Airbnb reported a strong Q1 2026, with revenue beating expectations and full-year guidance raised. The call emphasized successful product initiatives (Reserve Now Pay Later, hotel expansion, AI tools) and a clear strategy to expand beyond homes into a full travel ecosystem. Management was bullish on the World Cup event and discussed the competitive threat to traditional OTAs in the hotel space. Revenue grew 18% YoY to $2.7B, beating guidance; full-year 2026 revenue growth guidance raised to low-to-mid-teens.
Airbnb reported a strong Q1 2026, with revenue beating expectations and full-year guidance raised. The call emphasized successful product initiatives (Reserve Now Pay Later, hotel expansion, AI tools) and a clear strategy to expand beyond homes into a full travel ecosystem. Management was bullish on the World Cup event and discussed the competitive threat to traditional OTAs in the hotel space. Revenue grew 18% YoY to $2.7B, beating guidance; full-year 2026 revenue growth guidance raised to low-to-mid-teens.
Management highlighted that AI is accelerating product development, with nearly 60% of code now AI-written, and AI-driven customer support resolves over 40% of issues without human agents, improving efficiency. They are testing AI search and personalization, aiming to lead in…
Management highlighted that AI is accelerating product development, with nearly 60% of code now AI-written, and AI-driven customer support resolves over 40% of issues without human agents, improving efficiency. They are testing AI search and personalization, aiming to lead in…
Guidance · revenue to 14.5%
Aggressively scaling boutique hotels; top-line metrics growing 2x the broader business, with 55% of hotel bookers later booking a home.
Management highlighted that AI is accelerating product development, with nearly 60% of code now AI-written, and AI-driven customer support resolves over 40% of issues without human agents, improving efficiency. They are testing AI search and personalization, aiming to lead in AI-native travel interfaces.
First-time booker growth accelerates to 10%. The tone was confident and optimistic, repeatedly emphasizing momentum, raising full-year guidance, and expressing excitement about future initiatives like the upcoming summer release.
The tone was confident and optimistic, repeatedly emphasizing momentum, raising full-year guidance, and expressing excitement about future initiatives like the upcoming summer release.
“Reserve Now Pay Later is driving a meaningful lift to all booking metrics, net of cancellations. We believe this is a longer-term competitive benefit, locking in earlier calendar share.”
“Many of the independents have told us that they're feeling pressure to franchise, and not all of them want to join a franchise... Airbnb can become a very appealing channel for them.”
“We are obviously ramping up our use of AI internally. And so we anticipate that that is an expense that will ramp over the course of the year.”
“The World Cup is slated to be the largest event on Airbnb's history... 16 cities across three countries really gives us a large opportunity.”
| Metric | Period | Range | Midpoint | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Op margin | FY2026 | 35% | 35% | MAINTAINED |
| Revenue | FY2026 | 13%–16%above vs consensus | 14.5% | RAISED |
| Revenue | FY2026 Q2 | $3.54B–$3.6B | $3.57B | GUIDED |
| Issued | Metric | Target | Guide | Actual | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY2025 Q4 | Revenue | FY2026 Q1 | $2.59B–$2.63B | $2.678B | Met / beat |
Expanding the partnership to include experiences and services deepens the integration, likely driving more bookings for Delta through a broader loyalty offering.
“We're also expanding our partnership with Delta Airlines so that travelers can earn Delta miles on qualifying Airbnb experience and services in addition to homes.”
… in two weeks. We also continued scaling experiences, and earlier results show that it's becoming a demand flywheel. Almost a quarter of new guests who book an experience go to book a stay or a service. And about one in three people who book an experience book a stay within 90 days. So service experiences are about more than just standalone products. They're a great way to introduce new guests to everything Airbnb has to offer. We're also expanding our partnership with Delta Airlines so that travelers can earn Delta miles on qualifying Airbnb experience and services in addition to homes. And to capture even more trips, We're scaling our boutique and independent hotel pilot to more mature markets around the world. Early results are strong, especially in cities where supply of homes isn't meeting demand or where supply is constrained because of regulation. Now, bringing more hotels onto the platform helps us serve guests when a hotel might be the right choice. It also introduces more new guests to Airbnb. And roughly 55% of guests who book a hotel on Airbnb come back and they book a home. Third, we're using big events to drive a business. Now, big events are how Airbnb got its …
Airbnb's choice to partner with Instacart validates Instacart's delivery infrastructure and likely brings incremental order volume to Instacart.
“We're working at Instacart. We've realized, you know, they've been doing this for over a decade. We don't need to learn how to do grocery delivery.”
Thanks for taking my questions. I have two. The first one is go back to the hotels. Can you maybe just sort of walk through what is the, what is the biggest hurdle or constraint that we should be thinking about that will sort of dictate how quickly the hotels will roll across the platform this year and into next year? And then number two, maybe a bigger picture, Brian, I agree. You have a massive shop of people in your store and there's so many things you could do with it to drive more revenue per transaction. How do you think about, you know, adding air, adding a car service, adding a grocery offering, adding a much more complete travel experience through an agentic offering? Is that too…
Okay, well, let me start with the second question. Is that too big? No, definitely not. We are thinking very, very expansively. And You've rattled off a number of things. Maybe just to zoom out for a second, I do see Amazon as a pretty good inspiration for us. Obviously, there's many things that are different about Airbnb than Amazon. We're a much more capital-like business. Design is kind of very central to how we approach things. But I do think that the model that they had, where they went from books to kind of everything for retail, is a really good model for us. And they considered all these businesses as actually categories, category expansion. And so we think there's a lot of category expansion. And some will be first party and some will be third party. So, for example, we've already announced groceries. That's a third party. We're working at Instacart. We've realized, you know, they've been doing this for over a decade. We don't need to learn how to do grocery delivery. And then some of the first party services we do, like photography, there's really, we didn't see any site that was doing that really, really incredibly well. And we felt like that was very much unique to Airbnb and hosts. So that's an example of that. I think the way to think about this is that we're seeing ourselves building an ecosystem. And I think that today people think of the home as the sun of the solar system of Airbnb. If you really ask yourself, you could paint a picture of Airbnb, what would the image be of the home? I think in the future, it will be a member, a guest. And what we really want to see is a constellation of services, of ancillary offerings. I think a home, a hotel, service experiences are literally just the beginning. Even within services, I think there's a huge, endless opportunity. And then the natural question comes out, well, if you're doing all these things, are you going to get distracted? Well, the answer to this, again, we learned from Amazon, is that every subsequent offering we offer is less work than the prior offering. Because once you solve one service, the next service is only 20% different. Once you solve that service, the next service is only 10% different. So every new service gets more and more efficient. And what we find is that each new service, each new experience, each new offering brings in a different type of guest. And sometimes people …
Airbnb's rollout of Reserve Now Pay Later is significantly extending booking lead times and shifting mix toward larger, higher-priced homes, which inflates ADR and locks in calendar share well ahead of the travel date. — If this strategy successfully captures earlier demand and reduces booking volatility, it could structurally change competitive dynamics in online travel, pressuring OTAs that rely on last-minute booking patterns.
AI-assisted coding is drastically increasing output, with ~60% of code now generated by AI, but management flags that it will require a higher internal investment (cost) in AI tools and infrastructure over the year. — Airbnb's increased enterprise spend on AI tools (and likely cloud infrastructure) flows directly to major AI platform vendors, supporting their enterprise revenue growth narratives.
Allie, can you just help us understand the confidence in the higher revenue growth for the year and then also the slight uptick in view on EBITDA margin? And then, Brian, just given the reserve now, pay later penetration, I'm curious if you think there are other payment innovations or services that you could see as an opportunity on the platform? Thanks.
Great, thanks. Let me talk a little bit about the revenue revision upwards. So what does that reflect? I would say it reflects the momentum we've seen year to date in terms of our growth initiatives. In particular, I would say we have more confidence in our underlying nights booked forecast for the year. We have more confidence in terms of the durability of slightly higher ADRs over the course of the year. And third, as we called out in the letter, we're starting to see the benefit from some of our monetization efforts. And so you should see a slightly higher implied take rate in the back half of the year. It's really those three components that round out the upward guide on the top line. In terms of the bottom line, thank you for noticing the slight change in the language around the 35% EBITDA guide. What we're seeing right now is obviously relative to a quarter ago, there is upside on the top line. And with that upside, we are actively looking to reinvest to drive growth. The handful of things that we are reinvesting in that we called out in the letter, obviously marketing channels where we see high ROI, expansion markets where we see opportunities to lean in and capture more growth, and also things like policy opportunities where we see an opportunity to be more aggressive in a particular city to get a better outcome in our favor. We will do that. And then finally, yes, we are, as Brian has talked about extensively, we are obviously ramping up our use of AI internally. And so we anticipate that that is an expense that will ramp over the course of the year. And the way we've managed the P&L and delivered efficiencies over time, we have the ability to absorb that in the strong margin that we are confirming and updating here.
Airbnb is now offering boutique and independent hotels a competitive alternative to traditional OTAs, which they claim face pressure to franchise due to high commission rates from incumbent platforms.
The World Cup is creating a massive, geographically distributed supply event, with over 100,000 new first-time listings in host cities, extrapolating to a sharp, one-time spike in demand for payment processing, dynamic pricing tools, and professional hosting services.