Airbnb isn't used to having competition. For a loooong time it was the only owner-renting-by-app service in use. Not only, but the only one most people knew about.
Last year I looked at Airbnb's competition, Vrbo, which was acquired by Expedia. In 2021, Vrbo was starting to get popular, and even beat Airbnb on downloads for a few days here and there.
In 2022 that changed drastically.
Vrbo's downloads outpaced Airbnb's in the US for 10 out of 12 months in 2022, and not by a little!
Last time I compared the pair, Vrbo was beating Airbnb for short bursts. In 2021, Vrbo beat Airbnb for two out of 12 months. Exactly the opposite of 2022.
And the numbers were pretty big.
Vrbo added 18M new mobile users in the US to its bottom line in 2022, according to our estimates. Airbnb, US downloads came in at 15M. That's a difference of roughly 3M downloads. 20%.
For context, and also so you have the bigger story in mind, downloads of both grew drastically in the US when compared to 2021. Vrbo's downloads more than doubled (7M) and Airbnb nearly doubled (8M).
How did Aribnb let this happen? I bet you someone wasn't looking at competitors...
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