Tourism recovery: A tourist looks at the Airbnb app in Paris. The company is expecting a surge of travellers for the Paris 2024 Olympics. — AFP
NEW YORK: Airbnb Inc ended 2023 stronger than analysts had expected and gave an optimistic outlook for the start of this year, fuelled by growth in international markets and suggesting that the post-pandemic travel boom has yet to run out of steam.
The company’s shares jumped more than 8% in extended trading.
Revenue for the three months ending in March will be US$2.03bil to US$2.07bil, surpassing analysts’ average estimate of US$2.02bil.
The number of nights and experiences booked is expected to moderate compared with the fourth quarter, however, due to a particularly strong growth rate a year ago, the home-sharing company said Tuesday in a letter to shareholders.
“Guest demand remains strong – especially among first-time bookers,” Airbnb said in the letter.
The company had warned last November that it was seeing “greater volatility” globally early in the last quarter, due to economic and geopolitical issues. But then, bookings accelerated throughout the rest of the year.
Airbnb’s results suggest there is still pent-up travel demand, especially in regions that were slower to return to normal life after Covid-era lockdowns.
Airlines, hotels and and other travel companies, including Airbnb, saw record demand over the summer, a phenomenon dubbed “revenge travel”, as people proved willing to swallow high fares for flights and lodging to fulfill their lost pandemic itineraries.
Revenue in the fourth quarter jumped 17% to US$2.22bil, ahead of the average analyst estimate of US$2.16bil, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Nights and experiences booked increased 12% to 98.8 million, also ahead of expectations for about 11% growth. Airbnb said the results were boosted by a “modest increase” in the average daily rate and a favourable foreign-exchange rate.
Chief executive officer Brian Chesky sees markets outside the United States as one of Airbnb’s biggest growth opportunities and the San Francisco-based company is planning to boost its presence in about a dozen countries such as Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands in the coming years.
Airbnb has been working to adapt its app to the local market and raise awareness to drive traffic and is starting to see the effort pay off.
Gross nights booked in Brazil nearly doubled compared with the same pre-pandemic period in 2019, the company said. The Asia-Pacific region was one of the last globally to emerge from Covid lockdowns and cross-border travel is continuing to recover there.
Nights and experiences booked increased 22% in the area from a year earlier and Latin America saw similar growth.
Airbnb said it’s “particularly excited for the upcoming Paris 2024 Olympic Games”. It’s already seen an increase in supply and demand and the current backlog of nights in Paris during the summer is more than double a year ago. The company has said it expects to host half a million people in the City of Lights.
The company posted an unexpected net loss of US$349mil in the fourth quarter, due to non-recurring tax withholding expenses and lodging tax reserves of about US$1bil as a result of a 2017 Italian tax law that it fought and later settled last December. Excluding that, adjusted net income was US$489mil.
Airbnb, which went public in 2020, also announced a new share repurchase programme to buy back as much as US$6bil of the company’s stock. — Bloomberg
