You may have heard of Airbnb, the online service that enables people to lease out their houses in the short term. They have over 3 million listings worldwide in over 65,000 cities worldwide and has become a new source of income for people out there.
Recently, Airbnb released the Overview of the Airbnb Community in Africa report which gives an illustration of how people are using the service to rent or lease properties. In general, there were over two million Airbnb guest arrivals in Africa in the past five years and hosts earned over $139 million in the past year.
Kenya is among the African countries where local and domestic tourists can go to Airbnb and rent spaces. In the report, Airbnb has revealed interesting insights of how the service is being used in Kenya:
- There are 5,900 active listings on Airbnb from the country where the annual earnings for the typical host is $970 (Kshs 100,492 as per the current exchange rate)
- There were 39,500 inbound guests in the past year, which is a 143% growth when compared to the past year.
- Local listings in the country have earned $3.9 million (Kshs 404 million) in the past year. This figure has increased by 106% compared to the previous year
- 46% of Kenyan host incomes is earned by women hosts
- There has been a 238% increase in domestic travel on Airbnb in Kenya compared to the previous year.
South Africa is still the leader in the continent when it comes to the number of active listings (43,400) and the income earned by local households ($86 million).
In Africa, there are over 100,000 active listings with annual revenues of $1500 for a typical host and a total of $139 million earned by households in the past year. The number of listings in the continent has risen by 61% when compared to last year and the majority of them are entire homes (64% of the total). Majority of hosts are female (51%) and the average host age is 43.
