Nearly half of Airbnb experiences bookings unrelated to accommodations

As Airbnb continues its mission to expand past stays, its efforts are gaining traction, even attracting users who haven’t booked on the platform before.

Months after it launched services and relaunched experiences, the company said in the third quarter, nearly half of experiences bookings were not connected to Airbnb accommodations bookings.

Services are having an impact too: 10% of users booking services had never booked on Airbnb before, Brian Chesky, co-founder and CEO of Airbnb, said on the company’s earnings call Thursday.

“We think this is bringing a new audience to Airbnb,” Chesky said. “We also think that this is bringing people back to Airbnb, even if they aren't intending to book a home. And we think that services and experiences could eventually pull people to ... also add an Airbnb home to their reservation.”

Additionally, while the products were “primarily conceived for travelers,” Chesky said Airbnb’s original experiences, meaning those that are unique to the platform, are receiving local interest.

“In Paris, 70% of Airbnb Originals are booked by locals,” he said. “We think with Airbnb Originals, we figured out a product that is appealing to people in their own city.”

While the metrics are encouraging, the reality is that the verticals are still new.

“It's going to take three to five years, I think, for services and experiences to become a material part of our business,” he said. “But I'm very, very bullish on them.”

While sharing its Q2 earnings results this summer, Airbnb reported high customer satisfaction with services and experiences, despite early criticism from hosts.

Chesky on ChatGPT apps

On the earnings call, Chesky also addressed a question about why Airbnb wasn't one of the big-name travel brands to partner with OpenAI on the launch of ChatGPT Apps.

“The simple answer is, we just didn't think the integration was ready,” Chesky said, adding that he doesn’t want Airbnb to be positioned as “essentially” a data layer.

But he’s not opposed to integrating with a platform like ChatGPT in the future. 

“We just have a couple principles when we are integrating. Number one, we want to make sure that while we like the idea of being a launch partner … we like to have custom integrations if we're going to be a launch partner, and we want to make sure that that integration is really well developed,” Chesky said.

“Number two, we don't want to appear as a commodity. Number three, we certainly don't want to be a data layer. And number four, we really want to make sure that people understand the uniqueness of Airbnb when they're seeing results.”

He gave another example: Airbnb chose not to integrate with Google’s Hotel Finder (now Google Hotels) because Airbnb results would be positioned as commodities alongside hotels. Chesky didn’t see that as the right presentation.

“That being said, I think with great integrations, you can absolutely see us on chatbots going forward. And, obviously, I'm close to the people at OpenAI, and I think there's a lot of opportunities for us to work together.”

Instead, the company is integrating AI “extensively” across the app.

“Over the past year, we've been laying the foundation for a more intelligent, more personalized Airbnb,” Chesky said. “We now have more than a dozen AI work streams underway, and they're all focused on really creating a more personal experience for guests and hosts and making it easier to discover what we offer.”

Airbnb piloting hotels in restricted markets

After revealing in September the company would add hotels as a property type in its app, Chesky said that Airbnb has been doing hotel pilots in Los Angeles, New York City and Madrid, cities that have restrictions on short-term rental (STR) restrictions.

“New York City and Madrid, for example, are two markets that are constrained—constrained from a regulatory standpoint,” he said. “Hotels are very excited to participate. These are just pilots, but we're seeing a lot of interesting momentum.”

Now, if users search for New York City on Airbnb, some hotels will populate the results, he said. 

Chesky said hotels will serve as a “supplemental” piece to Airbnb’s core business, but the company's philosophy is that hotels and homes serve different purposes for travelers. 

“We don't see a large cannibalization between homes and hotels,” Chesky said.

“They're primarily different use cases, different audiences. And we also think hotels are a great way to fill our supply gap,” he said. “And again, the most important thing is we already have the demand. We don't need to spur demand. And so to add hotels is not really an incremental investment at all.”

Chesky added it’s been easier to recruit hotels to join Airbnb than it has been to recruit homes. Fundamentally, Chesky said the hotel business is more efficient in terms of scaling, particularly with existing demand.

Financial results

After mixed results in Q1 and growth in Q2, Airbnb saw a both stability and growth in Q3 2025.

The STR giant reported revenue of $4.1 billion in Q3, a 10% year-over-year increase, which the company said was driven by nights stayed and an increase in average daily rate. 

Net income was $1.4 billion, which was in line with income reported during the same period last year. The Q3 net income margin was 34% in Q3 2025 versus 37% in Q3 2024.

Adjusted EBITDA was more than $2 billion, which Airbnb said was its highest ever reported in a quarter. Sales and marketing spend totaled $639 million, up from $514 million in Q3 2024.

Nights and seats booked in Q3 were up 9% year over year to 133.6 million and gross booking value totaled $22.9 billion, a 14% year-over-year increase.

Airbnb said its recently launched “Reserve Now, Pay Later” feature contributed to a rise in U.S. nights booked.

“Not unexpectedly, this helped drive nights and seats booked in Q3, so we're going to continue to roll it out more broadly next year,” Chesky said.