Mel Camp starts this story with her personal story. She says six years ago she go divorced and she said most divorces aren’t very clean at the start. Mel went to the grocery store and the credit card didn’t work and she couldn't get her groceries. She got a text that said are you going to sign those documents or what? He cut off her credit cards. She had a dear friend who was making money as a single mom with two kids supporting herself renting out two apartments she had on Airbnb. Her friend told her to put her spare bedroom on Airbnb. Mel said she did that and it was a moment for her to get her life back on track.
Stephanie Ruiz, regional communications for Latin America Airbnb says more than 55% of their hosts globally are women and so that’s more than 2 million that have taken on this financial freedom or flexibility. She says in the complexity of the pandemic it is no secret that women have had to make a lot of tough decisions and the burden of the crisis has really fallen on their shoulders. They are excited to see that at this time when women have really needed this financial lifeline, they have been able to turn to hosting as that opportunity. Ruiz says we women hosts have earned more than 600 million dollars just since last March. Mel Camp says she is not surprised; it was a solid source of income for her.
Mel says for people who haven’t done it there are questions like safety. Ruiz says safety is a top priority for them. They have a team fully dedicated to looking at what is happening on the platform and whenever they see bad actors, they do their best to remove them. She goes on to say, they do their best to ensure both hosts and guests feel safe especially at time like during the pandemic we have cleaning policies and protocols to make sure guests and hosts are following them.
