Sending help from farther afield
Larger travel companies have also joined the effort to offer facilities and services to refugees. Airbnb, in partnership with its nonprofit arm Airbnb.org, has been working with hosts to supply free temporary housing for up to 100,000 refugees fleeing Ukraine to neighboring countries like Poland, Hungary and Romania.
Thousands of people around the world have also booked and paid for Airbnbs within Ukraine, with no plans to travel there, in efforts to send money to Ukrainian homeowners. Between March 2 and 3, more than 61,000 nights were booked in Ukraine, 34,000 of them by people in the United States, the company reported.
Paige Holden, 43, an interior designer from Los Angeles, was at first skeptical about the initiative, concerned that if she booked an Airbnb property the hosts would not be able to access the funds. But after reaching out to some of them and seeing their desperation, she immediately booked an apartment in a Kyiv property, which sent…
