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.
It won't surprise many of you that, according to this recent data from Pew, about half of Americans now get their news at least "sometimes" from social media. Meaning, half consume the news either "sometimes" or "often" through social media, and the other half do it "rarely" or "never".
What may be more interesting, though, is how much TikTok has jumped over the last three years. 43% of its users now "regularly" use it to get the news. This is roughly inline with Facebook and second only to X:
Also interesting:
Different networks seem to have clear gender biases. Facebook is women. Instagram is women. X is men. TikTok is women. Reddit is men. And Nextdoor is men. There also seems to be a racial bias that I wouldn't have necessarily expected.
If you market on social media, you may want to give some thought to these charts. For the full Pew fact sheet, click here.
We have been working with Vanderbrand for many years. They are the creative agency behind both Junction House and One Delisle. We love the work that they do. It's beautiful, and they have always managed to get our vision behind each project.
In the case of Junction House, we wanted something clean and simple that at the same time responded to the creative edginess of the Junction neighborhood.
And in the case of One Delisle, we wanted something elevated but that wasn't traditional or typical. One Delisle is all about pioneering architecture and the brand needed to reflect that (we ended up creating our own typeface that will be carried through into the completed building).
If you're interested in learning more, Vanderbrand has just updated their website to include a full "case study" on One Delisle. You can check that out over here. Below are a few of my favorite images.
