Airbnb Goes Last-minute with Instant Mobile Booking

product-iphone-featured-en-GBPrompted by the volume of people now turning straight to mobile, Airbnb has added a feature to its apps that will enable travellers to book last-minute accommodation for the same or next day.

Starting in San Fran and LA, with more cities on the way, mobile bookers can now use the search page and discover feed to quickly find places to stay for tonight and tomorrow. Every listing shown here, whether high-end or budget, is instantly available and bookable. If there are no instant spots left to lay your head, the app tells the user that everywhere is sold out.

Hosts have been brought on board to ensure that there are listings available for instant booking – which requires automatic approve of guests based on certain parameters, rather than the usual pre-approval process. There are already 90,000 hosts offering this service.

Airbnb has also added a weekend getaways function under a new this weekend tab for people looking for spontaneous insipration of places to go outside of the relevant city.