Slomads Rising: Stay Length Shifts in Digital Nomad Travel, United States 2019-2024

Using every U.S. Airbnb reservation created from 1 January 2019 through 31 December 2024, weighted by nights booked, we document a lasting shift toward longer stays after the COVID 19 shock. Mean nights per booking rose from 3.7 before the pandemic to a stable 4.1 to 4.4 after 2021; the median increased from two to three nights and the weighted standard deviation nearly doubled to seven nights, indicating a heavier tail. Negative binomial regression shows that, relative to the restriction period, post vaccine bookings are 6.5 percent shorter and pre pandemic bookings 16 percent shorter, with only mild seasonality. A hurdle model finds that the probability of a stay of at least 28 nights nearly doubled during restrictions (1.5 percent to 2.9 percent) and has settled at 2.2 percent since, while the conditional mean of long stays remains 43 to 46 nights. Hence the higher average arises chiefly from a greater frequency, not length of month plus stays. These results indicate that remote work "slomads" have durably thickened the long stay tail of the U.S. short term rental market, with implications for pricing, inventory management, and taxation.