Airbnb con­tin­ues to in­crease glob­al­ly and in T&T sig­nif­i­cant growth has been ex­pe­ri­enced over the last sev­en years, with To­ba­go gain­ing in­creased pop­u­lar­i­ty.

Ak­i­lah Pro­cope, an in­de­pen­dent re­search con­sul­tant, told the Busi­ness Guardian that pub­licly avail­able da­ta from AirD­NA (a va­ca­tion rental re­search source) has in­di­cat­ed that T&T’s Airbnb room stock stood at 4,000 at the be­gin­ning of this year.

For ac­tive rentals, how­ev­er, prop­er­ties that have had at least one reser­va­tion or avail­able day in the month pri­or are about half of that.

Short-term rental own­ers pri­mar­i­ly make their list­ings avail­able on a part-time ba­sis she not­ed, adding that about one in three list­ings are avail­able for a min­i­mum of 181 days in the year.

Pro­cope fur­ther not­ed that al­though To­ba­go’s pop­u­la­tion is about five per cent of Trinidad’s (CSO’s 2011 cen­sus) and tourist ar­rivals to the is­land are rough­ly five per cent of to­tal ar­rivals to T&T (CSO Tourism sta­tis­tics), To­ba­go’s share of Airbnb room stock is a whop­ping 48 per cent of all short-term stays on both is­lands.

“This in­di­cates a re­sponse to the ex­treme­ly strong de­mand for home-like stays in the do­mes­tic tourism mar­ket in To­ba­go,” she ex­plained.

Re­gard­ing types of prop­er­ties, Pro­cope fur­ther not­ed that ur­ban ar­eas tend to have a high­er con­cen­tra­tion of ‘pri­vate rooms’ avail­able when com­pared with rur­al ar­eas.

About one in three Airbnb rentals, she said are pri­vate rooms where guests have a bed­room and share the oth­er rental spaces with oth­ers.

“One, two and three bed­rooms are the most com­mon in T&T, with ur­ban ar­eas like Port-of-Spain, San Juan-Laven­tille, Tu­na­puna-Pi­ar­co and Ch­agua­nas hold­ing a high­er pro­por­tion of one-bed­room list­ings, which rep­re­sent these sub-mar­kets re­sponse to the de­mand in these ar­eas,” Pro­cope said.

Ac­cord­ing to AirD­NA, T&T’s Airbnb rental growth is 19 per cent on av­er­age, with San Fer­nan­do lead­ing in growth. 

Guest re­views and rat­ings on Airbnb list­ings in T&T are high­ly pos­i­tive, in­di­cat­ing high-qual­i­ty stock on both is­lands.

About 73 per cent of guests who stay in a lo­cal Airbnb gave a rat­ing of at least 4.5.

In the case of Port-of-Spain, 83 per cent of guests pro­vid­ed a rat­ing of at least 4.5.

Port-of-Spain’s av­er­age rat­ing cur­rent­ly stands at 4.78 out of a max­i­mum score of five.

Airbnb com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers al­so shared some of their per­spec­tives with the Busi­ness Guardian.

The po­si­tion of com­mu­ni­ty leader is post­ed on Airbnb’s web­site and, once se­lect­ed, the po­ten­tial com­mu­ni­ty leader is in­ter­viewed.

If suc­cess­ful, that per­son al­so has to sign a con­fi­den­tial­i­ty agree­ment.

Ten­isha Brown-Williams, who has been the com­mu­ni­ty leader for T&T since Feb­ru­ary 2022 and has been an Airbnb host since 2017, said her first apart­ment was in D’abadie.

She not­ed this re­ceived main­ly in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors such as sports tourists who came for tour­na­ments at the Na­tion­al Rac­quet Sport Cen­tre.

Brown-Williams al­so re­ceived many in-tran­sit pas­sen­gers who need­ed to overnight to catch a flight the fol­low­ing day. Over time, book­ings in­creased, with peo­ple from the di­as­po­ra mar­ket book­ing fre­quent­ly and eco trav­ellers, she said.

From 2018 in­to 2019, with the ad­di­tion of an­oth­er apart­ment and sev­en room list­ings (in the St Au­gus­tine area), she al­so had in­creased in­ter­est from lo­cals want­i­ng to en­gage in a stay­ca­tion.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Brown-Williams list­ed an­oth­er apart­ment dur­ing the pan­dem­ic with book­ings main­ly from lo­cals.

Now, she has a high per­cent­age of re­peat guests (25 per cent) and re­ceives book­ings, apart from Airbnb, via re­fer­rals. She has host­ed guests from the Caribbean, North Amer­i­ca, Eu­rope, South and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, Aus­tralia and Africa with guests from the di­as­po­ra mar­ket com­ing main­ly from New York.

Brown-Williams added that though all her list­ings are lo­cat­ed in the east, she re­ceived book­ings for Car­ni­val at least six months in ad­vance be­fore the pan­dem­ic.

Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, she con­tin­ued to re­ceive lo­cal guests, many from To­ba­go.

Brown-Williams fur­ther shared that Airbnb of­fers in­sights to hosts to track their oc­cu­pan­cy rate, can­cel­la­tion rate, the av­er­age length of stay and av­er­age night­ly rate, among oth­er da­ta points.

She not­ed that the av­er­age oc­cu­pan­cy rate from April 2022 to April 2023 for her list­ings is 11.4 per cent, with 34 av­er­age nights booked, adding that the av­er­age oc­cu­pan­cy rate for her list­ings is 3.3 per cent high­er than sim­i­lar list­ings in the area.

Among re­spon­si­bil­i­ties as com­mu­ni­ty leader is to serve as a con­duit be­tween Airbnb and the host com­mu­ni­ty by shar­ing in­for­ma­tion from the in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­ny and pass­ing on feed­back from hosts in T&T.

She al­so leads and mod­er­ates a lo­cal Face­book group man­aged by Airbnb.

The Face­book group, she said, is the cen­tral plat­form for the com­mu­ni­ty, not­ing that it is a vi­tal fo­rum be­cause when dis­cus­sions are made Airbnb re­views it, takes notes of the is­sues/sug­ges­tions, and may make ad­just­ments ac­cord­ing­ly.

Brown-Williams said the T&T’s Airbnb host com­mu­ni­ty Face­book group now has 250 plus mem­bers, which ac­cord­ing to her, was the largest on­line com­mu­ni­ty growth among Airbnb host clubs for the Caribbean in 2022.

She cred­it­ed the in­creased in­ter­est in join­ing the club to the ses­sions the T&T host­ing com­mu­ni­ty has ex­e­cut­ed since 2022, not­ing there have been six meet­ings to date; four vir­tu­al on var­i­ous top­ics, in­clud­ing price set­ting and in­te­ri­or de­sign­ing and two in-per­son meet­ings for com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers to be fa­mil­iar with each oth­er.

Brown-Williams added the fo­cus for 2023 is to help mem­bers un­der­stand how to boost busi­ness on Airbnb by en­gag­ing ex­perts to share ba­sic busi­ness skills re­quired for host­ing.

Top­ics, such as price op­ti­mi­sa­tion, en­hanc­ing guest ex­pe­ri­ences and guest safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty, among oth­ers, will be dis­cussed.

Brown-Williams, al­so a tourism pro­fes­sion­al with 20-plus years of ex­pe­ri­ence, added she wants to re­alise T&T’s host com­mu­ni­ty goal by es­tab­lish­ing a vi­brant com­mu­ni­ty of learn­ing, ex­change, col­lab­o­ra­tion and part­ner­ship.

She added there are al­so dis­cus­sions among com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers to es­tab­lish a short-term rental (STR) as­so­ci­a­tion by the end of 2023.

Re­gion­al com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers al­so shared their ex­pe­ri­ences.

Leah Broomes who leads the Airbnb com­mu­ni­ty in Bar­ba­dos said her main ob­jec­tive as the host com­mu­ni­ty leader is com­mu­ni­ty tourism.

“I have found that Airbnb trav­ellers are search­ing for a more au­then­tic ex­pe­ri­ence, and help­ing boost the lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties on my is­land is the ul­ti­mate goal,” she said, adding that the first plan is a clean-up cam­paign on that coun­try’s east coast as part of In­ter­na­tion­al Coastal Clean-up Day on Sep­tem­ber 16.

Of the Face­book group, Broomes said this is an ex­cel­lent ini­tia­tive as it ben­e­fits those seek­ing knowl­edge from sea­soned hosts plus, it helps hosts ac­cel­er­ate any predica­ments they may en­counter from time to time.

Jane Williams leads the host com­mu­ni­ty in Grena­da. She said af­ter find­ing her­self un­em­ployed and with the en­cour­age­ment of her chil­dren, she start­ed her jour­ney with Airbnb in 2018.

She added that she quick­ly re­alised that this was some­thing she was pas­sion­ate about do­ing.

“It al­lows me to li­aise di­rect­ly with the re­gion­al Airbnb man­ag­er and en­gage in ac­tiv­i­ties with oth­er lead­ers like my­self around the globe and be privy to ad­vanced in­for­ma­tion about up­com­ing Airbnb news and events,” Williams said.

She not­ed the Grena­da Face­book host com­mu­ni­ty has grown to al­most 80 mem­bers, adding that list­ings for Grena­da are cur­rent­ly in the range of about 300 to 400.

Ac­cord­ing to Williams, there is def­i­nite­ly po­ten­tial to ex­pand say­ing, “While it can be te­dious to rein mem­bers in for mee­tups, these events have proven in­sight­ful and en­gag­ing. Our fu­ture goals for our com­mu­ni­ty of lead­ers in Grena­da are to be recog­nised as an im­por­tant com­mod­i­ty with­in the tourism sec­tor here in Grena­da.”

Williams said she al­so wants to forge a re­la­tion­ship with that is­land’s tourism au­thor­i­ty for the bet­ter­ment of tourism as a whole for Grena­da.