Airbnb, Inc. Class A Common Stock 2026 Q2 Earnings Call

Good afternoon. Welcome to Airbnb's second quarter of 2026 earnings call. Thank you for joining us today. On the call with us, we have Airbnb's Co-founder and CEO, Brian Chesky, and our Chief Financial Officer, Ellie Mertz. Earlier today, we issued a shareholder letter with our financial results and commentary for our second quarter of 2026. These items are also posted on the investor relations section of Airbnb's website. During the call, we'll make brief opening remarks. We'll spend the remainder of time on Q&A. Before I turn it over to Brian, I would like to remind everyone that we will be making forward-looking statements on this call that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements due to a variety of factors.

These factors are described under forward-looking statements in our shareholder letter and in our most recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That being said, we urge you to consider these factors and remind you that we undertake no obligation to update the information contained in this call to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. You should be aware that these statements should be considered estimates only and are not a guarantee of future performance. Also, during this call, we will discuss some non-GAAP financial measures. We provided reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures in the shareholder letter posted to our investor relations website. These non-GAAP measures are not intended to be a substitute for our GAAP results. With that, I'll pass the call over to Brian.

All right. Thanks, Andrew. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining. Over the first half of 2026, we've delivered some of the strongest results in years. In Q2, that momentum accelerated. We exceeded our outlook across every key metric. Revenue grew 17% year-over-year to $3.6 billion. Gross booking value grew 16% year-over-year to $27.2 billion. Nights and seats booked grew 10% year-over-year, accelerating from Q1. We are seeing this momentum show up across the business. Nights booked on our app grew 23% year-over-year. They now account for 64% of total nights booked, which is up from 59% last year. More new guests are trying Airbnb than we've seen in years. In fact, growth among our first-time bookers accelerated to 11%. This is the highest growth that we have seen in four years.

Among first-time bookers, the Gen Z cohort is growing the fastest. Our expansion markets continue to outpace our core markets, with net nights booked growing about twice as fast. What's especially encouraging is that we're not only seeing growth accelerate in our emerging markets, we are seeing growth accelerate in many of our core markets. In fact, the U.S., France, U.K., and Australia all accelerated in growth in Q2. These results reflect something much bigger than a strong quarter. What they reflect is a fundamental shift in how we are building products. I think most people naturally want to point to one product or one initiative to explain a strong quarter, but that is not what's happening here. This is a culmination of changes we've been making over the last several years. We've rebuilt Airbnb from the ground up to be an AI-native company.

We have more world-class talent than ever before. AI is transforming how we execute and build products. Said simply, AI is the best thing to ever happen to Airbnb. Today, we're building, testing, and iterating faster than we could just a year ago. Across some of our key initiatives, we've reduced the time from concept to launch by as much as 60%. Compared to the same six months last year, we've increased the number of features and improvements we shipped this year by nearly 80%. The acceleration from AI allowed us to make hundreds of improvements across Airbnb for hosts and guests. I want to highlight a few examples that are helping drive the outperformance we're seeing. First, I want to talk about how we've made it easier for guests to book.

I've talked in past quarters about Project Y, which is our innovation blueprint, where hundreds of improvements compound over time. AI is accelerating this work across search, sign-up, checkout, and payments. By reducing friction across the guest journey, we are converting more traffic into bookings, and that's become one of the biggest drivers of our growth. We improved search and discovery, making it easier for guests to find and book the right home, hotel, service, or experience, and it's meaningfully improving conversion. We also introduced AI-generated listing highlights so guests can quickly understand the key details about a home. We also launched AI-powered review highlights, surfacing what guest reviews say about a home's location, amenities, and more. Later this year, we'll introduce AI home comparison, allowing guests to compare homes side by side before booking.

We simplified sign-up and login, making it easier for guests to get started on Airbnb. We streamlined checkout by making pricing and cancellation policies clearer. We also continue to expand Reserve Now, Pay Later to more listings, and we're making it more visible throughout the booking flow. AI is also making it easier to host. We know that as hosts are more successful when they have the right price, the right insights, and the right tools, and AI is helping us improve all three. We made it easier for hosts to set competitive prices and get more bookings. We also gave hosts more actionable insights to help them improve their listings and increase their earning potential. We're rolling out AI tools that help new hosts get started faster and better understand their pricing and earning opportunities. AI is also transforming customer support.

Our AI assistant is now available in more than 50 languages. Nearly 45% of issues that start with our AI assistant are now resolved without a human agent, while delivering much faster resolution times. Later this year, we will begin introducing AI voice support, extending the experience to phone call. AI isn't just making the product better, it's also making Airbnb more efficient. In Q2, customer support costs per booking declined about 16% year-over-year, driven in part by improvements by our AI assistant. We expect those costs to continue to decline as our AI assistant resolves more and more issues, and of course, as we bring it to voice. Improving the core experience is really only part of the story, because we're also continuing to expand what Airbnb offers.

In May, as you know, we expanded Airbnb Services across grocery delivery, car rental, airport pickup, and luggage storage. Recently, we introduced Resort Passes, giving guests day access to amenities at some of the world's best hotels. It's still early, but what we are seeing is really strong momentum in booking. Every new service that we ship, we can do faster than the service before, so we're getting much more efficient. For example, groceries took eight months, nine months, and airport pickups took about six weeks to develop. You can see how these things are compounding. We're also seeing some momentum with Airbnb Experiences. We added 1,000 new experiences across our most in-demand categories, increasing supply by nearly 80% year-over-year during Q2.

While experiences are still a small part of our business, bookings accelerated both year-over-year and actually sequentially from last quarter. We also expanded our accommodations business, adding thousands of boutique and independent hotels across top destinations around the world. Featured hotels come with price match guarantee and up to 15% credit that guests can use towards future bookings. Roughly 35% of first-time hotel guests return to Airbnb to book a home. What this shows is how hotels are introducing new guests to Airbnb, and many of those new guests don't just come back and book hotels, they come back and they book homes. Hotels are making homes stronger. While hotels still represent a single-digit percentage of nights booked, hotel nights are growing approximately three times faster than our homes business. There's a lot of growth ahead of us.

Finally, I want to share an update on our event strategy. Many events, major events help strengthen the Airbnb brand, while driving both supply and demand. I will remind you that Airbnb started to provide housing for events. Housing for events is in our DNA. These major events introduce millions of people to Airbnb, encouraging more people to become hosts, and help cities welcome more visitors without building new hotels. While bookings from any single event may be temporary, the brand awareness, the trust, and new hosts these partners create benefit our business long after the event ends. The World Cup is one example of this strategy. As an official tournament partner, Airbnb hosted millions of people during the tournament, many first-time guests. More than 150,000 homes across host cities were listed on Airbnb for the first time, creating new economic opportunity for locals.

It didn't stop with just the World Cup, because we are expanding this playbook to other events, including the Olympics, the Tour de France, Art Basel, Lollapalooza, LaLiga in Spain, and most recently, NASCAR. When you put it all together, I think there's a bigger story this quarter. The story is this: there was no single product, there's no single partnership or initiative that explains our results. It's a combination of stronger execution, a world-class team, and an innovation model that is accelerated by AI. This is what's creating the momentum across our business. There is no silver bullet. We believe it's one of the reasons we're outperforming our largest peers in travel. It's also evidence that the changes we've made over the last several years are paying off.

Those changes are rooted in the way we build and operate the business, we believe that momentum will continue through the coming quarters. It's given us so much confidence in the second half of this year, that that's why we're raising our guidance. With that, I'll turn it over to Ellie to share more.