Short-Term Rental and Vacation Rental News

In our top travel stories this week, Skift Editorial and Skift Research covered Airbnb and short-term rentals from every angle. Our most popular stories also included the latest acquisition of Lonely Planet, an interview with former Continental Airlines CEO Gordon Bethune, and the false hope of digital passports.

Airbnb played the Booking.com-like performance marketing game in 2019, and got burned as losses piled up and revenue growth didn't keep pace. A centerpiece of Airbnb's roadshow is to show that its brand advantage and repeat visitor dynamics mean it doesn't have to deploy the same strategy as its peers.

It’s finally here! Skift Research has been eagerly awaiting the opportunity to get its hands on Airbnb’s public filings. This report analyzes the challenges and strategies of the most influential company in the short-term rental industry.

Before the pandemic turned the world sideways, nearly 12 percent of Airbnb's revenue last year came from its top 10 cities. But among them, cities like Lisbon and San Diego are taking radical steps to limit their short-term rental portfolios. Are investors overlooking the likelihood of vastly more stringent regulations?

There were few surprises in Airbnb's roadshow presentation. It was high on optics and spin, and could have been much more substantive.

The entire hospitality industry would agree that short-term rentals led the tentative recovery in the spring and into the summer in many parts of the world. But a key question will be how will they respond when hotels and cities come back in earnest — and with vaccines a real possibility, they certainly will.

How Airbnb sees itself matters, for many reasons it lists in its IPO documents. Fascinating read into the mind of a big disruptor in the global travel sector.

To everything there is a season. And for Airbnb, that season is the third quarter.

Airbnb's secret sauce is its brand, which allowed it to buck the conventional wisdom and successfully compete against far larger incumbents. Can it maintain that direct traffic advantage if it hopes to scale?

What are the prospects of Airbnb becoming a full-service online travel agency with the ability to go head-to-head with Booking.com. We know from the S-1 statement that Airbnb isn't profitable and you can walk away from reading the massive document without great insight into so many potential growth initiatives.