Infographic: Airbnb Bookings More Than Quadrupled Since 2015

After a long wait, short-term rental market leader Airbnb has finally filed to go public on Monday. In its S1 registration filing, the company provides the public with a rare glimpse behind its business, revealing some interesting facts about what has been one of the most valuable unicorns in the world for years.

Conceived in 2007, the idea of renting out a room or an entire apartment to complete strangers sounded ludicrous at first, but 13 years later, it can safely be said that it revolutionized the travel industry and changed the face of many cities, not always for the better some would argue. According to yesterday’s filing, Airbnb hosts have welcomed guests in more than “220 countries and regions around the world” and earned over $110 billion in the process.

Last year alone, travelers booked 326.9 million nights and experiences on the platform, generating gross bookings of $38 billion. As our chart shows, Airbnb’s growth has almost been linear for the past five years. With both the number of nights booked and gross bookings increasing more than 4-fold between 2015 and 2019.

Unsurprisingly, 2020 has proven a challenging year for the company, as bookings crashed at the onset of the pandemic. Following two months of negative net bookings in March and April, i.e. more cancellations than bookings, travelers gradually returned to Airbnb over the summer with net bookings stabilizing around 30 percent below last year’s levels for the past four months.