People Around the World Are Booking Airbnbs in Ukraine to Help People in Need. Will It Work?

Anit Mukherjee and Alan Gelb | March 10, 2022

By Anit Mukherjee and Alan Gelb Over the past few weeks, thousands of people across the world took to Airbnb to book more than 60,000 nights at properties in Ukraine. Nearly all of these Airbnb would-be-guests weren’t considering wartime vacations, but instead were using the popular accommodation booking service as a cash transfer mechanism. This method of philanthropy appears to have originated and gained steam on social media starting on March 2, 2022 when a Twitter user shared the idea to support Ukrainians by booking rooms on Airbnb as a “way to send immediate monetary assistance to people in hard-hit areas.” In essence, p...