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Online Travel

Airbnb Loses $276 Million and 6 Other Takeaways From Its Fourth Quarter

Dennis Schaal photo
Dennis Schaal

Photo Credit: An Airbnb Plus property in Nashville, Tennessee. Airbnb piled up losses in the fourth quarter of 2019. Airbnb

Skift Take

Airbnb's fourth quarter financials show it is 10 times larger than Tripadvisor. They also provide clarity that Booking Holdings has a long way to go to catch Airbnb in short-term rental businesses. Airbnb's growing marketing spend in 2019 likely means that Google will have a welcome new partner in coming years.

Airbnb, which was preparing to go public in 2020, nearly doubled the size of its losses in the fourth quarter — and that was before coronavirus upended the global economy and daily life in many parts of the world. In the first two months of 2020, Airbnb's bookings plunged in key cities, including Beijing, Seoul, Rome, and Milan, according to AirDNA data. Bloomberg reported that it got a look at privately held Airbnb's fourth quarter financials, finding that its revenue leaped 32 percent to $1.1 billion partially on the shoulders of increased marketing spend, but earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) plunged 92.3 percent to a loss of $276.4 million.

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While Airbnb was profitable, according to Bloomberg, in 2017 and 2018, its bottom line turned red in 2019 as it hiked marketing spend in preparation of a publi

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