Airbnb (NASDAQ:ABNB) executives highlighted accelerating growth and a slate of product changes aimed at reducing friction for guests and hosts during the company’s fourth-quarter 2025 earnings call, while also outlining an early view of 2026 that calls for low double-digit revenue growth and stable adjusted EBITDA margins.
Fourth-quarter results showed reacceleration
Co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky said Airbnb delivered “strong results across the board” in the fourth quarter. Revenue increased 12% year-over-year to $2.8 billion, exceeding the high end of the company’s guidance. Gross booking value (GBV) rose 16% to $20.4 billion, which Chesky described as the company’s highest growth quarter in more than two years. Nights and seats booked increased 10% year-over-year, which management called its strongest quarter of the year.
Airbnb reported adjusted EBITDA of $786 million, representing a 28% margin, also above guidance. Net income was $341 million; Mertz said results were negatively impacted by roughly $90 million of one-time non-income tax.
Product changes and “Project Y” were central themes
Chesky framed the quarter’s acceleration as the result of a multi-year effort to rebuild Airbnb’s “foundation,” including its technology platform and app, and to restore a faster innovation cadence. He said Airbnb began a “Project Y” initiative two years ago, creating a small team tasked with making it easier to find and book a home on Airbnb. Chesky said hundreds of incremental improvements shipped in 2025, contributing “$hundreds of millions in revenue” last year, with expectations for “$hundreds of millions more” this year.
Mertz pointed to three Q4 features that management said drove measurable lift:
- Reserve Now, Pay Later, which launched in the U.S. and saw “significant adoption,” particularly for larger and higher-priced homes.
- Updates to cancellation policies.
- Early steps toward a simplified fee structure, including migrating API-connected hosts to a single service fee beginning in October.
Mertz estimated these three features together delivered more than 200 basis points of growth in nights booked and roughly 300 basis points of growth in GBV in Q4.
On Reserve Now, Pay Later, Mertz said the company extensively tested the product and that cancellation behavior in launched cohorts has tracked closely to expectations. She estimated the aggregate increase in cancellations at approximately one percentage point, describing it as an increase from about 16% historically to about 17% overall, while also noting longer lead times and a modest positive mix shift toward “slightly nicer” listings.
Supply growth, quality initiatives, and event strategy
Management also emphasized supply and quality. Chesky said Airbnb removed more than 500,000 low-quality listings, while “Guest Favorites” grew 30% in 2025 versus 2024 and represented nearly half of all bookings in Q4. Chesky connected improved quality to higher guest satisfaction and repeat usage, and said Airbnb’s customer service NPS is the strongest it has been since the pandemic.
Executives repeatedly highlighted large events as a way to recruit supply. Chesky cited adding more than 40,000 listings in Paris for the 2024 Summer Olympics and said many of those hosts continued hosting afterward. He said Airbnb is repeating the playbook for the 2026 FIFA World Cup across 16 cities in North America. Mertz said major events such as the Winter Olympics in Milan and the upcoming World Cup are “small portions of the overall business,” but can be additive and also provide broader benefits like brand awareness and supply growth.
International focus and expansion beyond homes
Chesky said roughly 70% of revenue comes from five countries, which he described as a major opportunity. He singled out Brazil as a market where Airbnb applied a deeper, localized approach, including features such as interest-free payments and local payment methods and marketing around cultural moments like Carnival. He said Brazil moved from a top-ten to a top-five Airbnb market and was the second-largest contributor to first-time bookers in Q4, behind the U.S.
In Asia Pacific, management said overall growth has been “relatively stable” across 2025, with varying performance by country. In Q&A, executives cited domestic Japan as an area of “nice results” after applying Airbnb’s expansion playbook starting in Q4 2024, and said India is seeing substantial growth, including 50% growth in the last quarter, with an opportunity to accelerate further in 2026.
Chesky also discussed building a broader “Airbnb trip” concept—adding services and experiences and expanding accommodations to include boutique and independent hotels. He said Airbnb is taking a city-by-city approach to scaling services and experiences, starting with Paris for experiences and Los Angeles for services, and testing offerings such as grocery delivery and airport pickup.
On hotels, Mertz said hotel nights were a single-digit percentage of total nights booked in Q4 but are growing at nearly double the overall platform rate. She said Airbnb intends to expand hotel supply over time and “exit 2026” with hotels as a meaningfully larger portion of the business. Chesky said Airbnb is currently focused on boutique and independent hotels and argued that personalization—supported by AI—will allow the app to present the right mix of inventory without diluting what users come to Airbnb for.
AI efforts, customer support automation, and outlook for 2026
AI was another major topic. Chesky said Airbnb took an “intentional path,” starting with customer support, where it built a custom AI agent trained on millions of support interactions. He said the AI agent is resolving about a third of support issues in North America without a live specialist, with faster resolution times, and that Airbnb plans to roll it out globally.
Chesky said Airbnb is also piloting AI search with a small percentage of traffic and emphasized rapid iteration over “big launches.” He said Airbnb has not yet “nailed” conversational AI search and wants to design sponsored listings around the eventual AI search form factor. Mertz later added that the company has not baked AI search benefits into its outlook.
Addressing potential competitive risks from AI platforms, Chesky argued that much of Airbnb’s value lies beyond the consumer-facing app, pointing to payments, trust and verification, reviews, messaging between guests and hosts, insurance and protections, and customer support. He also said traffic from chatbots has converted at a higher rate than traffic from Google, describing AI platforms as potential top-of-funnel partners rather than existential threats.
For guidance, Mertz said Airbnb expects first-quarter revenue of $2.59 billion to $2.63 billion, representing 14% to 16% year-over-year growth, including an approximate three-point FX tailwind after hedging. She said GBV should increase in the low teens, with high single-digit growth in nights and fees booked and a moderate increase in ADR. Adjusted EBITDA margin in Q1 is expected to be approximately flat year-over-year.
For full-year 2026, management said it expects revenue growth to accelerate to low double digits, with adjusted EBITDA margins stable year-over-year, supported by ongoing efficiency efforts and reinvestment into marketing, product, and technology. Mertz said the company expects the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” to materially reduce Airbnb’s effective tax rate to the mid- to high teens starting in 2026, primarily due to how foreign earnings are taxed.
Airbnb also emphasized cash generation and capital returns. Mertz said free cash flow was $529 million in Q4 and $4.6 billion for 2025, a 38% margin. The company ended Q4 with $11 billion of corporate cash and investments and repurchased $1.1 billion of stock in Q4. In 2025, Airbnb repurchased $3.8 billion of stock, using more than 80% of free cash flow, and has reduced fully diluted share count by about 9% since introducing its repurchase program in 2022.
About Airbnb (NASDAQ:ABNB)
Airbnb, Inc (NASDAQ: ABNB) operates a global online marketplace that connects travelers with hosts offering short-term lodging, unique accommodations and related travel experiences. The company’s core platform enables individuals and professional property managers to list private homes, apartments, single rooms and entire properties, while providing search, booking and payment processing for guests. Airbnb earns revenue primarily through service fees charged to guests and hosts and offers tools to facilitate reservations, communications, and logistics between parties.
Beyond accommodations, Airbnb has expanded its product portfolio to include curated experiences led by local hosts, higher-end offerings such as Airbnb Luxe, and programs aimed at enhancing quality and safety like Airbnb Plus.
