Airbnb (NASDAQ: ABNB) is a San Francisco-headquartered marketplace for short-term rentals, founded in 2008 by Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk. The company popularized the alternative accommodation category and has grown into one of the largest travel platforms in the world by gross bookings, with hosts in more than 100,000 cities.
Airbnb is a two-sided marketplace charging both guest service fees and host commissions on each booking. It does not own any property inventory itself, instead relying on a network of millions of individual hosts plus a growing share of professional property managers. Adjacent products include Airbnb Experiences, Airbnb for Work, and host services such as AirCover insurance.
Airbnb is the global leader in short-term rentals by brand recognition and supply diversity, with particular strength in unique and urban listings. Its main competitors are Vrbo (Expedia Group) in whole-home vacation rentals and Booking.com, which has rapidly expanded its alternative accommodation supply to challenge Airbnb's category lead.
Airbnb went public in December 2020 in one of the largest US IPOs of the year. The company faces ongoing regulatory scrutiny in many cities worldwide over short-term rental rules and housing impact. Recent product investments include Airbnb Categories, Guest Favorites, AI-powered search and a renewed focus on Experiences as a growth pillar.
Events
Delayed 15 min. Adjusted closes. Not financial advice.
Airbnb is running a free tailgate stunt in Melbourne around Australia's first NFL regular season game, and buried in the announcement is the number that matters to operators: US search interest for 8 to 14 September is up more than 250% year on year.
Airbnb's fall trends release contains a length-of-stay signal operators can act on: weekend getaways are displacing longer vacations, and demand is concentrating in small, non-metro markets.
Airbnb beat its own outlook on every metric in Q2 2026 and raised full-year guidance — but the number hoteliers should read twice is that hotel nights booked on the platform grew roughly three times as fast as its core homes business.
Airbnb released post-tournament data for the FIFA World Cup 2026, its largest hosting event ever. The interesting figures aren't the totals — they're the average nightly rate, the first-time-user share and where the supply came from.
Airbnb has signed a distribution agreement with U.S. boutique operator Lark, adding up to 75 independent hotels through a single centralised partnership — the clearest sign yet of how its hotel supply strategy actually works.