Airbnb is having a great quarter! The best quarter!
I've used Airbnb over the last few years as a proxy to "things getting back to normal" post-lockdowns, and its downloads as the proxy to its success.
During lockdown downloads dipped very low - but that's all done now.
In 2024, demand for Airbnb is now at an all-time high. According to our estimates, Airbnb's monthly downloads have doubled since 2018 from 8M to 16M. This is after downloads dropped to under 5M during covid and didn't get to double digits until 2022.
One other interesting bit is that downloads from Google Play are now on par with downloads from the App Store - and that's only started happening in the last few quarters.
The US accounts for the majority of downloads with 62M estimated downloads followed by Brazil with 24M and China with 15M. And keep in mind, the China downloads figure is only from the App Store because Google Play doesn't operate there.
Overall, this is great news for Airbnb and also for things going back to normal. Correction - Things are better than normal at this point.
And that reminds me of the rivalry between Airbnb and Vrbo, its clone. Every summer we see Verbo beat Airbnb for a few months as the platform that's owned by Expedia attempts to take market share.
While Vrbo's downloads have tripled since 2018, overall, it's still small in comparison. Our estimates show it was downloaded 3.4M times from the App Store and Google Play in Q1 of 2024. That's nearly a fifth of Airbnb's downloads. So, Airbnb is still the king!
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