Airbnb is seeing some of its fastest growth from this surprising segment

MW Airbnb is seeing some of its fastest growth from this surprising segment

By Bill Peters

The travel app has seen some demand disruptions from the Iran war, but is showing early success with its recent pivot into offering hotel bookings

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said the company has been able to adapt to big disruptions in travel and consumer sentiment.

Airbnb has a reputation for being the anti-hotel platform, with a business model built on disrupting the traditional lodging business and letting regular people rent out their homes.

But on Thursday, Airbnb $(ABNB)$ said its current trial run of boutique hotel listings, while small, is far outpacing the growth of the overall company.

Admittedly, the company's pilot of high-quality, independent hotel listings has accounted for only a single-digit percentage of nights booked on the platform. During Airbnb's quarterly earnings call, however, Chief Financial Officer Ellie Mertz said that over the past few quarters, "all the top-line metrics for hotels are growing more than double that of the entire business."

The remarks came as Airbnb grew more upbeat about the year, even as it deals with cancellations due to the Iran war. Wall Street has been trying to parse the conflict's impact on travel demand.

Airbnb has dabbled in hotels over the past decade, but last year said it would push more aggressively into that area. The company has since been testing out higher-end independent hotel listings in a handful of cities, like Los Angeles, New York and Madrid.

Mertz said hotel listings, for one, allow Airbnb to still attract consumers in areas that have placed restrictions on vacation-rental listings. Some cities have opposed short-term rentals on grounds that they diminish the housing supply for full-time residents.

The Airbnb CFO added that the selective embrace of hotels also helps the company serve customers for whom a hotel better fits their travel needs, and she said hotels offered a good way to sell its other services.

Shares of Airbnb were down 1.7% after hours on Thursday. The company said it expects nights booked to slow during the second quarter, due in part to the conflict in the Middle East.

However, Airbnb raised its sales outlook for the year, now calling for growth in the "low to mid-teens," despite a slowdown in March as cancellations piled up in India and the Asia-Pacific region.

Airbnb reported $2.68 billion in first-quarter sales, a bit above analysts' estimates for $2.62 billion. The company reported adjusted earnings of 26 cents a share, below analysts' estimates for 30 cents.

Over the past year Airbnb has overhauled its app and tried to offer more services to complement travelers' vacations, such as paid photographers and massage appointments.

CEO Brian Chesky, during Thursday's earnings call, said the company has been able to adapt to big disruptions in travel and consumer sentiment - be it last year's tariffs or this year's conflicts abroad.

"We have millions of homes everywhere in the world at nearly every price point, and that's something most travel companies can't replicate," he said.

-Bill Peters

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May 07, 2026 19:08 ET (23:08 GMT)

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