There are a lot of headwinds facing Airbnb. Cities around the world seem to be systematically making it more difficult to be a host. New York City, as many of you know, recently made it so that you need to be physically present while the dwelling is being rented. That is pretty limiting. Similar things are happening in non-urban markets too. North of Toronto in Muskoka, there’s a draft by-law that will, among other things, limit short-term rentals to 50% of the total number of days within certain time periods. That eliminates the possibility of doing this as a business. So in many ways, it’s easy to be pessimistic about the future of Airbnb.

But at the same time, if you step back and look at the bigger picture, there are over 7 million active listings on Airbnb. This effectively makes it the largest hospitality brand in the world. There are more accommodations on Airbnb than with Marriott, Hilton, Intercontinental, Wyndham, and Hyatt combined. (The below chart is from Scott Galloway.) It’s also important to point out that while Airbnb doesn’t own any of its own supply, the same is true of most hotel brands. They are, brands. The difference is that Airbnb created a more scalable platform and a more decentralized approach to aggregating supply.

The numbers also don’t suggest that things are slowing down for Airbnb. (Here’s their Q3 2023 shareholder letter.) Active listings on the platform grew 19% YoY in Q3 2023 (or by almost 1 million listings). Revenue is up. Free cash flow is up. And in Q3 of last year, the company repurchased $500 million of stock, bringing their one year total to somewhere around $3 billion. So despite all of the efforts to curb short-term rentals within our cities, the company, at least for now, seems to be holding up just fine. And if they can successfully diversify beyond their core business, there could even be reason to be bullish on the world’s largest hospitality brand.

Full disclosure: I am long $ABNB.