Aug 6, 2026 earnings call — AI-driven growth and product expansion
Airbnb raised full-year guidance after Q2 revenue of $3.6 billion and continued strong booking momentum.
Revenue $3.6B (est $3.6B) · EPS $1.37 (est $1.26) · Next-quarter revenue outlook $4.7B–$4.8B
Key quotes
"We've rebuilt Airbnb from the ground up to be an AI-native company."
"The hotel initiative is going significantly better than I expected."
"Specifically in Q2, over 20% of our total GBV was booked using this flexible payment option."
Analyst Q&A 12
hotel rollout and conversion
Q (Justin Post · BofA): He asked how the hotel initiative is going and whether hotels improve conversion in both constrained and unconstrained cities.
A: Management said the hotel initiative is doing better than expected. They see a large influx of hotels wanting to list on Airbnb and said hotels increase overall conversion and sometimes lead those guests to book homes later.
"What we are now seeing is a huge amount of influx of interest from hotels wanting to list on Airbnb." — Brian Chesky (CEO)
ancillary products and travel vision
Q (Richard Clarke · Bernstein): He asked if ancillary products will be simple add-ons or if Airbnb will become a full-service trip planner, and whether M&A is needed after a car hire partner was acquired.
A: Management described a phased expansion: first attach services to home bookings, then become a one-stop shop for travel, and later expand beyond travel. They said Airbnb aims to offer full trip planning within about a year and a half, and M&A remains opportunistic with a bias to grow organically.
"I think you will expect over the next year for us to be very focused on the travel phase, one-stop-shop for travel." — Brian Chesky (CEO)
hotel scale and AI search timing
Q (Lloyd Walmsley · Mizuho): He asked for anecdotes on markets where hotels drove conversion and for the timing and rollout plan for AI search and its role in ads.
A: They said hotels are currently a single-digit percent of nights but are growing about three times as fast as homes, and they are adding inventory carefully city by city. AI search testing starts this month in a small percent of traffic, will expand over the year, and is expected to be very conversational and boost conversion once users adopt it.
"More broadly, when you think about the scaling of this product, we've shared that today, hotels are only a single-digit % of nights booked on the platform." — Ellie Mertz (CFO)
host fee change rollout
Q (Jed Kelly · Oppenheimer): He asked whether the single service fee will be rolled out to all hosts or stay mostly for professional managers.
A: They said the single service fee began with API-connected hosts and was tested on more hosts this winter and spring. They expect the entire supply base to be migrated to the single service fee by year-end.
"We anticipate by year-end, our entire supply base will be on that single service fee." — Ellie Mertz (CFO)
hosts' reaction and trip planning scope
Q (Ken Gawrelski · Wells Fargo): He asked how hosts feel about adding hotels and whether trip planning is built city-by-city or globally.
A: They said hosts mostly care that their bookings increase and that hotels have been accretive to home bookings. For product rollouts, they test supply by city for hotels, services, and experiences, but trip planning will be a broad, global product tested at country or global level.
"We actually see hotels being accretive to the bookings for our home hosts, and I think the results are showing that." — Brian Chesky (CEO)
incremental margin and reinvestment
Q (Eric Sheridan · Goldman Sachs): He asked how much incremental margin will be reinvested versus flow to the bottom line long term.
A: They declined to give specific guidance beyond 2027. They said the business has strong underlying economics on EBITDA and free cash flow, and when opportunities to grow exist they will invest while still expanding margins.
"One is the underlying economics of this business are extremely strong from both an EBITDA and a free cash flow basis." — Ellie Mertz (CFO)
pricing tools and experiences scale
Q (Ron Josey · Citi): He asked how Airbnb helps hosts set optimal prices and whether experiences contribute meaningfully to nights booked.
A: They said new AI-powered pricing tools will recommend dynamic prices, make it easy for hosts to update prices, and are one of the largest levers to grow bookings. Experiences are growing quickly but from a small base; they expect experiences and services to scale on a multi-year horizon after proving product-market fit in targeted markets.
"What I think this is going to do is it's going to hopefully be generating a huge amount of growth for the company." — Brian Chesky (CEO)
AI costs and operational changes
Q (John Colantuoni · Jefferies): He asked how becoming AI-native affects product costs and what operational changes they make to limit impact.
A: They said many companies struggle to monetize consumer AI because inference costs are high, but Airbnb does not need major capital investment and inference costs are small relative to the extra revenue from higher conversion. They are expanding AI spend but are absorbing it while capturing offsets like lower customer service cost per booking and better output from existing staff.
"Part of the reason why is a lot of companies have not figured out how to make money on the consumer side." — Brian Chesky (CEO)
first-time booker growth drivers
Q (Kevin Kopelman · TD Cowen): He asked about the 11% growth in first-time bookers and which features or markets are driving it, and whether metrics like NPS moved.
A: They said acceleration comes from many product changes combined, with outsized growth in expansion markets like India and Brazil and renewed growth in core markets including the U.S. They highlighted Reserve Now, Pay Later and improvements to sign-up, login, merchandising, and search as specific contributors.
"First, obviously, we're seeing outsized growth in first-time bookers in our expansion markets." — Ellie Mertz (CFO)
product innovation and ADR strategy
Q (Conor Cunningham · Melius): He asked which innovations drove the quarter's core growth and about long-term ADR (average daily rate) pricing strategy.
A: They listed many product changes across guest and host sides—homepage personalization, smarter search and maps, signup/login fixes, Reserve Now, Pay Later, and host tools like single service fee and dashboards. On pricing, they said the strategy is to give hosts tools to be price competitive, encourage lower prices for value while also capturing durable ADR growth from larger homes and bedroom nights.
"Our pricing strategy is to provide hosts the tools to make them as price competitive as possible." — Ellie Mertz (CFO)
which services show traction
Q (Colin Sebastian · Baird): He asked which new service categories show the strongest early traction and how they pace investment across them.
A: They said car rentals will be the biggest service by far because reservations are longer than expected and they will expand it globally. Many services will be partnerships with low direct cost to Airbnb; some hosted services are rolled out city by city and others via partners to scale quickly.
"Car rentals is going to be the biggest one by far, just because of how big the asset is." — Brian Chesky (CEO)
B2B opportunity potential
Q (Doug Anmuth · JPMorgan): He asked whether Airbnb might build more formal B2B or enterprise travel products.
A: They said their B2B approach is emerging but the consumer-first route is preferred: get consumers to adopt and then make it easy for enterprises. They do not see themselves doing white-label products because they value the Airbnb brand.
"I think ultimately consumer wins and the consumers kind of point the enterprises." — Brian Chesky (CEO)