Airbnb said it would spend over $200 million on unspecified investments this year as it looks to continue its post-pandemic boom. The company reported revenue has tripled since it went public in 2020.
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Airbnb reported earning $2.5 billion in the fourth quarter and $11.1 billion for all of last year as travelers booked 491.5 million nights and experiences on the world’s largest short-term rental platform in 2024.
CEO Brian Chesky unveiled those results on Thursday as he foreshadowed big changes he said are coming to the company this year.
Airbnb continued its post-pandemic boom in the final three months of the year, when total revenue and nights booked both grew by 12 percent compared to the same time a year earlier.
The performance capped off an era when Airbnb said it was focused on perfecting the user experience of booking a place to stay and the host experience of offering a space for rent. Since the company went public in 2020, its revenue and gross booking value have tripled.
“In 2024, we successfully outpaced the travel industry’s growth,” the company said in a letter to investors detailing its fourth quarter and 2024 performance on Thursday.
Travel demand remained strong, though the company’s figures show where travelers were most interested in visiting.
Airbnb reported that nights booked in North America grew in the low single digits during the fourth quarter. Nights booked in Europe, the Middle East and Africa grew in the low double digits, the company said.
Travel was up most in Latin America and in Asia, where nights booked on Airbnb grew in the low 20 percent range, the company said.
The average cost to book an Airbnb for a night was $158, the company said, which was up 1 percent compared to a year earlier.
The company’s take rate, or the percentage it receives from the people renting and hosting on its platform, was 14.1 percent.
Expanding beyond ‘just a place to stay’
Before the pandemic, Airbnb began wading into offering experiences, where users could book an activity to do together with a host. After the shock of the pandemic’s onset virtually shut down travel before making way for a travel boom, Airbnb said it was focusing primarily on its core offering of nights booked, rather than experiences.
In the ensuing years, Chesky has hinted at plans to expand beyond the core of Airbnb once the company had added enough quality controls and assurances for travelers, as well as proof that the company would reliably deliver a healthy profit. That time, Chesky said, has come.
The company reported earning $461 million in profit in the quarter, $2.6 billion for the year, and it has $10.6 billion cash on hand. It said it would focus on steady improvement and investing in growth opportunities in 2025.
“Specifically, we plan to invest $200 million to $250 million towards launching and scaling new businesses to be introduced later this year,” the company said. “We anticipate a more significant contribution to revenue growth as these businesses scale over the coming years.”
Those unspecified investments will be unveiled within the first nine months of the year.
“2025 marks the start of Airbnb’s next chapter,” Chesky told investors. “This is the year you’ll see the beginning of a new Airbnb.”
Chesky shed more light than he has in the past on what that expansion could look like while continuing one of his favorite analogies of likening Airbnb’s future to Amazon’s past.
He pointed out that Amazon started out by selling books. Then it expanded to other media like movies, eventually getting into fashion before expanding into everything.
Chesky said Airbnb’s expansion this year would be “very closely adjacent to travel.”
“Things [consumers] wouldn’t even think to search for,” he said. “From there, we’re just going to keep expanding.”
He said the company would then continue expanding farther and farther outside of its travel core and suggested 2025 will be a year that Airbnb looks to start pushing on an accelerator, with its eye on continuing to dominate the short-term travel market.
“We’re not a frequently used app,” Chesky said, noting that many people only come to the app or website a few times a year. “I’d love for people one day to use us once or twice a week. That’s one of the goals over the long-term.”