Item 1. Business
Overview
We operate a global marketplace, where hosts offer guests stays and experiences on our platform. We are a community based on connection and belonging—a community that was born in 2007 when two hosts welcomed three guests to their San Francisco home, and has since grown to over 5 million hosts who have welcomed over 2 billion guest arrivals in almost every country and region across the globe. Every day, hosts offer unique stays and experiences that make it possible for guests to connect with communities in a more authentic way.
Airbnb has five stakeholders and is designed with all of them in mind. Along with employees and shareholders, we serve hosts, guests, and the communities in which they live. We intend to make long-term decisions considering all of our stakeholders because their collective success is key for our business to thrive.
Our Long-Term Growth Strategy
Our key strategic priorities include perfecting our core business, accelerating growth in global markets, and launching and scaling new offerings. Over the past several years, we have introduced hundreds of new features and upgrades to our platform spanning nearly every part of our service from pricing to quality to customer support. Additionally, we are leveraging our global markets strategy, which includes a more localized approach to product updates and marketing investments to raise awareness and consideration in less mature markets. Lastly, we are planning to expand our business beyond travel accommodations using our multi-year product roadmap to help drive long-term growth across new businesses.
Our Platform
Our Platform for Hosts
We built our platform to seamlessly onboard new hosts, especially those who previously had not considered hosting. We partner with hosts throughout the process of setting up their listing and provide them with a robust suite of tools to successfully manage their listings, including scheduling, merchandising, integrated payments, community support, host protections, pricing tools, and feedback from reviews. During 2024, we introduced Co-Host Network, which enables our hosts to find co-hosts who can help manage their listing. Co-hosts are experienced hosts who provide personalized support based on the hosts’ needs, from listing setup to managing bookings and communicating with guests.
Our Platform for Guests
Our website and mobile app provide our guests with an engaging way to explore and easily book a wide variety of unique homes and experiences. Over the last several years, we have launched a significant number of new features and upgrades through our biannual product releases to help guests find affordable, high quality and reliable stays across the platform.
Our System of Trust
The system for trust that we have designed includes the following components: host and guest reviews, account protection, risk scoring, secure payments, a nondiscrimination policy, watchlist and background checks in certain jurisdictions, cleanliness, fraud and scam prevention, insurance and similar protections, booking restrictions, an urgent safety line, a 24/7 neighborhood support line, anti-party technology, and a guest refund policy.
We offer protection for our hosts through AirCover for Hosts. AirCover for Hosts includes, among other features, guest property damage protection of up to $3 million per stay, liability coverage to hosts of up to $1 million per occurrence in the event of third-party claims of personal injury or property damage, deep cleaning protection, and pet damage protection.
We also offer AirCover for guests, which provides support for serious issues with a booking or during a stay, including host cancellations, inability to check-in, inaccurate listings, and a 24-hour safety support line.
We have new initiatives under development and will continue to create additional safety features to strengthen the trust and safety on our platform.
Our Technology
Our technology platform powers our two-sided marketplace and enables our global network of hosts and guests. Given the nature of the business, our technology platform has broad and complex requirements:
•Support of global payments. It enables guests and hosts to send and receive money in their preferred currency, supporting approximately 20 local payment methods. Designed for scalability and reliability, the platform ensures secure transactions through advanced protections against fraud and money laundering.
•Delivery of global community support. It provides multilingual, real-time community safety and support, and city-specific regulatory support.
•Delivery of deep business insights. It delivers deep business intelligence insights to manage our marketplace, including pricing insights and occupancy optimization for our hosts.
•Incorporation of artificial intelligence (“AI”) and machine learning. It incorporates sophisticated AI into key areas, from fraud detection, to personalized listing matching and enabling customized and real-time community support.
•Operation of a microservices architecture. We operate a microservices architecture and are evolving our foundational components to enable us to move rapidly in response to evolving customer needs without sacrificing correctness or stability.
As we continue to evolve our foundational technology, we are focused on the following broad capabilities:
•Data management systems that are designed to support user privacy, analytics, machine learning/AI, and business insights.
•Service reliability leading to best-in-class performance centered on availability, latency, disaster recovery and business continuity, security, testability, observability, operability, and agility.
•Cloud support focusing on robust capabilities for granular attribution and usage patterns to realize efficiency gains.
These continued technological investments aim to create a robust platform that allows us to more quickly adapt to the needs of our hosts and guests around the world and increase the productivity of our product development organization.
Our Marketing
Our marketing strategy includes brand marketing, communications, and performance marketing. Brand marketing increases awareness among potential hosts and guests, helping them understand the benefits of hosting and booking stays and experiences, and what makes these stays and experiences distinctly Airbnb. Our global communications team works across press, policy, and online influencers to share timely and important news about Airbnb. They also oversee the execution of a global consumer, product, corporate, and policy-communications plan that supports our brand strategy and generates considerable press and social media coverage. While performance marketing is one component of our multi-pronged strategy, the strength of the Airbnb brand and our communications strategy allows us to be less reliant on performance marketing.
Our Human Capital
We consider the management of our global talent to be essential to the ongoing success of our business. As of December 31, 2024, we had approximately 7,300 employees.
As of December 31, 2024, we relied on a global network of approximately 11,000 third-party workers to handle the vast majority of our community support contacts. Our internal community support employees are comprised of operations teams who handle complex and sensitive issues, and enablement teams who support all community-facing teams, including our partners.
Attracting, recruiting, developing, and retaining talent from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences enables us to provide our hosts and guests with innovative products and services as well as serve our other stakeholders. Through our hiring process, we commit to finding the best, most qualified candidates for each role, while encouraging inclusion and eliminating bias. We are also focused on supporting all of our employees in continuing to grow and develop throughout the employee lifecycle.
Our Live and Work Anywhere policy allows for the vast majority of our employees to work remotely. We believe that expanding our talent pool beyond the commuting radius near our offices will allow us to attract the best employees over time, as it helps us to have a broader and more diverse range of qualified candidates for any given position. We aim to create a highly coordinated working culture, and as such, will continue to promote ways to keep employees highly engaged and connected by aligning employees’ work through our product roadmap, as well as curating employee collaboration sessions either in the office or at off-site locations.
Climate Change
In 2021, we committed to a goal to operate as a net zero company for our global corporate operations by 2030, reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with our corporate operations across Scope 1 (direct emissions from stationary combustion and refrigerants), Scope 2 (indirect emissions from purchased electricity, diesel generators and district heat), and the following Scope 3 categories defined by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol: purchased goods and services, capital goods, fuel- and energy-related activities (not included in Scope 1 or Scope 2), waste generated in operations, business travel, employee commuting, and upstream leased assets. To help meet our goals, we are implementing a broad range of initiatives designed to help decarbonize our business and make our corporate operations more sustainable.
We also purchase, and plan to continue purchasing, carbon credits to fully achieve our emissions goals in the long-term. Our aim is to procure such credits from high integrity projects, with a focus on nature-based solutions or projects with other co-benefits where feasible.
Regulations
We are subject to laws, regulations, and rules that affect the short-term and long-term rental and home sharing business at city, state, country, and regional levels. While a number of cities, counties, states and countries have implemented legislation to address short-term rentals, there are many others that are not yet explicitly addressing or enforcing short-term rental laws, and could follow suit and enact regulations.
We seek to work with governments to establish clear, fair, and workable home sharing rules to create clarity for our hosts, however certain cities have passed onerous restrictions on short-term rentals. For example, New York City passed regulations in 2023, which resulted in a de facto ban of short-term rental activities. Other smaller cities have also passed onerous restrictions on short-term rentals. We will continue to collaborate with policymakers to implement sensible legislation around the world and/or dispute regulations that unreasonably restrict the right to host.
In addition to laws, regulations, and rules directly applicable to the short-term and long-term rental and home sharing business, we are subject to a wide variety of laws, regulations and rules governing our business practices. These include those related to the Internet, Internet access, e-commerce, and electronic devices, and those involving taxation, privacy, data privacy, data security, insurance, pricing, content, advertising, discrimination, consumer protection, employment, protection of minors, copyrights, distribution, messaging, mobile communications, use of AI, electronic device certification, electronic waste, electronic contracts, communications, competition, and unfair commercial practices. We are also subject to laws, regulations, and rules governing the provision of online payment services, the design and operation of our platform, and the operations, characteristics, and quality of our platform and services. Additionally, we are subject to a variety of taxes and tax collection obligations in the United States (federal, state, and local) and numerous foreign jurisdictions.
Our payments platform is subject to various laws, rules, regulations, policies, legal interpretations, and regulatory guidance, including those governing cross-border and domestic money transmission and funds transfers, stored value and prepaid access, foreign exchange, data privacy, data security, cybersecurity, banking secrecy, payment services (including payment processing and settlement services), consumer protection, economic and trade sanctions, anti-corruption and anti-bribery, and anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing.
Our business collects, processes, and uses the personal data of individuals across the globe. As a result, we must comply with certain laws on data privacy and data security regulating the collection, storage, handling, use, disclosure, transfer, security, and other processing of personal data. We take a variety of technical and organizational security measures and other procedures and protocols designed to protect personal data, including data pertaining to hosts, guests, employees, and others.
Legal requirements relating to the collection, storage, handling, use, disclosure, transfer, security and other processing of personal data continue to evolve, and regulatory scrutiny in this area is increasing around the world. This increases the complexity of compliance requirements, may limit offerings, and result in additional expenses while also diverting attention and resources from other projects. Regulators around the world continue to propose more stringent data privacy and data security laws, and these laws are rapidly increasing in number, complexity, enforcement, fines, and penalties. Data privacy, data security and AI laws and their interpretations continue to develop and are inconsistent from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.
As we continue to expand the reach of our brand into additional markets, we will be increasingly subject to additional laws, regulations, and rules.
For additional information regarding these and other laws, regulations, and rules that affect us and our business, see Note 13, Commitments and Contingencies – Legal and Regulatory Matters – Regulatory Matters, to our consolidated financial statements included in Item 8 of Part I of this Annual Report on Form 10-K and Item 1A. Risk Factors of Part I of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
Seasonality
Our business is seasonal, reflecting typical travel behavior patterns over the course of the calendar year. In a typical year, the first, second, and third quarters have higher Nights and Experiences Booked than the fourth quarter, as guests plan for travel during the peak travel season, which is in the third quarter for North America and Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (“EMEA”).
Our key business metrics, including Gross Booking Value (“GBV”) and Adjusted Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization (“EBITDA”), can also be impacted by the timing of holidays and other events. We experience seasonality in our GBV that is generally consistent with the seasonality of Nights and Experiences Booked. Revenue and Adjusted EBITDA have historically been, and are expected to continue to be, highest in the third quarter when we have the most check-ins, which is the point at which we recognize revenue. Seasonal trends in our GBV impact Free Cash Flow for any given quarter. A significant portion of our costs are relatively fixed across quarters or vary inline with booking volume. We historically achieve our highest quarterly GBV in the first and second quarters of the year with comparatively lower check-ins. As a result, increases in unearned fees typically make our Free Cash Flow and Free Cash Flow as a percentage of revenue the highest in the first two quarters of the year. We typically see a slight decline in GBV and a peak in check-ins in the third quarter, which results in a decrease in unearned fees, a lower sequential decrease in Free Cash Flow, and a greater decline in GBV in the fourth quarter, where Free Cash Flow is typically lower. See the section titled “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations — Key Business Metrics and Non-GAAP Financial Measures” included in Item 7 of Part II of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for definitions of our key business metrics.
Competition
We operate in a highly competitive environment. As we seek to expand our community globally, we face competition in attracting hosts and guests.
Competition for Hosts
We compete to attract and retain hosts to and on our platform to list their homes and experiences, as hosts have a range of options for doing so. We compete for hosts based on many factors including the volume of bookings generated by guests, ease of use of our platform, the service fees we charge, host protections, such as those included in AirCover for Hosts, our brand, and community support.
Competition for Guests
We compete to attract and retain guests to and on our platform, as guests have a range of options to find and book accommodations and experiences. We compete for guests based on many factors, including unique inventory and availability of listings, the value and all-in cost of host offerings on our platform relative to other options, our brand, ease of use of our platform, the trust and safety of our platform, and community support.
Our competitors include:
•online travel agencies (“OTAs”), such as Booking Holdings (including the brand Booking.com), Expedia Group (including the brand Expedia), Trip.com Group and other regional OTAs;
•internet search engines, such as Google and those powered by AI, including its travel search products;
•hotel chains, such as Marriott, Hilton, Accor, Wyndham, as well as boutique hotel chains and independent hotels;
•property management companies; and
•online platforms offering experiences.
Our Intellectual Property
Our intellectual property is an important component of our business. To establish and protect our proprietary rights, we rely on a combination of patents, trademarks, copyrights, domain names, social media handles, know-how, license agreements, confidentiality procedures, non-disclosure agreements with third parties, employee disclosure and invention assignment agreements, and other intellectual property and contractual rights.
We have a substantial patent portfolio, consisting of issued patents and pending patent applications (“patent assets”) from the United States and multiple foreign jurisdictions. The portfolio includes both organically grown and acquired patent assets. We own a trademark portfolio with protections around the world for our primary brands — AIRBNB and our Bélo logo, for other brands or protectable brand elements important to our business, including but not limited to Rausch, our primary corporate color, localizations, translations, and transliterations of our primary brands, and brands associated with businesses we have acquired. We have registered domain names that we use in or relate to our business, such as the airbnb.com domain name and country code top level domain name equivalents.
Available Information
Our website address is www.airbnb.com. Information contained on, or that can be accessed through, our website does not constitute part of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) maintains an Internet site that contains reports, proxy and information statements, and other information regarding issuers that file electronically with the SEC at www.sec.gov. Our Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K and amendments to reports filed or furnished pursuant to Sections 13(a) and 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, (the “Exchange Act”) are also available free of charge on our investor relations website (investors.airbnb.com) as soon as reasonably practicable after we electronically file such material with, or furnish it to, the SEC. In addition, we routinely post other information, which could be deemed to be material to investors, on our investor relations website. Information regarding our corporate responsibility and sustainability initiatives is also available on our website. Information on our website, including the information published in our sustainability reports, is not incorporated by reference in this Report.
We webcast our quarterly results calls and certain events we participate in or host with members of the investment community on our investor relations website. Additionally, we provide notifications of news or announcements regarding our financial performance, including SEC filings, investor events, and press and earnings releases, as part of our investor relations website. The contents of these websites are not intended to be incorporated by reference into this Annual Report on Form 10-K or in any other report or document we file.