Is Airbnb Stock Worth More Than Its Competitors?

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Airbnb (ABNB) stock trades at 36.2 times earnings. Over its latest four quarters, the company grew revenue faster than any of five travel and hotel peers. Marriott International and Hilton Worldwide both grew more slowly, yet their stocks cost more per dollar of profit. Booking Holdings grew almost as fast, but costs far less. So is Airbnb’s growth lead big enough to explain where its price sits?

Airbnb Leads Marriott On Growth, Barely Edges Booking

Airbnb looks cheap for its growth beside Marriott and Hilton, and expensive beside Booking. Over its latest four quarters, Airbnb grew revenue 13.6%, compared with 4.7% for Marriott International. Marriott’s stock trades at 40.7 times earnings, a higher multiple than Airbnb’s.

Booking Holdings is the exception. It grew revenue 12.9% over the same four quarters, just behind Airbnb. Its stock trades at 15.8 times earnings, less than half Airbnb’s multiple. Booking also keeps more of each sale as profit: its operating margin was 34.5%, compared with 20.8% for Airbnb. Based on the past four quarters, Airbnb’s small growth lead and narrower margin do not explain the extra you pay for it over Booking.

Airbnb Is Growing Faster Than A Year Ago

Airbnb’s quarterly revenue grew 16.5% in fiscal Q2 2026, up from 12.7% in fiscal Q2 2025. The company has also been adding boutique and independent hotels across top destinations. While hotels are still a single-digit share of the nights booked on Airbnb, management said on the August 6, 2026 call that hotel nights are growing about three times faster than its homes business.

Airbnb also runs on little capital. On the same call, management called Airbnb’s business model capital-light, pointing to free cash flow over the past twelve months of 37% of revenue. Separately, on AI, management said the company does not need to make any major capital investments and is not buying up large numbers of GPUs. In fiscal Q2 2026, customer support costs per booking fell about 16% from a year earlier, helped in part by its AI assistant. That may be part of what buyers are paying for: faster growth than a year ago from a business that needs little capital to run.

What Airbnb Has Forecast For 2026

On its August 6, 2026 call, Airbnb raised its forecast for 2026 revenue growth to at least the mid-teens, up from the low-to-mid-teens it gave in May. For fiscal Q3 2026 alone, the company expects growth of 15% to 17%, close to the 16.5% it reported for fiscal Q2 2026. About three percentage points of that will come from currency moves, management said, so the forecast without them is about 12% to 14%.

Management expects its adjusted EBITDA margin, the company’s own profit measure, to be down slightly in fiscal Q3 2026 from a year earlier because of the timing of investments in 2026. Outside the company’s own forecast, a news report on September 9, 2026 said new EU plans will give European cities more room to limit short-term rentals such as Airbnb.

If you pay more for Airbnb than for Booking, you are counting on Airbnb to keep outgrowing Booking while it adds hotels. So far Airbnb has done that, though Booking still keeps more of each sale as profit. Airbnb’s revenue growth for fiscal Q3 2026, which the company is expected to report in November 2026, is the number to watch.

How To Act On ABNB?

Now you know Airbnb better. Our purpose is to inform you so you can decide for yourself, and acting on one stock, in either direction, carries its own risk.

If you would rather own a portfolio built to spread that risk, the Trefis High Quality (HQ) Portfolio holds 30 quality companies in equal weight. Since its inception in September 2020 it has returned 105%, ahead of a benchmark that combines the S&P 500, S&P Mid-cap and Russell 2000.

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