for the users. But recently, 40% of the users who visit ABNB have no specific destination in their mind.
Airbnb has introduced the “flexible search” on Tuesday which allows the users to search for an apartment or a home they want to stay in. Users will now have access to the Flexible Dates feature that enables them to look for homes in a completely different way.
Now users can look for new choices such as a weekend vacation spot, a week-long holiday, or even a month-long or months-long stay instead of choosing the specific dates at the start of a search. This will enable users to navigate through more choices whilst staying flexible on the specific dates of their journey to make their trip suited to their timetables.
This open-ended search feature is omnipresent, but it will only be helpful for leisure travelers not for business travelers. Furthermore, ABNB saw a surge in the revenue of its first quarter as a public firm. The firm has reported that its gross bookings declined to 31% YOY. Shares of ABNB headed high 13.34% at $206.35 on Friday’s trading session. The firm has gained +24.229 during the trading session of Friday. ABNB has a total market capitalization of $122.17 billion at the time of writing.