Airbnb’s growth has slowed in recent years, says the company’s CEO, Brian Chesky, but he has a plan to remedy the situation.
In an interview on Tuesday at the Skift Global Forum conference, an event for the travel industry, Chesky noted that Airbnb experienced 40% growth in 2022, but that number declined to 18% in 2023 and then 12% in 2024. For the second quarter ending June 30, revenue growth was at 13%.
“I’m not happy about where the growth rate is at the company,” Chesky said at the event. “I think Airbnb should be growing significantly faster. It should at least be growing in the teens, and I aspire to run the kind of company that’d be growing at more than 20% one day.”
Related: Airbnb’s CEO Says He Personally Manages 40 to 50 Employees as Direct Reports: ‘A Lot of Work’
The problem, Chesky explained, was that the company lacked the foundation for sustainable growth and needed to “rebuild” itself entirely earlier this year to open the doors to new businesses.
“That’s what we’ve been doing,” Chesky said. “The final stage is now we reinvent ourselves.”
In May, Airbnb redesigned its app to include a new feature that allows guests to book services (such as massages, photography services, spa treatments, personal training, private chefs, and beauty treatments) and experiences (such as watching a comedy show or going on a boat sightseeing tour with local hosts). Chesky said the company hopes to grow its core business, vacation rentals, while “layering on” these services and experiences.
Chesky said on Tuesday that he believes Airbnb’s new offerings will be “multi-billion-dollar businesses” at some point, per Business Insider.
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky. Photo by Myunggu Han/Getty Images for Airbnb
He also stated in the interview that he believes Airbnb’s growth will accelerate next year, despite Airbnb’s history of “decelerating” growth, and reminisced about the company’s “hypergrowth,” when it was first founded in 2008.
“We grew the company like a rocket ship,” Chesky stated at the event.
Related: Airbnb Will Be the Place to Find Work After AI Takes Your Job, Says Its CEO: ‘Nobody Wants a Robot Answering the Door’
Airbnb is also leaning into AI. In August, Chesky stated on an earnings call that Airbnb would become an “AI-first application” over the next few years. The company began using AI for customer service in April, which reduced human customer service interactions by 15%. AI now handles tasks at the company like canceling reservations and helping with travel plans. Airbnb plans to expand the agent this year and give it more advanced capabilities, like the ability to search through a reservation to find specific details.
Airbnb had a market cap of over $76 billion at the time of writing. The company has over 5 million hosts.
Airbnb’s growth has slowed in recent years, says the company’s CEO, Brian Chesky, but he has a plan to remedy the situation.
In an interview on Tuesday at the Skift Global Forum conference, an event for the travel industry, Chesky noted that Airbnb experienced 40% growth in 2022, but that number declined to 18% in 2023 and then 12% in 2024. For the second quarter ending June 30, revenue growth was at 13%.
“I’m not happy about where the growth rate is at the company,” Chesky said at the event. “I think Airbnb should be growing significantly faster. It should at least be growing in the teens, and I aspire to run the kind of company that’d be growing at more than 20% one day.”
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