Airbnb: The Bears Were Wrong About Long-Term Stays
Airbnb: The Bears Were Wrong About Long-Term Stays
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Airbnb: The Bears Were Wrong About Long-Term Stays
Dennis Schaal, Skift
September 10th, 2024 at 3:48 PM EDT
Skift Take
Pundits predicted that people would return to cities once the pandemic subsided. They have but non-urban stays are still a strong Airbnb category.
Dennis Schaal
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Key Points
Airbnb experienced a surge in long-term stays of 28 days or more and reservations in non-urban areas during the pandemic. These trends have remained robust even as other parts of the business have normalized. Chief Financial Officer Ellie Mertz highlighted that long-term stays have grown to be about double their pre-pandemic size and continue to be a significant portion of Airbnb's business. Although long-term stays are slowing growth in North America compared to other regions, they are still a key segment. Additionally, non-urban travel continues to thrive due to the flexibility of remote work and Airbnb's diverse market presence.
During the pandemic, Airbnb saw a burst of long-term stays of 28 days or longer, and also reservations in non-urban areas. While many other areas of the business have normalized in the interim, those two areas are still solid.
“I think a lot of bears thought that segment would unravel as we emerge and people went back to work,” Chief Financial Officer Ellie Mertz told a Goldman Sachs investor conference Monday, referring to long-term stays. “And yet what we see today is that segment is not growing as fast as short-term rentals, but on nominal terms [i.e. not adjusted for inflation], it’s approximately double the size that it was pre-pandemic and continues to be a very significant portion of our business.”
During the first quarter of 2021, long-term stays were Airbnb’s fastest-growing category of trip-lengths.
In August, Mertz noted that long-term stays are slowing the company’s growth in North America compared with other regions. That’s because Airbnb’s long-term stays are concentrated in North America and their growth is slower than for short-term rentals.
Airbnb has been pushing the theme recently of how the average one-bedroom Airbnb is cheaper than a hotel stay. Mertz didn’t raise that issue, but argued that an Airbnb stay is much more practical for a long-term stay than a hotel.
“If you want to stay somewhere for five, six weeks, six months, a hotel is not a reasonable alternative and Airbnb provides a massive amount of inventory that allows you to make use of that use case,” she said.
U.S.-headquartered hotel companies, though, are making big investments in extended stays so they might push back on Mertz’s contention.
Non-Urban Still Strong
Mertz said non-urban travel, which surged during the pandemic because people were seeking refuge from congested areas, “has continued at a higher level than urban sites.”
One reason for that is that while many companies demanded that employees return to the office, employees still value the flexibility of remote work. Mertz tied the ongoing strength of non-urban bookings to heightened awareness that Airbnb is present in a “diversity of markets,” and the “really highly differentiated aspect of our offering.”
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Dennis Schaal, Skift
September 10th, 2024 at 3:48 PM EDT
Tags: airbnb, dwell, online travel newsletter, short-term rentals
Photo credit: The interior of an individually hosted Airbnb in Riverhead, New York in 2021. Dennis Schaal / Skift
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