Airlines are bracing for a tsunami of travelers for the upcoming Christmas season and it’s no surprise — people are itching to get out of their homes for good reason.
What the news reports don’t tell you is that many of these travelers are on their way to an Airbnb (ABNB), where they will not only stay a weekend to sample the local zeitgeist, but will make their Airbnb a work-from-home office for 4 weeks or perhaps more.
The side effects from the pandemic have indicated to companies that technologies like Zoom and DocuSign make it possible to work from home.
Airbnb makes it possible to work from any home.
And this newfound flexibility is triggering a revolution in how we travel because for the first time ever, millions of people can now travel anytime, anywhere for any length, and even live anywhere on Airbnb.
I firmly believe that this trend toward more flexibility will only accelerate.
The pandemic has suddenly untethered tens of millions of people from the need to go into an office.
In recent months, some of the world's largest companies —Procter & Gamble, Amazon, Ford, PricewaterhouseCoopers — have announced increased flexibility for employees to work remotely.
This is just the beginning as I fully expect more companies to follow their lead.
I am witnessing several trends as a result of this travel revolution.
Can you believe now that Mondays and Tuesdays are currently Airbnb’s highest growing days of the week to travel?
This is a paradigm shift in the way we think about movement and cross-border living.
Second, now people are traveling everywhere, literally everywhere. During the pandemic, over 100,000 cities have had at least one booking on Airbnb. And that includes 6,000 towns and cities that received their first booking ever on Airbnb. The third trend is people aren't just traveling on Airbnb, they're now living full time on Airbnb.
Long-term stays on Airbnb, classified as a stay up to 28 days or more, remain Airbnb’s fastest-growing category by trip length.
People are traveling with Airbnb for extended vacations, relocation, temporary housing, student housing, and many other reasons.
I’ve illustrated how there has been a massive boost in inherent demand for Airbnb units with the merging of travel and work, but the thing that gets me excited is the supply side of the equation.
Now finally, more people than ever are interested in hosting.
Airbnb ended Q3 with the most active listings ever.
Demand is driving more supply. In fact, Airbnb’s highest supply growth is in their highest-demand destinations, particularly in North America and Europe.
The travel rebound that began earlier this year accelerated in the third quarter resulting in Airbnb's best quarter yet recording revenue of $2.2 billion surpassing 2019 by 36%.
Net income of $834 million was the highest ever, nearly four times larger than a year ago.
Gross booking value of $11.9 billion slingshots above 2019's levels by 23%
Airbnb now has 4 million hosts, and 90% of hosts are individual meaning they specifically latched onto Airbnb’s platform to become a first-time host.
These units are only listed on Airbnb translating into Airbnb possessing the best quality of rental units and in high volume.
No other platform can lay claim to the depth of Airbnb’s business and companies like Tripadvisor.com, Expedia.com are miles behind the curve and still over-reliant on Google’s search engine to manufacture leads that translate into costly customer acquisition fees.
Airbnb now has a simple 10-step process to become a host where they’ve radically reduced the number of steps.
They’ve made it easier to host and the conversion rate for people starting to lease their space flow is up.
On no night, are Airbnb supply-constrained globally.
Before the pandemic, most people were narrowly stuck in their search parameters.
However, now, over 500 million searches have used flexible searches. More than 40% of searches, guests are flexible on where or when they're traveling, and as Airbnb management has become brilliant at predicting the onslaught of demand before it comes to fruition, they have also been stellar at adding the corresponding supply at the right moment in a preemptive fashion.
Airbnb has really moved the profitability needle and future quarters will see a hockey stick-shaped effect on revenue and EPS.
Any pullback should be bought and, to be honest, Airbnb really has hit the sweet spot as the world’s digital housing agent.
I am highly bullish on Airbnb for the year 2022 and beyond.
