Airbnb: Evolving Urban Destinations Across Asia Pacific: a New White Paper for Cities From ARUP and Airbnb

San Francisco, United States - 5 September, 2023 - As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, people are living, travelling and working differently. Airbnb has worked with Arup to publish a new white paper — Evolving Urban Destinations: How the blending of work and travel is reshaping cities in Asia-Pacific for the better — which explores how cities can respond to emerging challenges and opportunities, and best position communities to be more resilient as travel recovers around Asia Pacific. 

This first-of-its-kind white paper is a blueprint which outlines ways in which urban destinations can be strengthened, including pursuing opportunities to:

• Better disperse travel within cities
  How to encourage travel dispersal so that communities big and small can share in the benefits of tourism

• Reimagine city identities
  Ways to create diverse and unique travel, lifestyle, and workspace offerings throughout urban landscapes

• Collaborate with local communities
  Work closely with local communities to build authentic, diverse, inclusive and sustainable tourism that brings benefits to a broad group of stakeholders

• Accommodate new remote work practices
  Embracing trends such as workcations and digital nomadism to help win the global competition for talent

• Repurpose existing real estate
  Rethinking land use for both office and living spaces will help achieve sustainability savings, reinvigorate urban spaces and adjust to new working trends

• Diversify housing typologies
  Enact housing policies that cater to different communities and accommodation needs, e.g. increasing supply of more permanent and affordable housing, and options for remote workers.

On Airbnb, we are seeing people embrace longer stays and a “live-and-work-anywhere” mindset as they become untethered. 

New Airbnb product launches have helped both travellers and destinations make the most of this trend. We have driven greater flexibility and dispersal in the travel sector through the development of new search tools such as Categories and I’m Flexible. Through the City Portal, we collaborate with governments across the world, providing tools, data, and travel insights to make better decisions and enforce regulations. These are examples of how innovation can address significant challenges like over-tourism, collection of taxes, and better regulation of our industry. But there is more that can be done.  

Airbnb is committed to being a partner for cities, by helping create jobs and disperse the benefits of tourism to more neighbourhoods and communities. Our hope is that this white paper can serve as a blueprint for how industry and government can work together to design better urban destinations for the future.

To learn more and download the white paper, go online here.

If you are a policymaker or urban placemaker and want to continue the conversation or explore partnership opportunities, reach out to Airbnb at: apac-cities@airbnb.com