Airbnb CEO: Travel Has Changed Forever

Big quarter for you, and we're seeing the travel rebound happening in your numbers. You have told me quarter after quarter that travel will never be the same, and I'm curious with this rebound, do you still believe that, that travel will never be the same? Yeah, because the world's never going to be the same. We're not going back to 2019, and that means travel's not going back, and here's why. What I think has happened is, you really think about it, before the pandemic, most people were tethered to where they work. They had to live near where they worked. Now, for millions, or actually tens of millions of office workers, many of them are no longer tethered. Their CEOs are now offering flexible work policies. We just saw Amazon, Ford, Procter & Gamble, PwC, all put out flexible work policies, and I think they're just a sign of things to come, because companies are actually embracing this new model. If you don't have to go back to the office five days a week, if all you have to is believe in a world of Zoom, to believe a world where people have more flexibility. A world where people have more flexibility is a world where we can travel more times to more locations, and when we do travel, we can stay longer, and I think this fundamentally is a revolution in how we travel. Now, long-term stays, a big and growing opportunity for you. How much bigger do you think that opportunity can be? It's going to get so much bigger, I think. It's hard to know how long it's going to take to grow, but to give you a point of reference, this was the fastest-growing segment, stays of longer than a month, before the pandemic, and what I think the pandemic did was it accelerated an inevitable trend. We were already going to see more and more people book homes for a month at a time, but what we saw with the pandemic was a massive acceleration. It's now 20% of our business are nights that are longer than a month. Nearly 50% of our business are for nights longer than a week, and I think the lesson here is the longer you're away from home, the more you want to be in a home, and increasingly, people are going to want this flexibility. So answer your question, Emily, I think it's going to be a lot larger than 20%. I don't know how long it's going to take, but it's pretty clear where the world's going. Still, you've got Australia. It's been closed to international tourists until just about now. Hong Kong has these lengthy quarantines. Thailand's still grappling with outbreaks. Singapore is stopping and starting. What's been the impact of these delayed reopenings, especially in the Asia-Pacific region? North America and Europe and Latin America are outpacing APAC, but what we've seen is that, just to give you a point of reference, before the pandemic, half of our business was cross-border, and in fact, the majority of our business were people crossing borders or staying in cities. What we've seen is that the biggest growth we've seen is people not crossing borders, traveling domestically, and not traveling to cities, going to vacation destinations or rural communities. What we've now seen, though, is that as borders start to get reopened, growth cross-border surges. When President Biden announced on October 15th that borders were reopened on November 8th, the week after, within one week of that announcement, cross-border bookings into the United States were up 44% in one week. So obviously, we're borders still closed, cross-borders still restricted, but that also means that we think there's going to be a lot of pent-up demand. And so the longer the borders remain closed, the more pent-up demand there is after. And I think travel is one of the things that people miss the most, that they felt like has been taken away from them, especially cross-border travel. So I think you're going to see a lot more once the borders reopen. So let's talk about after then. How do you see the mix of domestic and cross-border travel shifting as we move forward? I mean, it will come back a bit. I don't think you're ever going to see the world looking like 2019. Business travel will come back, but business travel will never come back to 2019 levels, at least in the way it was. People getting on airplanes for a meeting. Now you can do it on Zoom. It's much cheaper. There'll be new types of business travel, which I think could make up the gap, which are people who are working remotely, flying or going back to headquarters for weeks at a time. So there's a major shift from business to leisure. There's a major shift from people going to the top destinations to people traveling everywhere. And no matter how travel recovers, I think the genie is out of the bottle. I think increasingly more and more people are going to travel nearby. They're going to stay longer and they're going to travel in off-peak hours. But when we do see borders reopen and we do see urban come back, it's going to be a rebalance. I don't think it ever goes back to 2019, but it will be somewhere in between. Hard to know exactly where. So let's talk about holiday travel. Thanksgiving right around the corner. What are you expecting and are you prepared if there is another wave of COVID or new variant that takes off around the globe? I think it's going to be a really big holiday season, obviously. I think most people in travel are saying that because I think not everything from the pandemic that we lost, we all probably want to get back. I don't know if everyone, for example, wants to go back to the office five days a week if they don't have to. But I do think that most people want to travel because travel is one of the most meaningful ways to spend time with people you care about. So I think that that is absolutely important. Now, I also would say this about what if there's another variant. I think anyone who was in the business of predicting the future last year was humble. And so the best thing I can say is if I can't predict the future, I can't adapt to it. And Airbnb's business model is highly adaptable. We have nearly every type of home with nearly every type of community at nearly every price point for every type of trip. And so that means however travel changes, our model can adapt. So I'm very optimistic in adaptability of our model. It's because we have such a global network. However it changes, we'll be prepared. Now, stays in rural locations are increasing, but we're still seeing a lot of cities that are slow to recover. How are you working with cities to help revitalize tourism? Well, it's a great question. I mean, we've now worked since the start of the pandemic with a hundred destination marketing organizations. So DMOs, these are essentially the tourism arms of governments of cities or states or countries. And so what we found was, you know, COVID was a bit of a reset on our relationship with cities all over the world because many cities that felt like maybe before they had too much tourism now saying they don't have enough tourism. Because when borders get closed off to international travelers and people don't travel for business, suddenly there's not as many people going to these cities. So I think we are seen as an inevitable solution to some of the economic shortfalls that many of these cities are seeing. And we're working really closely with them. We want to be good partners. You know, fun fact, we've collected $4 billion in hotel tax since we started Airbnb. And so if we're not the largest collector of hotel tax in the world, we probably eventually will be. And we're going to continue to work really closely with these cities. Now, you've talked over the last year and a half about Airbnb going back to its roots, the homes business, you know, pulling back on some of those other initiatives you were working on. And I'm curious, now that the homes business has fully rebounded, are you looking back at expanding into flights or further into hotels and trying to become more of a full service provider like a Bookings or an Expedia and capture more of that wallet share of your travelers? Yeah, Emily, what I would say is never say never. Nothing that we paused is off the table to restart once again and go really big. That being said, I'm most focused on the most perishable opportunities. And we have this huge travel rebound that we're anticipating that I think is turning into really a revolution in travel. And so we're focused on our core because I think this is a defining moment in this industry. And so we're focused on getting as many hosts on Airbnb, making the process as seamless as possible. I think short-term stays, long-term stays and experiences are our bread and butter because they're all about hosting. And hosting is what makes me most different. That being said, I'll just say this. I'm 40 years old. I started this company when I was 26. And I don't want to feel like my best days are behind me. And the biggest innovation I did was in my 20s and 30s. So all that is to say we're going to launch some really exciting products next year and many years to come. So stay tuned. All right. Well, I mean, can you tell us more? I mean, give us a hint. OK, well, I'll tell you that next Tuesday, 8 a.m. Pacific Standard Time, we're unveiling the Airbnb 2021 winter release with more than 50 new upgrades. We're going to show you updates to I'm Flexible, a feature on Airbnb that's used 500 million times. We're going to show ways to make it easier to host. We've got a really big new offering for hosts that if you're interested in hosting, I think this is going to be really compelling. And next year, there's going to be a lot of new innovation. I think it's going to be built around this idea that you can now live anywhere. Not everyone can live anywhere, but tens of millions of people can now live anywhere. That's enough of an opportunity for us to design for. And then looking out, you know, experiences that that was that was going to be your next big thing. And I'm curious if you still think that will be you know, you talked about Netflix as a competitor. How big do you think the opportunity is there over time? It is it is just huge. And I always thought, Emily, that 2020 was going to be a breakout year for experiences. That's all the data was indicating that next last year was going to be a year it was going to break out. And instead of breaking out, the whole thing had to be put on pause. And it's just now ramping back up as people get comfortable. You have to basically be comfortable like standing next to a stranger. And so, you know, this is going to be ramping up. But I'm very bullish for experiences. And you said Netflix. I mean, Netflix is wonderful. The problem is you can only stay home and watch so many shows on Netflix before you really just got to get out of the house and have a real experience with a real person. And so I think that this is going to be something a lot of people are going to want to do next summer, whether they're locals or people when they're traveling. And the more travel is distributed outside of cities, the fewer other alternatives there even are of things to do. So this is something I'm really bullish. I'm just taking a longer view than I did before. You know, we're now really looking out further because the pandemic has really slowed the recovery, but I'm expecting some pretty big opportunities in the years to come. Well, speaking of flexible options, we've been looking at some of your new marketing campaigns and it's good to know you can bring your cats to Airbnb once in a while. You can. Brian Chesky CEO of Airbnb. You've got to bring the whole family. You've got to bring the whole family when you travel. The dogs, the cats, everyone. The whole family, including the kitty.