Travel demand is rising, according to Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, but business travel will never be the same as it was before the coronavirus outbreak. “It doesn’t mean business travel is dead, just business travel as we knew it isn’t coming back the way it was,” Chesky stated in an interview with CNN’s Poppy Harlow on May 25, 2021. “The reason why is the bar is higher to get on a plane to do a meeting.” People have had limited movements for more than a year, and most of what they used to accomplish at work can now be done online, according to Chesky.

According to Chesky, people now have what they didn’t have a year or two ago. They have a lot of flexibility in terms of where they go, live, and work, and they’re beginning to take advantage of it. People, according to Chesky, are unable to let go of anything once they have it. Despite the lack of a complete reopening of cross-border travel, according to Chesky, travel activity has already returned to 2019 levels on Airbnb, a platform for locating and booking rooms in 220 countries and regions across the world.

Airbnb currently believes that flexibility will determine the future of travel. Among the more than 100 upgrades announced by the company to better serve both visitors and hosts are new ways to search and a simpler onboarding process for new listings. People are becoming more flexible in terms of where and when they travel, as well as staying in places for longer periods of time, according to the company. During a news conference on Monday, Chesky stated that more than a quarter of bookings in the first quarter of 2021 were for stays of 28 days or longer.