Airbnb's (ABNB) app downloads has been a very good proxy for understanding the impact of covid lockdowns on mobility and it's also a great for proxy for the recovery.
2022 was pretty much the year for that, and we saw Airbnb's massive rise in downloads in the US over the summer.
Now that 20203's summer is over I was curious to see if the recovery has expanded internationally.
The easy answer is yes!
Looking at Airbnb's downloads by month since 2019, we can see that Airbnb's downloads have more than full recovered, but that growth post-lockdowns is much stronger.
January, which is a higher-than-average month for Airbnb's downloads brought in 3.4M new downloads in 2019, 3.9M in 2020 (pre-lockdowns), 2.3M in 2021, 3.2M in 2022, and a whopping 5M new downloads in 2023.
That's a 44% increase from 2019 and 113% when compared to 2021.
And that wasn't Airbnb's highest month of downloads this year!
The summer is Airbnb's best time for new downloads. Specifically, the month of July. In 2020, July was still Airbnb's highest month of downloads - though fewer than before (or after).
This year, Airbnb's downloads rose to the highest they've ever been in July - 5.6M, according to our App Intelligence. That's 37% higher than 2019 and 107% higher than 2020.
Airbnb continues to face stiff competition in the US from Expedia's Vrbo, has been officially banned in my home town of New York City, and is facing internal challenges so the growth comes with some growing pains.
I think they'll survive.
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