Home-rental Service Airbnb Loses Millions in Revenue Due to Pandemic

New Delhi: Hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic, the home-rental service Airbnb saw its gross booking revenue (GBV) nosediving by 39 per cent to reach 18 billion, while generating sales worth $2.5 billion (down 32 per cent year-on-year) in the nine months that ended in September 30. Also Read – A Mattress in Middle of a Field: YouTube Pranksters Create ‘World’s Worst Airbnb’ & People Are Actually Booking It!

The company which filed for an initial public offering (IPO) on Monday, revealed that its business will continue to be affected as Covid-9 continues to spread. Also Read – 27-Year-Old Indian Developer Finds ‘Sign in With Apple’ Bug, Paid Over Rs 75 Lakh For His Discovery

Airbnb generated $1 billion of net cash provided by operating activities and incurred $507 million of purchases of property and equipment cumulatively from January 1, 2011 through December 31, 2019. Also Read – Airbnb moves to building homes with ‘Backyard’

“We believe that we are still early in the global shift in consumer preferences toward one-of-a-kind stays and experiences, which provides an opportunity to further grow our community and business,” said the company.

In 2019, Airbnb generated Gross Booking Value of $38 billion, representing growth of 29 per cent from $29.4 billion in 2018 — and revenue of $4.8 billion, representing growth of 32 per cent from $3.7 billion in 2018.

“COVID-19 has materially adversely affected our recent operating and financial results and is continuing to materially adversely impact our long-term operating and financial results,” the company admitted.

“However, we believe that as the world recovers from this pandemic, Airbnb will be a vital source of economic empowerment for millions of people”.

The company has seen annual net losses every year since its launch and said it may not be able to achieve profitability.

“Our revenue growth rate has slowed, and we expect it to continue to slow in the future,” it said in the filing.

As of September 30, Airbnb had over 4 million hosts around the world, with 86 per cent of hosts located outside of the United States.

“Our hosts had 7.4 million available listings of homes and experiences as of September 30, 2020, of which 5.6 million were active listings,” the company informed.

“Our hosts largely come to us organically with 79 per cent of our hosts coming directly to our platform to sign up to host in 2019. In 2019, we added more hosts than any year in our history with 23 per cent of our new hosts first starting out as guests on Airbnb,” it added.

In 2019, 54 million active bookers worldwide booked 327 million nights and experiences on its platform.

Since its founding, there have been over 825 million guest arrivals on Airbnb.

“We estimate our serviceable addressable market (SAM) today to be $1.5 trillion, including $1.2 trillion for short-term stays and $239 billion for experiences.

“We estimate our total addressable market (TAM) to be $3.4 trillion, including $1.8 trillion for short-term stays, $210 billion for long-term stays, and $1.4 trillion for experiences,” Airbnb informed.