As travel businesses struggle to find staff, one prominent company is bucking the trend by offering people the chance to work abroad for 90 days a year. As Luke Clark of CP5 writes, it’s one of many calculated bets that Airbnb has made in order to carve out a new niche for the long-stay worker-traveller.
HE once spent eight years at eBay, then more recently, set up an investment company called Cosmic Cafe with his wife. Now Steven Liew, Director of Public Policy, APAC for Airbnb is enjoying the life of a digital nomad – while he carves out a brave new segment for the company.
“I think Covid did a lot of strange things to people,” says Liew. “The other panellists talked about soul searching. I did quite a bit of soul searching for the two years that we were stuck in Singapore.”
Having made 14 start-up investments, he says the investment game “was fun”. Yet COVID put paid to the hangout time with his founders and co-investors. Soon, he began to look for something more stimulating. The Airbnb opportunity looked fascinating. “There are very few companies at this stage of his growth cycle, which are still run by the trio of original co-founders, and are still very much values-driven.”
Liew was speaking in Singapore, having recently spent two-and-a-half months in Japan, testing its potential as a digital nomad destination, which clearly, as WiT founder Yeoh Siew Hoon noted, is a great excuse to travel.
From mid-2022, Airbnb announced that its 9,000 employees can work anywhere in the world for up to 90 days per year, assuming they have permission to work there. “I took that opportunity to enjoy the benefit on one hand – and the other side of it, really test-drive this thesis that people should be able to live and work anywhere.”
“I took that opportunity to enjoy the benefit on one hand – and the other side of it, really test-drive this thesis that people should be able to live and work anywhere.” – Steven Liew, Director of Public Policy, APAC for Airbnb (WiT Singapore 2022)
So having covered Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Kanazawa, Nagano, Fukuoka and Hirado Nagasaki, is Japan ready for digital nomads from everywhere? Having covered 11 Airbnb listing across seven cities, Liew learned a lot about a dwelling’s capacity to support living and working. Needs of his market include a dedicated workspace, reliable wifi – and plugs to be visible and close at hand. “For a destination interested in digital nomads, remote workers, entrepreneurs and gig workers who want to spend longer time in a destination, there are a few things that we need to look at,” said Liew.
Critically, these travellers require a digital nomad visa. In Europe, Malta and Estonia are doing this, while in Asia/Pacific, Thailand and Malaysia have announced it, while Australia has a working holiday visa. Meantime, Japan and other North Asia markets have not yet introduced one.
Liew observed that recently, Indonesia’s tourism minister had confirmed that with the country’s tourist visa, you can now work in Bali for two to three months, and can renew this once. Secondly, tax treatments have to be simplified and clarified. “If I want to spend nine months in Bali for example, how do you treat that? So these are the questions that we are spending a lot of time trying to figure out.”
Having attended several gatherings of tourism ministers in Bali recently, he sensed a greater willingness to be flexible. “My take is that I think a lot of government are trying to rebuild the economy, rebuilding tourism, and just looking for any new solutions that can help them.”
Recovery was especially tough on the supply side. “They are all suffering from the difficulty of getting staff to come back. Two years is a long time,” Liew noted. “One of the industry association representatives shared with us that one in 10 jobs worldwide are still not filled.”
As Lu Dong, CEO and Founder of TakeMe Co, pointed out during the WiT panel titled “Changing Things Up, On The Ground”, one of his goals is “for travellers to live like locals anywhere.”
But really, should destinations revamp infrastructure and tax policies to go after this digital nomad market? Is this market here to stay or a phenomenon of post-Covid times?
Liew pointed out that with a lot of employers facing challenges trying to convince their employees to come back, this type of policy could actually be viewed as a genuine incentive towards retention. “When Airbnb announced that we were going to have permanent work from anywhere, our careers page was viewed one million times overnight,” he said. “So I think that there is a demand for that.”
He said during the second quarter of 2022, the long stay segment was the fastest growing category for Airbnb, with 25% year on year growth, compared to 2019 pre-Covid numbers, “This is 90% growth: it’s a very fast-growing segment for Airbnb. We believe this is a segment worth investing in,” he noted. “We are assisting hosts to make sure they have the right kind of amenities on their properties. And we’re working with destination marketing organisations to ensure they have the right infrastructure to receive these guests.”
Furthermore, as Japan, Taiwan and South Korea open more slowly post-Covid, the long-stay segment could also be a good market to road-test the reopening, as fewer travellers staying longer can be viewed as both safer and more sustainable.
As Liew equated, one million people coming into a destination for just a day will cause more health and environmental issues than 100,000 who each spend 10 days. “The choice is yours. For those markets that are only now opening, our recommendation is you could view this particular segment as a controlled experiment – to see how travellers coming in will then interact with the local community.”
