Airbnb Digital Engagement Stalls

Regulators aren’t the company’s only problem. Traffic and app engagement are down, year-over-year, and stagnant over the past few years

Airbnb no longer looks like the revolutionary force in travel and hospitality that it once did.

New York City recently made a widely publicized move to crack down on rules against short-term rentals, eliminating loopholes and enforcement gaps Airbnb was once able to slip through. A recent article in The Atlantic discussed the extent to which the company succeeded with a form of “regulatory entrepreneurship,” as in gaining an advantage by skirting the laws that apply to competitors (in this case, hotels) and trying to force more lax rules. The company claims most other cities are more tolerant, but if the backlash is just getting started that could be bad news for the company.

Some consumers are also turned off by the increasing professionalism of Airbnb property management, which takes the company away from its quirky roots. See the Wall Street Journal’s report, “Your Next Airbnb Host Could Be a Private-Equity Firm.” Maybe that’s why the digital growth we see is more on the host, rather than guest, side of the ledger.

While Airbnb has been prospering financially, beating analyst expectations with its most recent quarterly report, the company reported weaker guidance for the coming months. The patterns of digital engagement with Airbnb should also be cause for worry.

Key takeaways

• Worldwide traffic to airbnb.com was down in October by 6.6% worldwide and 7% in the US, according to Similarweb estimates. Meanwhile, the number of monthly active users of Airbnb’s iOS and Android apps was essentially flat in the US.
• We also checked the web traffic to Nerdwallet’s list of Airbnb alternatives and found that competitor Vrbo (vrbo.com) seems to be caught in a similar downdraft, with October traffic down 10.3% worldwide and 12.9% in the US, both year-over-year. A few much smaller competitors are seeing growth. Hipcamp (hipcamp.com), which is more likely to find you a campsite than an apartment or a room in a house, is up 49.6% year-over-year, worldwide, and Marriott Homes and Villas (homes-and-villas.marriott.com) is up 20%.
• If we zoom out to look at the longer-term trend, traffic to airbnb.com is only about 2% higher than it was in October 2018, showing little progress over five years. Vrbo web traffic grew more than 100% over that period, although it still only gets about a quarter of the traffic of Airbnb. Perhaps Airbnb is already so dominant in vacation rental that it has little room to grow its audience, only to profit from it more efficiently.
• Traffic to the section of the airbnb.com website for hosts, not guests, was up 49% year-over-year in October.
• Meanwhile, AirDNA, a provider of analytics for professional management of Airbnb properties, has grown its traffic by more than 260% over the last five years, surpassing 1 million monthly visits in recent months – although it, too, was down in October to about 920,000 visits.

Traffic up and down, but not growing for Airbnb and Vrbo

Traffic to the two websites tends to oscillate in sync with the rhythms of the travel seasons, but there is very little growth over time. This overall statistic would include both host and guest engagement.

For app engagement, where we have the best visibility into iOS and Android stats combined within the US, there hasn’t been much growth since the comeback after the pandemic.

Appealing to hosts, not guests?

Meanwhile, Airbnb did see strong growth in the segment of its website focused on hosts, not guests, where traffic was up 49% year-over-year based on desktop web data.

AirDNA makes its presence felt

Over the past few years, the ranks of Airbnb have shifted from homeowners and hosts with a spare bedroom to professional property management companies, making a market for property management software and analytics such as AirDNA. Founded in 2014, the company has seen its strongest growth in online interest over the past two years.

The name of the game is changing

To remain successful, Airbnb will have to try out new tactics – and it already is by expanding its focus on boutique hotels in NYC to offset the backlash against its other short-term rentals.

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