Airbnb Celebrates the Women Hosts That Power the Community

NEW YORK, March 12, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- When Shannon decided to start her own company in her hometown of Portland, she knew she would need some extra money to build her business. To help, she turned to home sharing. Recently, Ali Killam, Consumer Trends Spokesperson at Airbnb, teamed with YourUpdateTV to discuss the important role women play in home-sharing and creating memorable travel experiences.

A video accompanying this announcement is available at: https://youtu.be/UKh7KVuY-6U

Shannon is one of millions of female hosts around the world that have used the Airbnb platform to support their self-made livelihoods. Through home sharing platforms like Airbnb, women around the world are finding a new source of supplemental income and a new opportunity for economic security and independence.

Women make up nearly 56 percent of all hosts on Airbnb and have earned nearly $32 billion on Airbnb since the company launched a decade ago -- $12 billion of that in the past year alone. 

Hosting on Airbnb has proven to be a powerful tool to empower women in countries around the world, providing an important, independent stream of income. Overall, women in the US earned the most, $4 billion in 2018, followed by France where women made over $1 billion.  In India, Gauriben Brahman’s house, in the province of Gujurat, has earned her more in one month of hosting than an entire year of harvesting crops.

For more information, visit Airbnb.com

About Ali Killam
Ali Killam is the consumer trends spokesperson at Airbnb. As part of her role, Ali constantly keeps her finger on the pulse of the travel industry, sifting through data and consumer insights to uncover the hottest travel trends, up-and-coming destinations, and more, while featuring the vast array of the most unique and popular Homes and Experiences on the Airbnb platform. Ali also plays an integral role in creating content and managing stories that are published across the Airbnb channels. Prior to joining Airbnb, Ali was an award-winning multi-media journalist, with experience reporting for multiple broadcast stations across the Midwest. As an avid traveler, Ali has a true passion for community and learning about culture from across the world, most recently visiting Bali, the UK, and South Africa.

About Airbnb
Founded in 2008, Airbnb exists to create a world where anyone can belong anywhere, providing healthy travel that is local, authentic, diverse, inclusive and sustainable. Airbnb uniquely leverages technology to economically empower millions of people around the world to unlock and monetize their spaces, passions and talents to become hospitality entrepreneurs. Airbnb’s accommodation marketplace provides access to 5+ million unique places to stay in more than 81,000 cities and 191 countries. With Experiences, Airbnb offers unprecedented access to local communities and interests through 15,000+ unique, handcrafted activities run by hosts across 1,000+ markets around the world. Airbnb’s people-to-people platform benefits all its stakeholders, including hosts, guests, employees and the communities in which it operates.

About YourUpdateTV:
YourUpdateTV is a social media video portal for organizations to share their content, produced by award-winning video communications firm, D S Simon Media (http://www.dssimon.com). It includes separate channels for Health and Wellness, Lifestyle, Media and Entertainment, Money and Finance, Social Responsibility, Sports and Technology.

Media Contact:
Michael O’Donnell
D S Simon Media
212-736-2727
modonnell@dssimon.com