This article originally appeared in Conde Nast Traveller.
Airbnb co-founder and chief strategy officer Nate Blecharczyk could probably have written the home-sharing company's trend report for 2021, released today, based on personal experience alone. Over the summer, he, his wife, Elizabeth, and their two kids temporarily relocated from San Francisco to an Airbnb in Maine for an extended stay with East Coast–based relatives, forming a familial pod.
“It was a very welcomed kind of relief after months of isolation and the rare moment to socialize this year,” he says. “From a parent's perspective, it was also nice to have the support network of family members with an appetite to do all the arts and crafts projects that we had gotten burnt out doing after a couple of months.”
He's far from the only one who has made a move, temporary or permanent, to be closer to family—or to simply get more space. According to a recent Airbnb survey, one of every five of respondents said they had relocated amid the pandemic, with 85 percent of survey respondents saying they'd prefer to relocate closer to family.