Skift hold

Turf wars between individual and professional hosts on Airbnb have existed for a long time. Chesky isn’t making friends with professional hosts when he touts Airbnb’s co-hosting network as a way to replace them.

Denis Schaal

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky told analysts on Thursday’s third-quarter earnings conference call that 20,000 people have expressed interest in becoming co-hosts since then. Airbnb launched an improved network in mid-October.

They would complement the current 10,000 co-hosts across 10 countries and help hosts who may not have time to handle certain tasks themselves, like listing management and cleaning services.

“The best part of all was that it would be an alternativeve to certain third-party property management companies,” Chesky said.

This won’t do much to ease the concerns of property managers like Vacasa, Sonder, Vtrips, Awaze, Evolve and many others, all of whom use Airbnb to varying degrees to attract bookings. One property manager told Skift he objected to Airbnb’s statement last month that co-hosts get higher guest ratings than professional property managers, a point Chesky reemphasized THURSDAY.

“The average five-star rating for co-hosts on Airbnb is significantly higher than the average rating from a third-party property manager,” he said.

Airbnb continues to pursue a supply strategy of emphasizing listing quality over increasing supply in a clean-cut fashion: it has removed 300,000 listings since last year. But Chesky said the co-housing network could unlock “millions” of new listings in the coming years because it will make it easier for people to earn extra money by renting out their homes on Airbnb.

Airbnb said it had more than 8 million active listings, but as of this year, given the quality effort, declined to quantify the percentage increases. Chief Financial Officer Ellie Mertz said enrollment growth outpaced demand by a few percentage points in the third quarter.

Airbnb does not offer alternative accommodation

The word “alternative” came up on the call when an analyst asked whether Airbnb’s “alternative lodging growth” would outpace that of its competitors.

Chesky said he wanted to interject before Mertz answered the question. “I don’t think we do alternative accommodation“, Chesky said. “I think alternative housing This is what our competing OTAs do. I think alternative accommodation is a bit of a catch-all that includes property-managed houses and serviced apartment hotels. But I’ve never heard a client talk about alternative accommodation. I hear them say Airbnb. I’m going to book an Airbnb. I’m going to do an Airbnb. And I think we’re really in a league of our own. So just so you know, I just think we don’t refer to it or consider it an alternative accommodation.

Booking Holdings and Expedia Group – which make most of their money from hotels – refer to their short-term rental businesses as “alternative accommodations.”

The numbers

In the third quarter, Airbnb saw its net profit fall 68% year-over-year to $1.4 billion, but that drop was largely due to a $2.8 billion tax benefit the company received a year earlier. Revenue rose 10% to $3.7 billion.

Room nights and experiences booked increased 8% in the third quarter. Alternative accommodation nights booked by Rival Booking Holdings increased 14% in the third quarter, but from a more modest base. It has outpaced Airbnb’s growth rate in 13 of the last 14 quarters, according to Booking.

Comparisons are not like-for-like: for example, Booking may include certain hotel-type properties, including apartment hotels, in its alternative accommodation numbers.

Other highlights

What else did we learn from Airbnb’s earnings announcement:

• The company said that nights and experiences booked on average across Airbnb’s growing markets – including Mexico, Brazil, Germany, Italy, Spain, South Korea, India, Japan and China – produce double the growth rate of its top five markets. These five main markets, namely the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France and Australia, represent 85% of Airbnb’s gross booking value.

• Chesky reiterated that Airbnb would launch a lodging-adjacent business in May 2025. The company’s experiences business would also launch on that date.

• “It’s basically going to start with the closest proximities around travel, and over the next decade we’re going to go well beyond travel,” Chesky said. He said each company would be worth between $1 billion and $2 billion.

• The percentage of Airbnb nights and experiences booked through its mobile app increased 5 percentage points year over year to 58% in the third quarter.

• The company said it was also seeing growth in new bookings, “particularly from our younger travelers.”