Anywhere workers | Could YOU be a digital nomad?

If you haven’t heard of “digital nomads” yet, then you will soon. Lonely Planet recently polled more than 1,400 respondents ⁠— made up of 67 different nationalities across six countries (including the US, Mexico, Portugal, Indonesia and Spain)⁠ — and conducted with freelancer services marketplace Fiverr, and discovered that more than half (54%) said they now consider themselves to be “anywhere workers”.

It's the logical conclusion of the remote working revolution that accelerated during the pandemic – that knowledge workers, or anyone whose work can be done on a laptop, can work from anywhere in the world. It’s a vision endorsed by Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, who recently declared that the office was “over”, stating: “If the office didn’t exist, I like to ask, would we invent it? And if we invented it, what would it be invented for?”

Chesky believes that the future of work will be dominated by tech-enabled, remote workers without a fixed place to live, who travel the world living and working from Airbnb properties. In other words, digital nomads.

Growing in popularity

In the past, this kind of “gig work” was really only done by freelancers, but leaps in technology and a greater understanding in corporate culture of the benefits of flexible work for both wellbeing and productivity has meant that more workers on fixed contracts are able to become digital nomads. It’s a trend that’s set to grow. “The more remote work becomes available, the more people will take advantage of that fact to travel and live with more freedom,” says Anna Boyd, a senior consultant at global organisational consulting firm Korn Ferry.