Airbnb's growth continues to outpace that of the broader travel industry, and company leaders said they've managed to outpace 2019 figures even with depressed urban and international travel.
Speaking during the company's first quarter 2021 earnings call, CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky said a rebound of those two travel segments will provide a "significant tailwind" for his company.
"Our business improved without the recovery of two of our strongest historical segments: urban travel and cross-border travel," he said, noting his company has grown its non-urban listings in tandem with demand growth in those destinations.
Chief Financial Officer Dave Stephenson said the company is already seeing the early signs of a rebound for urban travel demand.
"Our urban travel growth rate has increased every month this year and continues to do so through April and early May," he said. "So we're just seeing continued positive momentum."
Chesky noted that before the pandemic, international travel accounted for roughly 50% of the company's bookings, and he believes there is still pent-up demand for that segment of travel.
"People are hesitant to travel right now if they aren't vaccinated or maybe aren't traveling due to some lockdowns on borders," he said. "So we know many of those trips will be coming back and will be incremental to what we're seeing today."
One of the few bright spots for urban bookings has been those for stays longer than 28 days, which Chesky said shouldn't be considered typical travel demand for practical reasons.
The length of stay increasing. In 2019 at this period of time, 14% of bookings were longer than 28 days. Now, 24% of Airbnb nights are longer than 28 days.
"What that basically means is a quarter of our business isn't travel," Chesky said. "It's living. After 28 days, you probably aren't traveling, and I think what this is [means] is the trend that traveling and living are going to begin to blur together."
He said his company is banking on increased bookings tied to more companies embracing remote work on a long-term basis.
Due to an influx of travelers who want to get on the road but are flexible in their ultimate destinations, Chesky said his company has been successful in routing demand to have greater geographic diversity.
"If you look at the concentration of our revenue, it's much more distributed than it was a couple of years ago, and this is because people aren't just going to the same 20 or 30 cities," he said. "They are getting in cars and traveling to small towns, rural communities, many of which don't have hotels."
Airbnb beat its 2019 figures in both overall revenue and gross booking value, according to its first quarter letter to shareholders. The company recorded $10.3 billion in gross bookings for the quarter, which marked a 52% increase compared to the same quarter in 2020 and a 3% increase over bookings in the first quarter of 2019.
The company also saw $887 million in revenue, up 5% year over year and 6% over 2019 levels. Despite the relatively strong revenue numbers, the company still recorded a net loss of nearly $1.2 billion for the quarter — partly attributed to cutting unused office space — and adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization remained $59 million in the red.
As of press time, Airbnb's stock was trading at $133.4 a share, down 9% year to date. The Nasdaq Composite was up 3% for the same period.