Short-term rental giant Airbnb said it will spend as much as $250 million on new businesses in 2025.
“This is the year, you'll see the beginning of a new Airbnb,” said co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky in a call with analysts to discuss its fourth quarter and full year 2024 financial results.
While there was quite a lot of optimism voiced around the company’s future, Chesky and his team stopped short of sharing the specifics of those new businesses.
Chesky shared a bit about his long-term philosophy, as he has so often done in his widely discussed but vague plan to expand beyond Airbnb's core.
Chesky said the strategy is framed first around considering what else travelers need and want past a place to stay.
This is the year, you'll see the beginning of a new Airbnb.
Brian Chesky, Airbnb
“When people book an Airbnb, there's a lot of experiences and services and other things that would make this stay more special, and it would even include things they wouldn't think to search for,” he said. “Eventually we'll move it further and further away from our core.”
And as the company looks to move beyond accommodations, Chesky said a focus will be on providing products consumers may need more frequently.
“Airbnb is used by, I think, 1.6 billion devices a year, so it's got a pretty big volume of users, but we're not a very frequently used app,” Chesky said. “People typically use this once or twice a year, and I would love for the one day for people to use this once or twice a week. And so that's kind of one of the goals over the long term.”
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The company generally unveils its product and platform updates twice yearly in May and November. Chesky said the "Summer Release" slotted for May will be much larger than those that have occurred in the past.
Last summer, the company said it would relaunch its Experiences product this year but on the call with analysts Chesky said he likely wouldn't speak more on the topic until May.
100,000 listings using co-hosts
One of Airbnb's updates last fall was its "Co-host Network", which provides a marketplace of highly-rated hosts that can be hired to provide services such as property management.
In its first four months, Airbnb said nearly 100,000 listings are being supported by co-hosts and those listings earn nearly two times what an Airbnb listing may earn in comparable countries. The co-host marketplace is available in 10 countries with plans to expand to Japan and Korea next.
Financial results
Airbnb reported positive earnings for Q4 2024 and full year 2024, despite ongoing headwinds. There is rising competition in the short term rental space, plus an imbalance in supply and demand and regulations are tightening.
Revenue was $2.5 billion for the fourth quarter of 2024 and $11.1 billion for the full year 2024, both a 12% increase year over year. Net income for Q4 was $461 million, compared to a net loss of $349 million in the same period of 2023.
Adjusted EBITDA for Q4 was $765 million, a 4% year-over-year rise. Gross booking value was $17.6 billion in the fourth quarter. In the fourth quarter the company saw 111 million nights and experiences booked, up 12%.
Sales and marketing expenses for the year were $2.1 billion, up 22% from 2023 but remaining a comparable percent of revenue at 19%. Gross bookings value was $81.8 billion for the full year, up 12% and nights and experiences booked were 491.5 million in 2024, up 10%.
The company cautioned that the first quarter of 2025 might not be as rosy thanks to headwinds.
“For Q1 2025, we expect to deliver revenue of $2.23 billion to $2.27 billion, representing year-over-year growth of 4% to 6%, or 7% to 9% excluding the impact of FX [foreign exchange],” Airbnb said.