Daily Times

Airbnb (ABNB.O) is offering a night for two in the Palais Garnier opera house in Paris this summer, transforming a box in the theatre into a plush bedroom with sweeping views of the famous auditorium. The “Phantom of the Opera”-themed stay – a nod to the novel by Gaston Leroux and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical – comes as tourism bounces back in Europe after several years of pandemic disruptions, with visitors from the United States arriving in France in droves since last summer. European capitals are also gearing up for the return of Chinese tourists, following the lifting of travel restrictions. Before the pandemic, Airbnb had created other unusual overnight stays in the French capital, one of its key markets. These included a shark tank in the city’s aquarium, the skull-lined catacombs, the Moulin Rouge cabaret and the glass pyramid in the Louvre. The idea is to encourage people “to travel and dream at the same time — and raise a lot of emotions around travel,” Emmanuel Marill, Airbnb director of Europe, the Middle East and Africa told Reuters.