Airbnb spends $10 million to fund the construction of the 100 most unique vacation rentals

The short-term rental website offers many outstanding vacation homes: from a giant guitar in Romania to an upside-down house in the Netherlands. Soon, the list of extraordinary vacation rentals could expand. Recently, Airbnb selected 100 projects from 20 countries that will receive up to $100,000 each to bring their design ideas to life. 

The OMG! Fund, which helps to finance the construction of unique vacation rentals, launched in June and received more than 10,000 applications. Many of those entries took inspiration from fruits, vegetables, music, and wine. This year’s winners, selected by the Airbnb judging panel, will begin to welcome first guests in the summer of 2023. 

A giant flower pot, acorn treehouse, sustainable beehive cabins, mushroom spaceship, and adobe fossilized dinosaur skull are among the recipients of OMG! Fund. However, the one theme that unites all of these projects is sustainability. Most participants incorporated renewable energy into their design proposals. According to Airbnb, 7,931 entrants added solar panels to their projects to make their vacation homes more eco-friendly. 

Once the new vacation rentals are completed, you can find them in Airbnb’s OMG! Category. Over 50 percent of this year’s winners already work as Airbnb hosts. A typical short-term rental host in the United States earned about $14,000 in 2021, up by over 85 percent from 2019. 

The list of OMG! Fund recipients include a couple from Chicago. Kim Sullivan and Clayton Brown plan to build a new Airbnb rental using old tires. A few years ago, they stumbled across a pile of 1,000 old car tires in the junkyard near their second home. Sullivan and Brown tried to recycle them. However, according to The Real Deal, the local recycling facility only accepted four tires per year. So, they have to come up with a new plan. 

“We really hope to inspire people to be creative in their own lives, in their own homes and where they live their lives,” said Sullivan in an interview with Crain’s Chicago Business. “Just really thinking about reusing things and recycling and taking something that might look like a piece of junk and being able to turn it into something that’s really cool and unique.”

Resources:

“100 out-of-this-world ideas: Meet the recipients of the $10M OMG! Fund,” (Airbnb, 2022)

“Couple wins $100K to build short-term rental out of tires,” by TRD Staff (The Real Deal, 2022)

“Couple wins $100,000 from Airbnb to build recycled tire house in Southwest Michigan,” by Rachel Watson (Crain’s Detroit Business, 2022)

“Airbnb will support the construction of 100 wacky vacation rental designs through its OMG! Fund competition,” by  Trevor Schillaci (The Architect’s Newspaper, 2022)