Airbnb’s Growth Is Being Driven by Commercial Operators, Report Says


Skift Take

As with any report that covers Airbnb, whether it's from Airbnb itself or from its eternal nemesis, the AH&LA, we have to take this data with a generous helping of multiple grains of salt.

Airbnb's exponential growth in the U.S. is being driven by an increase in hosts renting out multiple units and hosts offering entire homes, according to a report by CBRE Hotels' Americas Research. The report, issued Thursday on behalf of the American Hotel & Lodging Association, states these trends are especially evident in Airbnb's top 13 domestic markets (Austin, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, New Orleans, New York, Oahu, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.) Airbnb is now valued at an estimated $31 billion after its latest fundraising round. According to the research, hosts in the U.S. with two or more unit listings generated more than $1.8 billion in Airbnb revenue in 2016, which accounts for some 32.1 percent of Airbnb's total U.S. revenue from October 2015 to 2016. Revenue from this type of host grew at a faster rate than any other type of Airbnb host,. The report pegs the revenue increase at 89 percent year over year in the t