It seems everywhere you turn these days people are talking about Airbnb, whether it’s renting out their crib over New Year’s or finding a way to cover their bond by letting strangers from foreign lands pay their bills.

There’s good reason for that too, with Cape Town being Airbnb’s biggest African market for internet accommodation. There are currently over 5 000 listings for the city and fans are saying it is something of game changer. Below from Fin24:

…Airbnb challenges the traditional hotel and guest house industry by enabling ordinary property owners to rent out rooms and even entire homes to guests from anywhere in the world…

Figures released by the company on Monday in Johannesburg indicate that South Africa is Airbnb’s largest African market with 9 400 homes listed and a growth rate of 138% in the last year…

[General manager for Airbnb in Africa and the Middle East Nicola D’Elia said] “We have nearly 10 000 listings in South Africa. In Cape Town alone there are over 5 000 listings – it’s one of the fastest growing markets”…

D’Elia [also said] that Airbnb has “nearly 1 000 listings in Johannesburg and then we’ve got a presence in Durban, Port Elizabeth and other cities”.

Incredibly there isn’t actually an Airbnb office anywhere on the continent, although that is set to change in the not too distant future:

“In terms of specifically what we’re going to do, the first thing (to do) is to start building a team in place. So, identify a few markets and South Africa will be one of these where we are going to have a regional market manager that will be our presence on the ground,” D’Elia [said].

If you consider the fact that South Africa plays host to almost 10 million tourists a year it makes sense to try and tap into that market – that is a whole bunch of dollars, pounds and euros and we know those go a long way.

[source:fin24]