What Changed In Airbnb’s Story?

Airbnb (ABNB) stock trades at 38.6 times earnings, against 22.9 for the S&P 500. Shareholders paying that much need to know what they are buying, but there is a twist: what management talks up on its calls has changed. During the fiscal Q3 2024 call, management said it was focused on making hosting just as popular as traveling on Airbnb, which means getting more people to rent out their homes. On the latest call, management made the case for something else. So what is it?

Airbnb Now Puts Hotels In The Spotlight

During the fiscal Q2 2026 call in August, management highlighted hotels, saying hotel nights are growing about three times faster than the homes business. The company also described the next stage for Airbnb as a one-stop shop for travel, and said it had expanded Airbnb Services into grocery delivery, car rental, airport pickup and luggage storage.

Before that, hosts were the supply story. Management introduced co-host networks on the fiscal Q3 2024 call as an easy way for a homeowner to find a local host to run the listing. By the fiscal Q2 2025 call, management said 100,000 listings were managed by co-hosts and that the program could lead to millions more homes on Airbnb. Co-hosts did not come up on the latest call, and hotels took the spotlight. Homes still got attention: management said more than 150,000 homes in World Cup host cities were listed on Airbnb for the first time.

How Big Are Hotels Next To Airbnb’s Homes?

Hotels still represent a small part of Airbnb. Management said on the fiscal Q2 2026 call that they account for a single-digit percentage of nights booked. As a result, homes still make up the great bulk of what guests book, even with hotel nights growing about three times as fast.

Management said nights and seats booked grew 10% from a year earlier, accelerating from fiscal Q1 2026. Revenue grew 16.5% in fiscal Q2 2026, faster than the 12.7% growth in fiscal Q2 2025.

Should Airbnb Holders Worry About Its Push Into Hotels?

So far the push reads as more reassuring than concerning, because Airbnb as a whole is growing faster, not slower. Revenue over the twelve months to June 2026 grew 13.6%, against 10.2% for the twelve months before. Management also said roughly 35% of first-time hotel guests return to Airbnb to book a home, meaning hotels appear to be bringing new guests to the homes side.

The concern is not hotels, but the supply of homes. In September, the EU set out plans to give European cities more leeway to curb short-term rentals such as Airbnb. On the August call, before those plans came out, management said policy is a risk, but not an existential one.

When Airbnb reports on or around November 5, 2026, the measure to watch is growth in nights and seats booked. Management expects growth at a low double-digit rate for fiscal Q3 2026.

How To Act On ABNB?

Not necessarily on Airbnb alone, if your goal is long-term wealth. Wealth is built by owning the companies that keep outperforming, the leaders of their industries, wherever they are. Here are two companies from Airbnb’s own industry that have beaten it. Over the five years to October 2026, Booking Holdings stock rose 69% and Royal Caribbean stock rose 245%, while Airbnb stock rose 2.8%.

Finding companies like these takes comparison across industries and sectors, and that is what the Trefis High Quality (HQ) Portfolio does. It holds 30 quality companies in equal weight and, since its inception in September 2020, has returned more than 105%, ahead of a benchmark that combines the S&P 500, S&P Mid-cap and Russell 2000. See how we find the leaders.

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