102M nights booked
$1.5B revenue (70% Y/Y)
$(19)M net loss
$229M Adjusted EBITDA
$1.2B free cash flow
2 years ago, our business dropped 80%, our IPO was put on hold, and some didn’t think we’d make it at all.
Here’s how we turned Airbnb around:
First, we simplified our business. We got back to our roots, prioritizing the everyday people who host their homes and offer experiences
We cut the vast majority of our projects, shuttered our business units, and made the painful decision to do a layoff
We significantly improved our cost structure, decreasing our cost of revenue (merchant fees and servers), and tightly managed our fixed costs
Next, we changed our approach to marketing. When travel stopped, we paused all performance marketing and shifted our focus to PR (there have been 1M+ stories written about Airbnb since then)
By 2021, we started investing in brand marketing again, but reduced our overall marketing spend from 34% of our revenue in 2019 to 20% in 2021
Revenue dramatically rebounded when people disproportionately started traveling closer to home, staying in Airbnbs in thousands of towns and cities
Soon, people weren’t just traveling on Airbnb, they were living on Airbnb.
In 2021, around 20% of our nights booked were for stays of a month or longer, and nearly 50% for a week or longer
These trends continue to this day. And now, urban and cross-border travel, which were the majority of our business before the pandemic, are back to 2019 levels
In 2021, we completely overhauled our product as the world became more flexible.
We made 150+ upgrades and improvements, including launching the “I’m Flexible” feature, which has been used more than 2 billion times
On May 11, we’ll introduce the biggest change to Airbnb in a decade
1. Airbnb and Airbnb.org are working with our Hosts to house up to 100,000 refugees fleeing from Ukraine, for free
2. We need help to meet this goal. The greatest need we have is for more people who can offer their homes in nearby countries, including Poland, Germany, Hungary and Romania. If you can host a refugee, go here: airbnb.org/get-involved
1. I think we’re on the verge of a revolution in travel
2. Before the pandemic, most people were tethered to the place they worked because they had to go into an office
3. The pandemic accelerated the mass adoption of technologies (like Zoom) that allowed millions of people (not everyone, but a large chunk) to work from home
Starting today, we are banning “party houses” and we are redoubling our efforts to combat unauthorized parties and get rid of abusive host and guest conduct, including conduct that leads to the terrible events we saw in Orinda. Here is what we are doing:
First, we are expanding manual screening of high-risk reservations flagged by our risk detection technology.
Second, we are creating a dedicated “party house” rapid response team.