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2026.10.01 | TB | Internet | Airbnb Outlook vs Booking & Expedia

原标题：Airbnb – 12-24-month Outlook vs Booking.com & Expedia

#internet

Third Bridge · 2026-10-01

Analyst-led • 23 Sep 2026

Companies: EXPE US, ABNB US, BKNG US

Stephanie Kovach (SK) Independent Consultant

Albie Amankona (AA) — Third Bridge Sector Analyst

Agenda

Key Insights

Introduction

AA [00:00:01]: Welcome to Third Bridge's Interview entitled Airbnb – 12-24-month Outlook vs Booking.com & Expedia. My name is Albie Amankona and it's a pleasure to be facilitating today's Interview. It's also great to have Stephanie Kovach joining us, who is a former Global Business Manager for Travel at Google. Stephanie, welcome. Great to have you with us today.

SK [00:00:27]: Thanks. Good to be here. Hello, everyone.

AA [00:00:31]: Before we start, please could you state either I agree or I disagree to the following statement: You understand the definition of material non-public information and agree not to disclose any such information, or any other information which is confidential, during this Interview today.

SK [00:00:47]: I agree.

AA [00:00:49]: Could you please begin with a brief introduction to your background and experience to date?

SK [00:00:59]: Hello, everyone. I'm Stephanie. I have been in the travel space or have been with the travel space for the last 7-8 years. My background is predominantly in digital and working with digital-native companies across various industries from finance to retail to gambling, so have been around a lot of the industries. I've spent my last recent seven years in travel, been through COVID, which was an interesting time for all of us. For those in the travel industry, it was a painful experience across all businesses. I've been primarily working alongside some of the OTAs and vacation rental companies globally from the UK. That's me.

Questions

00:01:57] Do you think the travel market has completely recovered from the pandemic? Are we now back on a pre-pandemic growth trajectory or has the market structurally changed? Are those structural changes still evident in 2026 and looking ahead to 2027?

SK [00:02:29]: I would like to say we are through the traumatic events of COVID as an industry. Some of us are still operating in the red. Some of us have come up to the black in terms of profits. However, I would say that consumers sadly are faced with a different type of COVID. We are plagued with loads of wars that are happening. Consumers are being affected with how they have to choose their spending. Do they have enough money to heat their homes, feed their children or go on holiday. I think the industry has come out stronger from COVID, mainly because they've been able to fix some of their infrastructure. I believe that COVID offered opportunities for companies to re-evaluate their costs. AI has helped dramatically through that upswing in the travel industry. Yes, I believe travel is rebounding. However, some of the economic pressures that we're experiencing as consumers sadly is putting a swing or a wrench in the industry's ability to generate acceleration, whether that be in new markets or acceleration into different ancillaries to drive revenue.

00:03:59] How do you see the post-pandemic impacts you mentioned affecting Airbnb going forwards? Is the company more exposed to consumer travel trends rather than business travel trends and therefore might be impacted by the macroeconomic difficulties that you highlighted? Or is it somewhat insulated from that because, for example, people might not get an Airbnb in the south of France or New York but they might get an Airbnb in the Cotswolds or Yorkshire? People are still going on holiday, they're just not going abroad and they might be spending the same amount of money on accommodation, but saving by not flying somewhere, for example, and all of the extra additional cost that goes with travelling longer distances. What is your view on how that's impacting Airbnb specifically?

SK [00:04:52]: What makes Airbnb unique is obviously their immense amount of proprietary inventory, and that allows them to be sustainable in ways that the OTAs, for example, cannot be, and it's not easy to replicate. If we think about their inventory and what they can offer, just to your point, if consumers want to do a staycation, roughly, they want to get out of the big cities where it's really expensive, they want to go to suburban or rural areas, Airbnb can meet those needs of those consumers. The supply elasticity that Airbnb has vs traditional hotels, host supply can expand organically or contract depending on what is the need. I think Airbnb is in a very unique position because of their inventory. I think it protects them from a lot of this economic downturns because they have such unique supply.

I also believe that just speaking on their inventory, they have product differentiation that OTAs don't have, for example, you were just talking about family trips. You're going to need a multi-bedroom home. You're going to need facilities like laundry and a bigger kitchen that address those travel use cases of now and hotel rooms just don't meet those needs of consumers. I think they have an insulation with their inventory. Then if we take it one step forward and we really think about how the OTAs, the competitiveness and pricing what does that mean for Airbnb? Airbnb is really shielded from a lot of that price comparison that happens across Google and Trivago. You can't compare a property on Airbnb apples-to-apples through price scraping or whatever they're using to really understand how to get that parity for those proprietary listings. Again, that is another tick in the green column for Airbnb. Also, because of that, they have different pricing algorithms that can use local demand signals, lead times, seasonality and even ingest what the hotel's ADRs, the average daily rates, to really understand how they can even push and pull room-night growth. That opens up another insulation for Airbnb.

00:08:12] What do you think Airbnb's revenue growth could look like for full-year 2026 and for the next couple of years? For Q3 2026, the company has guided between 15% and 17% YoY growth. Do you think that could be achieved for the full year? Is that a reasonable assumption for a YoY growth rate as we look into 2027?

SK [00:08:55]: Airbnb are… Short answer, yes, if they do a few things strategically right and really think about what is really going to drive the nights, the room nights, what is actually going to drive bottom-line revenue and how do they really use both the B2C and the B2B side together. Let's talk about that for a second. They are very mature in North America and EMEA. With that, they're going to have to use those mature markets, both EMEA from a volume perspective and North America from a premium perspective to really drive the revenue. What I mean by that is that those two areas of the world as they think about revenues are going to have to work harder than they previously have to generate enough cash to absorb the future of 2027, which would be expansion, expansion into LATAM, expansion into the APAC, which again, have low maturity and low ADR, but there's a volume play there.

Their projections are valid, but just getting that right in terms of how they think about market entry is going to be a big focus for them. That's (1). (2), if we think about the, I guess, B2B side of things, they're going to have to think about how they free up some additional revenue through that via monetisation. Do they start charging SaaS-like fees? Do they have a different payment model for property managers that are using Airbnb for a collection of properties and really think about what are the key areas to drive extra revenue from that host side of the business? Then the third thing would be they're going to have to be really aggressive on how they think about reducing friction along the booking flows for the B2C side. What I mean by that is we all know global travel car abandonments anywhere between 85% and 93% for the travel industry, huge.

They need to make sure that they create, from a consumer perspective, a very sticky checkout environment, something that is rich for consumers to find, (a), a unique accommodation, which is their bread and butter, (b), they could potentially look at hotel inventory as that's coming on the platform or, three, experiences. What I mean by just reducing that friction, every point where Airbnb has an opportunity to upsell, cross-sell, they need to make it dead easy for the consumer. If we think about ancillary revenue, if they embed one-click add-ons, early check-in, late checkout airport transfers, they can capture about 10-20% higher ancillary revenue per booking. That's massive. Again, that's going to feed in to their overall revenue.

00:13:16] How much does ancillary revenue account for in an ordinary booking for a company such as Airbnb? What might 10-20% extra look like, on average? For example, if a booking is GBP 1,000, EUR 1,000 or USD 1,000, what proportion of that do you think could be ancillary revenue?

SK [00:13:42]: It could be… I don't know off the top of my head, no. What I would say is if you break down, you're doing about USD 1m worth of booking attempts. That 10-20% could equate to about USD 160,000 worth of booking or ticket value that you can add on. The good part about it is, those are low cost or overhead costs for Airbnb because if you have them booking an accommodation and then you add on those add-ons or even experiences, there's low acquisition cost because you already have the customer. You're going to be making about, I think I was estimating about 20-25% on that.

AA [00:14:40]: The ancillary revenue could be 10-20% extra?

SK [00:14:48]: Yes.

00:14:49] What does making the products more primed to get the ancillary revenue look like? How long might it take to get to the point that you've described in the business journey? Could that happen in 6-12 months, or is closer to 1.5-2 years?

SK [00:15:21]: I think it will be closer to 18 months because they're going to need to balance making those improvements as well as expanding into the new markets and expanding into the new markets isn't going to be the playbook for expansion. We'll need some time and some strict timelines and monitoring and modelling in their back end to make sure that they're getting it right. I would give about maybe 18 months, but definitely within two years, they could definitely do that because those on-demand services and those experiences, those are already being added to the platform. As they learn and more of those experience get bundled with the inventory, they'll start to learn how or what they need to change to optimise. With the amount of volume that they have going through, I don't think it would take long to learn that. It will probably be longer to deploy that in the website, app and booking-flow experience.

00:16:31] If we look at industry analyst expectations for how Airbnb might perform in the next 18-month period, rather than YoY revenue growth staying at the 15-16% that is expected for 2026, we see it going back to the 11-12% that we saw in 2024 and 2025. That revenue growth rate is quite similar to those of traditional OTAs [online travel agencies] such as Expedia and Booking.com. Airbnb's EBITDA margin is expected to stall around the 35-36% mark, with an opportunity to increase the top line with the 10-20% extra-high-margin ancillary revenue that you think it could do if it embarked on that programme for the next 18 months. Conversely, the market is expecting things to stay the same when it comes to EBITDA margin and actually slow down when it comes to YoY revenue growth. How do we reconcile these things?

SK [00:18:05]: Yes, you're right. I think the overall market guidance for all of OTAs is about 6-8% in terms of revenue growth. I think even advertising revenue growth is at 11% or maybe 10%, so them achieving over 11% is pretty strong. It is going backwards from the last couple of years. That's why they need to be thinking about how else are they going to be driving room-night growth as well as bringing in all these other options to drive revenue.

00:18:53] If Airbnb is successful with the ancillary revenue drive, do you think the results will be better than what the market expects?

SK [00:19:08]: Yes. Because if they are able to monetise B2B, expand in the markets and get even more inventory on the site and start selling from a volume perspective in the LATAM and APAC regions, plus make all the optimisations and get that ancillary revenue humming, yes, I do think so.

00:19:33] Do you think there's much more white space when it comes to inventory? When you say more inventory on the platform, do you think there's a vast swathe of empty properties that people would want to stay at that aren't yet on Airbnb, Vrbo or somewhere else?

SK [00:20:03]: I'm trying to think of the stat. I was just reading about the inventory that not necessarily has actually made it to Airbnb. There is loads of inventory that haven't been put on Airbnb, fine. There's also an opportunity with the inventory almost morphing into a new revenue model. I think Airbnb has an ambition to drive more longer-term stays, which is roughly about 17-18% of their total nights booked. With the recent regulations across the strict short-term rental caps, when I'm talking about inventory, yes, hotels, yes, experiences, yes, other unique individual host homes. However, changing the inventory from a purely transactional vacation platform to a mid-term housing market. If they want to scale long-term stays, they can basically create a stable reoccurring cash flow and bypass the short-term rental restrictions, the likes of New York and Barcelona, by being able to offer 28-30 days under a residential framework.

That opens up a whole new opportunity for them. It allows them to protect those tier 1 cities. To your point, I don't believe that there's too much more inventory in those high populated tier 1 cities. Instead of losing that inventory to those regulations or having that stunted, they can now scale monthly rentals into these dense global hubs like New York and Barcelona and really start to smooth out their cash flow.

00:22:26] Does the opportunity within the long-term rentals business mitigate the tougher regulations that we are seeing in cities such as Barcelona and New York? I suppose we might start seeing that in other tier 1 destinations globally – something similar could happen in Paris, London, Tokyo or perhaps on some of the Balearic Islands, wherever there are concerns around overtourism or where local authorities want to raise more money or pander to local interest. It's not crazy to think this might start happening in other places, as we've seen, for example, when it comes to food delivery platforms and whether the workers are freelancers or employees. That's now happening all over the world, and the same could happen with short-term holiday rentals. Yes, long-term rental bookings have grown to 17-18% of Airbnb's business, up from 13-14% before the pandemic, but does that make up for the loss or potential loss of not having short-term rental businesses in key destinations where the majority of people want to holiday?

SK [00:23:53]: I think there's some preservation. I don't have a figure to tell you how much. Like I said, just thinking about the practicalities of what that would do for cash flow and margin defence, longer stays have low operating expenses. There's no cleaning, turnover, guest communication, overhead costs for host. Again, it just helps with operating expenses. Then you're going to get a higher net operating income. Yes, average daily rates are going to be lower for monthly stays, but occupancy increases, what, from like 50% to 80%. That consistent base cushions the total platform cash flow against seasonal travel dips. Again, I use inventory very blanket term, but you could think that there's a real opportunity there and the laws allow it. As we fight regulation on one side for the short stays and the holiday-goers, it could really pivot host inventory to preserve the platform revenue.

00:25:18] What do you think long night stays could reach for Airbnb over the next 1-3 years as a proportion of total nights booked? If those are around 19-20% today – given that the 17-18% figure was from 2024 and it might have continued growing – where could they be in 2-3 years? Could this reach 25% or even 30% at some point? Could it even reach 50% in the future? Do you think that would be desirable for the company?

SK [00:26:09]: I don't know how to answer the desirable for Airbnb. If it makes money, yes, in some degree. Again, you want to preserve the brand equity of what the platform is. It does really well at providing unique accommodation globally and having these long-term stays may dilute that. I think it could be 20% of the revenue, specifically as a lot of these regulations, but also hosts that can offer those long-term stays. Airbnb has the infrastructure, the legal compliance, the simplified payment options. You could almost see how Airbnb because it's so smart in just their algorithms today for host pricing, they could really… This is why I'm saying it's over 20% because you could think they could turn rental agreements completely digital, really make mid-term lease integrations. It really starts automating host pricing based on rental benchmarks. Just think of how we're incorporating hotels into this, it's almost like another type of inventory where you can really maintain average daily rate competitiveness against residential sublets. You can be filling off-peak with the 28 stays, so it's very attractive.

Again, getting there is going to require some time. I think it opens up another opportunity, sorry, I'm getting excited. You could even think I just had an idea. It drives conversion among business relocations, travelling nurses, all that remote workers that is so core post-COVID is ripe for the rental industry to be on that side, like the traditional housing rental to really be taken apart and rebuilt and Airbnb is well-positioned to do that.

00:28:43] On the longer stays, as Airbnb calls them, or mid-term rentals, as the estate agency industry might call them, the company has a relatively good reputation with travellers and people that want to stay in places for short or medium amounts of time. How much of a risk do you think it would be if it were to focus on sweating the asset of mid-term rentals more? Would it start being seen as more of an estate agent than a short-term rental platform with great customer service? Estate agents don't have very good PR. How much of a risk is that to Airbnb's brand in the future, if people take the problems they'd usually go to their estate agents with, because they're staying somewhere for 1-2 months, and take them to Airbnb, which might not be able to deal with them as well?

SK [00:29:54]: I think Airbnb can manage that and manage that well. The way I think about it is, first and foremost, is, again, protecting the uniqueness of that inventory because consumers mainly go to Airbnb for vacation rental. However, it doesn't mean that there can't be other inventory types as a consumer when being exposed. I would say that management can really start thinking about similar to how they're bringing on hotel, how do you complement the unique home bookings to give the consumer as much choice as possible with whatever they're looking for. For example, you think about discovery. Airbnb can configure that when their search results comes up or their discovery algorithms show specific user intents, they can feature a short-term rental or they can do unique accommodation.

Now, you could almost see whereby maybe hotel listings or the short-term, mid-term listing will only surface when the search parameters indicate a longer stay or business and uses the intent-based filtering that they could build within their search algorithm. They might already have this today. I don't know inside or behind the curtain, but they would be able to control how that supply is discovered. Then they can start thinking about layering on maybe a prioritisation logic, where when a user searches for that long-term stay, then the algorithm brings up single-family homes, cabins, but also if you're going to be staying over 20 days, you might want to consider X, Y and Z. Again, it allows Airbnb to push front and centre based on the intent that the user is using the platform for. You're right, Airbnb definitely needs to protect its brand equity.

Again, another way to do that is when we're putting on new inventory, hotel or this mid-term rental, they really need to curate it so that the celebration is not that you can stay 28-30 days. It's that it's a character-rich boutique property, and that's what you focus on, not that you can stay in it in 28 days and it's a mid-term lease, etc. I think it's about preserving the platform identity and retain that reputation, but be able to use mechanisms to surface the right property for the users.

00:33:09] Looking at adjacent revenue sources and how Airbnb could scale them up – thinking about experiences, hotels, guest services, equipment and rentals – how do you think those new revenue streams could push overall take rates above baseline levels over the next 12-24 months?

SK [00:33:36]: I think the blended effective platform take rate will just overall increase total gross booking value. As we take each of those in stride, I mentioned it before, but there's just higher commission on those non-stay categories. The chefs, the spa treatments, the housekeeping, the experiences, those commissions bring in anywhere between 20% and 25%, which is substantially higher than traditional home booking.

AA [00:34:09]: To be clear, when you say 20-25%, what metric are you talking about there?

SK [00:34:14]: The commissions that the platform gains from that.

00:34:20] I believe Airbnb's net take rate in 2025 was 13.5%, having dropped slightly YoY, albeit not by a huge amount. It's been around that 13-14% mark since 2022, and the market expects it to remain that way until 2027. Do you think the company can outperform that net take rate if it's able to really improve its adjacencies or experiences and non-accommodation revenue, as well as the longer-term stays, or do you think the estimates of staying in the 13-14% range are reasonable?

SK [00:35:16]: I think the estimates are reasonable. For example, experiences only launched in the UK recently, and there's not that many experiences on the platform. They need to get the volume of offerings, and they don't have that yet. I think the estimates are correct.

00:35:40] How long do you think it will take for Airbnb to ramp the experiences component, get the volume of offerings there and get people actually booking them through the platform? We hear a lot about people being more interested in experiences now. Whether you're talking to Ticketmaster, Eventim, Airbnb, Booking or somewhere else, everyone is talking about experiences and people are booking a lot of them. As you mentioned, even looking to 2027, that might not have a huge impact on the take rate, EBITDA margin or even the revenue. When do you think that upside will come, or is it not going to? Is it just about keeping things where they are as the companies get more mature and the growth curve starts slowing down?

SK [00:36:39]: I'm a host on Airbnb, and I know Airbnb is trying to make it really easy for me to add on experiences to bundle it with the stays. I'm in a city, so I have loads of experiences to offer. It could be anywhere from a West End show to a ride on the London Eye as an experience. I don't think it's easy for me as a host to start pushing experiences as part of my package with staying. I think that's going to need some time to come, along with having the experiences that my guests are going to want to go to. For example, most of my guests go to the Harry Potter in Kings Cross to see that. Now I know that just through talking, but we have no data that suggests that those two go together. I think it's understanding the data trends and what bundles work the best, making it easier for hosts. I know we don't have too much to go down this route.

The fee structures, you think about building this in, guests pay for stays and then we're going to have add-ons in a single checkout. Airbnb's payment infrastructure needs to automatically calculate and disperse the funds to the host, the co-host and the third-party service, concurrently. We talk about timelines. I feel quite confident that it will be at that high-teens moment, but there's still a lot of work that could be done to optimise it. Like I said, you're creating a lot of friction for me as a host right now to add on these services and then what is my incentive as a host to put these experiences and push these experiences to my guests?

00:39:03] What might Airbnb do to encourage top hosts and hosts in general to add on the guest services without creating extra payout complexity or administrative overhead, either for the host or for Airbnb itself? What might that look like?

SK [00:39:33]: I don't want to oversimplify it, but it could just be in one respect, an affiliate referral fee, so incentivising a host to push a different service, and I have no operational involvement, but I earn 5-10% when my guest uses that service, one. They could offer discounts, again, creating those bundles for our guests and then Airbnb gives you a percentage or a flat fee. I think the other big one for me as a host, one of the best frameworks Airbnb has, maybe Vrbo or Booking.com have something similar, so I don't know. Airbnb has AirCover and AirCover is a framework that legally protects both the guest as well as the host. That AirCover, if they integrated these services directly into AirCover framework, you don't have to worry about if they didn't like the show or the tickets got cancelled or invoicing or anything that could sadly go wrong or risk involved with adding these services as a host. I think that would be a big incentive for me personally because I wouldn't want the additional administrative tasks to adding on these different experiences or services for my guests.

00:41:21] Airbnb has been a relatively early adopter of automated systems, with automated assistance resolving issues for customer support queries. That's driven the company's support cost per booking down quite significantly compared to other OTAs. It also spends less on performance marketing than traditional OTAs. Its cost structure might be a little bit lower than other OTAs, but its EBITDA margins are at a similar level, which is an interesting dynamic. How much further do you think it can improve its cost structure with AI or other forms of technology or operations?

SK [00:42:30]: Again, speaking candidly, I don't know enough of what Airbnb has in its back end and the tools that they have deployed. I think there are loads of ways that AI can help across operations further for Airbnb and probably free up a lot of time and efforts. As we think about AI, one of the best things I was just talking about at the start of the call around COVID, it really gave the travel industry a real good reset to look at their infrastructure. Some companies had everything held together with a little bit of glue, some rubber bands and some spit in their back-end system. Infrastructure rebuilding has happened at speed across travel. It's no surprise that travel as an industry has been operating on a lot of old tech, like decades-old tech. The challenge Airbnb has as it expands with its hotel supply, and it probably has already done this as hotel inventory is already on the site.

One of the AI solutions is really… It's painful. It's painful using a distribution system that when you just want to change a date or you want to adjust room types or something, the whole thing comes to a screeching halt because it's so old and you touch it and it just gets angry and has errors coming out of every aspect. One of the things that they can drastically reduce a lot of those human hours, looking into all of that, again, taking on those non-automated APIs and really making their own systems into their own inventory. Again, taking the hotel feeds in those systems, one would just help operations. That's a little bit of something that I expect them to have already been doing, and I'm sure every travel company has done. I think the other area where I think AI still can help is around just that back-office tasks. This is around administration. I'm sure Airbnb has probably built their own proprietary system. This is a theme that we're seeing in travel.

They've built their own, but how can they acquire other AI start-ups that can layer on to their current infrastructure or to their tech stack to allow them to automate invoice checking, expense auditing, fraud detection, all of those things that research says that when AI is adopted, yields the highest satisfaction. Again, it's just automating those repetitive back-office tasks. I think the biggest opportunity for AI and Airbnb is around the data synthesis. As AI starts to learn and mine their data, again, pause, assuming that their data is not a fragmented reality and it's actually consolidated all in one place that they can actively mine it with 100% confidence. This data synthesis, you could think about them building hyper-personalisation recommendations into their searches. Again, we talked about servicing different types of inventory when a user has a certain intent-based query. Again, this would be a huge opportunity for AI to really come in and start creating those algorithms and models.

00:46:58] Do you expect Airbnb to be able to get any upside from AI implementation in the next 1-2 years, or might the costs associated with investing in what is needed to do that mean that the gains will be a bit further off? If that is the case, when might the actual net gains come? Or are you of the view – as some people are, or even as reflected in the media sometimes – that the cost of implementing AI basically mitigates any of the gains that come from it? Ultimately, for some businesses, there may be no structural change in EBITDA margins because the cost of implementing AI is so high and the gains don't necessarily make up for it. What is your view?

SK [00:47:54]: I agree with that last statement. I think AI frees up human productivity and efficiencies, but it's expensive. Running these models, keeping them, if you have to change any of them, it's just a lot of… Even if you strike a three-year deal to use any of the AI infrastructures that exist out there, it's expensive. However, if you are leveraging other fixed costs and you think about how you can create that headroom for AI, I think it could be a net neutral, and it doesn't have to be as expensive. I encourage those that are whether acquiring an AI company or going to use AI, really think about the use cases and the business case of what value are you going to extract? Again, are you just putting AI in because you want to say it's AI and it's not really AI? Do you want to put it because the infrastructure is a wobbling Jenga set and you need to reinforce it? Is that the right thing to do or do you just rent something from another tech stack and then rebuild the infrastructure a little bit more sturdy.

Really thinking and stress testing about what is the business use case and what value is going to bring the company short, medium and long-term because AI evolves and that agility and that flexibility that AI creates, some companies are not built that way to adapt and evolve. That maintenance cost of having AI integrated to legacy systems is, again, one of the reasons why I'm in the camp of it's expensive.

00:49:58] Do you expect there to be any net upside from AI at some point in the future, or do you think things will remain as you've described?

SK [00:50:19]: It's a loss in the beginning, then it becomes neutral, then it becomes a positive. I know that sounds a little bit like yes.

AA [00:50:27]: When might it become a positive?

SK [00:50:31]: I guess it depends on what you're using the AI for. If you're using AI to data minds and create more effective marketing campaigns or efficiencies there, I say within a year, I think you can do that quite quickly, scaling out the manual marketing processes, whether that be reporting or even generating ads at scale, you would definitely see the benefit of that, especially if you're expanding and you need quick, fast assets. I think from a product development perspective, I think it would take anywhere between 18 and 24 months before you're really seeing the output. I think you would see it initially, but then it would stagnate out and then come out of the S-curve and be positive. I think there will be immediate gains and then that will dampen. Then as you learn what it can do and start evolving its capabilities within your organisation, yes, would be positive.

I think about 18-24 months from a product or a tech perspective, I think it will be faster for a marketing sales perspective, mining all the stuff that you need to be an effective sales team very quick. Then operations, I would also say about probably 12-18 months depending on your internal infrastructure around invoicing or any of those administrative tasks.

00:52:08] My understanding is that Airbnb's hotels product has been growing quite significantly. How much of that do you think is net-new growth vs cannibalising the short-term rentals business?

SK [00:52:59]: I don't know if I would look at it as cannibalising. Just thinking my gut says, I said it earlier about keeping the platform sticky, whether the consumer books a hotel or books a vacation rental, a booking is a booking, so great. The profit and the margin might be different depending on what they book, but being able to give the consumer choice, I don't think it's cannibalising. I think it's complementing. Again, we talked about earlier in the call ways by which Airbnb should explicitly have their hotel listings surface. I can't remember if they divided their hotels vs vacation rental bookings in terms of room nights. I can't remember the figure. I think it's net positive. I don't think it's cannibalising. However, I don't think people go to Airbnb to look for a hotel. I think they look for an accommodation. If it so happens that in that area or those dates, if there is no unique accommodation, I get to stay on Airbnb and continue my journey through a hotel booking instead of a vacation rental.

00:54:30] If we think about the competitive landscape, Expedia has an Airbnb equivalent and Booking.com has been getting into the short-term rentals business. As a proposition, do you think Airbnb's dominance as the category-creator is at risk? People use the term Airbnb, whether they're booking on that actual platform or not. Do you think its market share is at risk in key markets such as Europe and North America? What's your view on the competitive landscape?

SK [00:55:16]: I think they have a firm hold on North America and Europe. You can see the aggressiveness coming from Vrbo and from Booking.com in a few of the Google auctions. You see a lot of pushes on social channels to bring awareness that Vrbo offers vacation rentals. I think it's a little less well known in Europe from a vacation rental standpoint. I think the brand equity still remains. We don't want to dilute any of what Airbnb is good at and their core values as it brings on these services experiences and hotel inventories. That's one on the competitive advantage. I would also say that Airbnb remains competitive from their commission payouts to hosts. I know they recently just changed in the UK but comparatively vs other vacation rentals, Vrbo, I think, is about 8%. Booking.com is in the high teens, I believe. Sykes Cottages, which is local here in a way, are all in the 20-25% plus in terms of commissions.

Competitively, if they can maintain those host fee structures, they will continue to, again, organically grow their unique accommodation vacation inventory. From a B2B perspective, they have a very large competitive advantage there. Second thing is the tools that Airbnb offer hosts are far more advanced and, how do I say this, intuitive for users that aren't property managers. They're really speaking to those that want to list and have an active listing on Airbnb's platform. Then, three, I talked about their AirCover, but again, their ability to… They really take care of their hosts and the structures and frameworks that they put in place. That doesn't exist across Booking or Vrbo. Then I'm going to follow it up. I think the North America, EMEA is great. I think the APAC, India, Brazil, there's a lot of investment going on by other companies to invest in luxury rentals. I think Airbnb might have a little bit more competition going into those markets that they need to really think about their pricing strategy and how they want to go to market from a competitive point.

The last final thing is Booking.com has a very price-conscious consumer that typically buys from Booking.com. They have the loyalty programme, Genius. Expedia has the One Key rewards as well, that's inclusive of Vrbo vacation rentals. From a competitive point of view, I think they may need to start thinking about what retention strategies that they have. Again, they're still competitive because everybody loves Airbnb and has that strong authenticity for that brand. However, as those loyalty schemes start to favour, again, we talked about the economic pressures and inflation and savings, what may Airbnb think about to maybe use a loyalty scheme, both on the B2B and the B2C side to remain competitive in North America and EMEA in those mature markets.

00:59:40] In the mature markets you were discussing, what market share would you expect Airbnb to have in 2027 for the short-term holiday rentals market or even in the holiday accommodation market?

SK [01:00:03]: I don't know if I could give you an estimate. North America will continue. Airbnb has done a fantastic job of growing their market share in the last years. Airbnb, like I said, are stronger in North America and some of the European cities. They're not that strong in the Scandies. I can't give you a number, but I would hold North America because North America is just going to be a very competitive landscape this year and next year with Booking.com and Expedia Group getting a bit more aggressive, and you can see that now and to really have that foothold. I can't give you a direct estimate apart from also Airbnb's APAC present and market share is quite high vs its competitors. I think it will remain high and/or grow as they acquire more inventory.

01:01:07] Is there anything else that you'd like to highlight around Airbnb or the industry?

SK [01:01:14]: The one thing I would touch on just the last point around competitiveness. I think Airbnb continues, again, brand equity and that direct traffic, and that sets them far between them and someone like Expedia or the OTAs because their customer acquisition costs are going up across Google, Meta and TikTok and Airbnb's low-performance marketing really gives them a leg up because 90% of their traffic comes organically. As long as they continue to have that as their baseline and focus there, I think they will do well and continue to grow regardless of the market conditions.

AA [01:02:12]: Thank you so much for your time. It was great to chat. Enjoy the rest of your day.

SK [01:02:19]: Thank you so much. Have a nice day.

AA [01:02:21]: Thanks. Take care. Bye-bye.

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