Airbnb tips

Booking Holdings Chief Financial Officer David Goulden said this week that the flagship Booking.com brand launched its short-term rental business as a supplement to hotels “15-plus years” ago, which is roughly around the time Airbnb got going in San Francisco.

As has been his habit about product changes, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky tweeted about updates the company is making to this year’s summer release announced in May.

Good morning from Skift. It’s Wednesday, December 6. Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.

If you’ve seen a tweetstorm about the alleged “Airbnb collapse” and are wondering if the data seems too dramatic – you’re not alone, or even wrong. 

If you’ve read the various hot takes on the state of the housing market as indexed by Airbnb revenue, here are a few concerns you can put to rest. What will happen to the housing market in a recession is anybody’s guess, but speaking purely of Airbnb as a stock, the company has a few things going for it.

Airbnb recently reminded hosts that it plans to shutter its email alias feature September 30. The feature enables hosts and guests to email and share documents, such as PDFs of property guides, passports and other IDs from their regular emails accounts without having to log into Airbnb.

Taylor Jones, a Florida real estate investor, tells us the key to making money from an Airbnb you invested in is the purchase price for the property — and how much revenue you can extract from the property.

Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, who left his full-time role at the company a year ago, has sold more than $1.37 billion worth of his Class A shares since that time, including more than $1 billion so far in 2023, according to regulatory filings, Bloomberg reported. Gebbia still chairs the non-profit Airbnb.org, but more importantly, he retains the bulk — but not all — of his Class B shares, which now give him 19.8% of Airbnb’s voting power. Together with his two other co-founders, CEO Brian Chesky (30.6%) and Chief Strategy Officer Nathan Blecharczyk (26.9%), they control 77.3% of Airbnb’s voting power.

While reporting on the short-term rental saturation story last week, I got into some data-digging to find out which markets saw the largest increase in available listings. I was specifically interested in available bookable listings, rather than listings or occupancy, because the former is a factor in market saturation, which impacts home prices.

The ‘Airbnbust’ debacle, which saw one short-term rental data vendor showing plunging host revenue way deeper than its peers, went viral.  However, it does call for some introspection and interrogation (on my part) to understand the data I get from different vendors that often is a bedrock for any story. 

A New York state court judge dismissed an Airbnb lawsuit against New York City, ruling the city had a right to require host registration and licenses, and that it was reasonable to require that Airbnb — and other platforms — verify that listings have licenses, or face penalties.

Let’s face it: New York is hardly the first city to impose regulations on short-term rentals. Today is the official deadline for hosts to register their listings.

Airbnb has partnered with Sentral Wynwood in Miami, allowing apartment tenants to rent out their units for up to 75 days. When tenants choose to list their apartments, Airbnb will handle pricing, security, access for guests, and cleaning.

Yesterday we wrote about Airbnb’s sweet deals with developers in Florida – where the company is partnering with developers to allow apartment tenants to rent out their units for up to 75 days per year. Airbnb would handle pricing, security, access for guests, and cleaning.

Happy hump day, folks – let’s get into it. I was reading this latest report from Skift’s director of research Wouter Geerts: Airbnb vs Vrbo in 20 Charts, and here are a few stats I find interesting.

Happy Tuesday, folks! We’re back after last week’s 10th annual Skift Global Forum in New York City. It was quite the event: Notable speakers for me were Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, Salamander Hotels CEO Sheila Johnson, and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi.

Good morning, readers. I hope you’re having an easy Thursday so far. I don’t know about you, but I am loving the new look of this newsletter, so much so that I sent myself multiple test emails this morning.

Good morning, readers! I hope you’re have your reading glasses on, this is a long one.

Welcome to a brand new week, folks! Here’s a Tuesday tidbit for you: Between 2020 and 2021, Manhattan residents who moved to Miami brought $2.9 billion in taxable income with them. And Palm Beach County netted $1.06 billion from these Manhattan ex-pats. Wow, that’s some serious wealth migration. 

With critics questioning Airbnb’s growth momentum, Airbnb announced Tuesday that Chief Financial Officer Dave Stephenson will become chief business officer, a newly created position, and VP of Finance Ellie Mertz will become CFO March 1.

Airbnb has a fake listings and verification problem — and the company knows it.