管理層發言
Good afternoon, and thank you for joining Airbnb's earnings call conference call for the fourth quarter of 2025. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded and will be available for replay from the Investor Relations section of Airbnb's website following this call. I will now hand the call over to Andrew Slabin, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, and welcome to Airbnb's Fourth Quarter of 2025 Earnings Call. Thank you for joining us today. On the call, 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 fourth quarter of 2025. These items were also posted on the Investor Relations section of Airbnb's website. During the call, we'll provide some brief opening remarks and then spend the remainder of time on Q&A. Before I turn it over to Brian, I'd like to remind everyone that we'll 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. We urge you to consider these factors and remind you that we undertake no obligation to update the information contained on 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. And with that, I'm pleased to turn the call over to Brian.
Thank you, Andrew, and good afternoon, everyone. I appreciate you joining us today. I'll begin with a brief overview of our Q4 results, followed by a deeper look at the factors driving these results, as that's where the real narrative lies. In Q4, we achieved impressive results overall. Our revenue increased by 12% year-over-year, reaching $2.8 billion, surpassing the upper limit of our guidance. Gross booking value rose by 16% year-over-year to $20.4 billion, marking our highest growth quarter in over two years. Additionally, the number of nights and seats booked grew by 10%, making it our most robust quarter of the year. However, the key takeaway is the momentum we are building. In a market, reaccelerating growth isn't as straightforward as just pushing the gas pedal; it’s akin to steering a cruise ship. It requires time and discipline, and the results aren’t always immediately apparent from one quarter to the next. The growth you're witnessing didn't occur by chance. It's a product of the intentional path we've undertaken over the last few years. Let me explain further. Airbnb experienced rapid growth leading up to our IPO, quicker than we ever expected. We were like a company designed to be a two-story house, but after going public, we wanted to continue growing. However, you can't arbitrarily add more floors to a house that wasn't built for it; you need a stronger foundation. Therefore, we rebuilt our technology platform and restructured the app incrementally. Over recent years, we enhanced nearly every aspect of the experience for both guests and hosts. But reinforcing our foundation was just the start; we needed to innovate more rapidly as well. When reflecting on what fueled Airbnb's early success, it wasn't merely the concept; it was our approach. In our early days, Joe, Nate, and I would meticulously analyze every detail in our apartment, quickly determining what worked and doubling down on those successful strategies. This cycle of focus, learning, and scaling propelled our initial growth. As companies expand, they often struggle to maintain that speed and focus. So, two years ago, we resolved to recreate that same innovative spirit within Airbnb, but on a global scale, forming what we called Project Hawaii. We assembled a small team with a clear mission: simplify the process of finding and booking a home on Airbnb. We started with minor adjustments to address the challenges in booking, like enhancing search filters and refining the booking process. Once those changes proved effective, we scaled up our efforts. We improved conversions from highly interested visitors to long-term users through straightforward website prompts fueling more app downloads. We made our search functionalities more adaptable, enabling guests to discover homes that would have otherwise gone unnoticed, resulting in even more significant impacts. Eventually, we tackled larger initiatives, such as completely reworking the checkout process to make bookings more straightforward and intuitive. These are just a few of the hundreds of enhancements the team has rolled out, which have generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue in 2025 alone. We expect Project Hawaii will yield hundreds of millions more this year. Once we recognized this successful template, we began deploying it across the company. I will now highlight four areas where the Hawaii innovation framework is fostering growth. First is pricing. Hidden fees are a significant source of friction in travel. Therefore, we established a pricing team with a mission to simplify and make pricing more transparent. The initial major step was displaying the total price upfront to guests, making us the first major travel platform in the U.S. to do so. This transparency in pricing was just the beginning; we launched numerous updates for more flexible cancellation policies and improved pricing tools for hosts. These changes compounded over time. We then implemented a significant initiative, Reserve Now, Pay Later, allowing guests in the U.S. to book eligible stays without any upfront payment. The immediate response was notable, driving a surge in bookings in Q4, particularly for larger, high-priced homes. We are now broadening this initiative to new markets, highlighting its critical role in the strength we are experiencing in Q1. We anticipate that pricing strategies will generate revenue this year comparable to that of Project Hawaii and will continue to serve as a robust tailwind for years to come. Our next focus is supply. Most of our supply growth is organic, with hosts approaching us directly. However, we've also developed a supply engine that allows us to be specific about our growth strategies. A prime example is how we strategically capitalize on major events. For instance, in preparation for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, we added over 40,000 listings. We're applying the same strategy as we prepare for the 2026 FIFA World Cup across 16 cities in North America. Concurrently, we're enhancing quality; we've removed more than half a million low-quality listings, while high-rated listings, which are the best offerings on Airbnb, increased by 30% from 2024 to 2025. In Q4, these high-rated listings accounted for nearly half of all bookings on Airbnb. We're also leveraging the Hawaii model for international growth. While Airbnb operates in almost every country, about 70% of our revenue comes from just five. This presents a significant opportunity, and we are unlocking it by focusing deeply on a select number of priority countries. Brazil exemplifies this approach; a few years back, it was a smaller market for us, but after allocating a dedicated team, we introduced features that resonate with the Brazilian audience, such as interest repayments and localized payment options, while also capitalizing on cultural events like Carnival. We've invested in local marketing efforts to enhance our relevance, with fantastic results. Brazil ascended from a top 10 market to a top 5 market on Airbnb. In Q4, it became our second largest source of first-time bookers, only behind the U.S. This demonstrates the effectiveness of combining global strategy with local execution, a method we are applying to our top priority markets across all regions. Lastly, we are adopting the Hawaii model for new business ventures. We launched services experiences globally in May, but to scale effectively, we are taking a city-by-city approach, starting in Paris for experiences and Los Angeles for services, where we are seeing excellent outcomes. We're also beginning to experiment with new offerings like grocery delivery and airport pickup to enhance the travel experience from the outset. To expand our offerings further, we're bringing boutique and independent hotels onto the platform, ensuring guests can find all types of accommodations on Airbnb, regardless of their preferences. While it’s still in its early stages, the potential in the hotel sector is substantial, and we intend to provide more details on our strategy later this year. However, the core idea isn't merely to develop isolated businesses; they all contribute to a more extensive vision: the Airbnb trip. We present a unified app and brand, where each aspect of the journey enhances the others. There are multiple entry points into Airbnb and various ways to increase bookings. A guest might use our services or experiences to uncover a home for their trip, or they might reserve a hotel for business, then come back to book an Airbnb for a family vacation. Each piece of the journey strengthens the others. The final element propelling our efforts is AI. We've taken a very strategic approach here. While many companies hastily add chatbots to their apps, we focused initially on solving our most challenging issue: customer support. We created a custom AI agent trained on millions of our support interactions, which is already resolving a third of support inquiries without requiring a live representative, significantly speeding up resolution times. This system is currently live in North America, and we plan to expand its availability globally. But this is just the beginning; we are designing an AI-native experience where the app understands users, assisting them in planning their entire trips, enhancing their business capabilities, and improving our company’s operational efficiency at scale. This strategic direction is a major reason we appointed Ahmad Al-Dahle as our CTO. Ahmad is recognized as one of the top AI experts globally, having spent 16 years at Apple and previously leading the generative AI team at Meta responsible for developing Llama models. He is skilled at merging substantial technical capabilities with exceptional design—exactly how we aim to revolutionize the Airbnb experience. This approach also serves as our strongest defense against disintermediation. A simple chatbot might provide a list of homes, but it can't offer the unique characteristics found on Airbnb. A chatbot lacks our 200 million verified identities, our 500 million proprietary reviews, and the ability to communicate with hosts—something that 90% of our guests do. It cannot deliver global payment processing, customer support, or insurance. By integrating AI throughout the Airbnb experience, we believe we are creating something that is nearly impossible to replicate. Hence, you can understand our enthusiasm for the upcoming year, reflected in our guidance. We anticipate revenue growth will accelerate to at least low double digits in 2026, with adjusted EBITDA margins remaining stable year-over-year. Furthermore, we expect to achieve this without the need for massive capital investments. We don't own homes, we aren't managing experiences, and we're not constructing data centers. Instead, we focus on identifying small successes and scaling them effectively. This is why we have been able to generate free cash flow at nearly 40% of our revenue and have accrued nearly $19 billion in cumulative free cash flow since our IPO. This capacity enables us to reinvest in our business while bolstering our balance sheet and maintaining healthy margins. While we can't predict every quarter with complete accuracy as we look to 2026—given the various factors affecting travel such as currency fluctuations, macroeconomic conditions, and global events—what we can control is the pace of our innovation. Ultimately, that is what leads to sustainable growth. In summary, we've restructured vital components of the company, embraced a new innovation blueprint, and now, we're experiencing increased momentum. This progress is no accident; it is the outcome of our exceptional team working cohesively toward shared goals on a global scale. I would like to extend my gratitude to everyone on the Airbnb team listening today—our business is stronger because of your efforts. Now, I will hand the call over to Ellie for a closer look at our financials.
Thanks, Brian, and good afternoon, everyone. As Brian just shared, we're seeing increased momentum in our business. I'll start with Q4 financial results, and then I'll cover our outlook for Q1 and the full year 2026. Q4 was a great quarter for Airbnb. Gross booking value grew 16% year-over-year to $20.4 billion, driven by strong growth in both bookings and price. Nights and seats booked increased 10% year-over-year, an acceleration from Q3 with strength seen across all regions. By region, Latin America grew in the high teens. Asia Pacific grew in the mid-teens. EMEA accelerated in the high single digits, and North America grew in the mid-single digits. Now going into the quarter, we expected a tough comp given a particularly strong Q4 in 2024. And as the quarter played out, we saw a slightly better macroeconomic environment than anticipated. But more importantly, our product roadmap delivered material lift to the business. As Brian shared, we've been steadily making it easier to find and book a home on Airbnb. In Q4, a few updates in particular helped drive our acceleration. The launch of Reserve Now, Pay Later, updates to our cancellation policies, and the beginning of our migration to a simplified fee structure. Reserve Now, Pay Later saw significant adoption among knowledgeable guests in Q4. It's also led to longer booking lead times and a mix shift towards larger entire homes, especially those with four or more bedrooms, contributing to the increase in ADR. And as Brian mentioned, given the positive results, we've decided to roll it out to more guests globally and to cross-border stays in the U.S. Our updated cancellation policies and simplified fees also contributed to both NIKE and GBV growth in the quarter. As a reminder, beginning in October, we started simplifying our fee structure, which we believe will help our hosts price more competitively. We began migrating our API host to a single service fee and now plan to migrate more hosts in 2026. Hosts on a single service fee can adjust their prices to maintain the same net earnings while guests continue to see the full price upfront. In total, we estimate these three features delivered over 200 basis points of growth in NIKEs booked and roughly 300 basis points of growth in GBV in Q4. In 2026, we'll continue iterating to simplify pricing, improve transparency, and help our hosts stay competitive. Now turning to our Q4 financials. Revenue was $2.8 billion, up 12% year-over-year and exceeded our guidance, driven by the impact of our product updates. In terms of profitability, we generated $786 million of adjusted EBITDA, representing a 28% adjusted EBITDA margin, also exceeding guidance. Finally, net income was $341 million, negatively impacted by roughly $90 million of one-time non-income tax. For 2025, our full-year effective tax rate was 20%, including one-time discrete items that increased our provision for income taxes in Q3. Now starting in 2026, we expect the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to materially reduce our effective tax rate to the mid- to high teens, primarily due to how foreign earnings are taxed, which will benefit our consolidated earnings. Next, to our balance sheet and cash flow. We continue to generate significant cash in Q4, delivering $521 million of free cash flow. In 2025, we generated $4.6 billion, representing a free cash flow margin of 38%. At the end of Q4, we had $11 billion of corporate cash and investments as well as $7 billion of funds held on behalf of our debt. Our strong balance sheet allowed us to repurchase $1.1 billion of our common stock in Q4, up from $857 million in Q3. And in 2025, we repurchased $3.8 billion of our common stock using over 80% of our free cash flow. Returning capital to shareholders remains a key component of our capital allocation strategy. Since introducing our share repurchase program in 2022, we've reduced our fully diluted share count by about 9%. Now let's shift to our Q1 and full year 2026 outlook. We're encouraged by the momentum we've seen so far this year and excited about our roadmap to drive growth in 2026. In Q1, we expect to generate revenue of $2.59 billion to $2.63 billion, representing year-over-year growth of 14% to 16%. This includes an approximate three-point FX tailwind after factoring in our hedging program. We expect gross booking value to increase in the low teens year-over-year, driven by high single-digit growth in nights and seats booked and a moderate increase in ADR due to price appreciation and FX. On profitability, we expect Q1 adjusted EBITDA margin to be approximately flat year-over-year. And for the full year 2026, we expect year-over-year revenue growth to accelerate to low double digits with an ambition to grow even faster than that. While FX tailwinds should fade as the year progresses, we're encouraged by healthy demand and execution across our growth initiatives. We're also excited about major events this year, including the Winter Olympics happening now in Milan and the FIFA World Cup coming this summer. Cities continue to look to Airbnb to help meet demand around large events, and our global supply positions us well to support that demand. Overall, we believe continued progress against our product optimization pilots and new offerings, together with broader macro conditions will support incremental growth in 2026. And finally, across the full P&L, we're continuing to drive efficiencies in our platform. We plan to reinvest most of these efficiencies into marketing, product, and technology to support our growth. As a result, we expect our 2026 adjusted EBITDA margin to be stable year-over-year. And to close, 2025 was an exciting year, and I'm incredibly proud of what the team delivered. We're carrying that momentum into 2026 with an ambitious set of goals. We'll continue strengthening our core business while accelerating innovation to drive growth. And with that, I will open it up to Q&A.
分析師問答
I guess AI is the topic du jour, and you gave some helpful remarks about why the AI bots today can't match what Airbnb does. But given the sort of speed of innovations going on, why do you think those AI platforms couldn't launch a short-term rental platform over time? And maybe secondly, do you see any risk that you'll have to share your economics with an AI platform at some point going forward? Or do you expect you'll be able to retain the same level of direct traffic you have today in an AI world?
Yes, it's a great question. Let me start by saying that what constitutes Airbnb goes far beyond just the app you see. We have a comprehensive host app that has been developed over 18 years, and we process over $100 billion in payments through our platform. Customer service poses significant challenges for us; we don't have specific stock-keeping units to manage, and we must facilitate communication among people who speak different languages. We provide insurance and protection for everyone and perform extensive verification. Ninety percent of our customers send a message when booking, and messaging requires a verified ID. We have 200 million verified IDs in our system, surpassing the number of U.S. passports in circulation. Most of our unique listings can only be found on Airbnb. We're continuously expanding our offerings and believe people will want to consolidate them into travel itineraries they can access on their phones. I think chatbot platforms will play a role similar to that of search engines, serving as effective discovery tools. In fact, we've observed that traffic generated from chatbots converts at a higher rate than that from Google. It's important to note that these AI models are not exclusive; the models used in ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and others are accessible to all companies. This means that soon, any company could transition into an AI platform. We can build with the same models used by others, and we believe that specialization will be critical in the travel sector. If someone is seeking an Airbnb or planning a trip, we can leverage the same models they use, further train and refine them based on our interactions, and connect them with our customer support and hosts. This belief has driven us to hire Ahmad Al-Dahle, an expert in AI who developed one of the notable models. Our goal is to create a team that transitions our company towards becoming more AI-native. For chatbots or AI companies to thrive, it's not necessary for others to fail. I don't believe one company will dominate the entire space; collaboration will allow us all to succeed. Companies can be significant sources of top-of-funnel traffic for Airbnb, just like Google.
Okay. I wanted to ask one on the Asia region. NIKEs growth was still strong at the mid-teens and mid-teens, but did moderate from recent quarters. I know it's your smallest region, but I was hoping you could talk to what drove the slowdown and how you think about the growth opportunity in Asia Pacific over time. And second, I was curious on the services and experiences, have you seen any signs that they're helping you acquire new customers that you can convert to accommodations given that over half of your experiences weren't attached to an accommodation bookings.
Let me start with the Asia question. So when we look at our performance in APAC from a destination perspective, overall growth has been, I would say, relatively stable over the course of 2025. That being said, we see a tremendous amount of opportunity in terms of future growth for the region. What I would say in terms of APAC is that, obviously, there are different pockets in terms of where we have seen substantial growth. As you're probably aware, we have relatively high levels of penetration in Australia, which we factor into that number, whereas we're relatively nascent in some of the, I would say, continental countries, in particular, places like India, Southeast Asia, Korea, et cetera. What we shared in the letter is that we're seeing nice performance in those markets that we have begun focusing on. So in particular, what I would call out is domestic Japan. That's a market and segment that we began our expansion playbook back in Q4 of '24 and have seen some nice results. Second, I would call out India, which we mentioned in the letter, a huge market where we are seeing really substantial growth. So 50% growth in the last quarter, very strong, and we see opportunities to accelerate that growth in '26. So the broad story in APAC is stable. We are seeing some very positive signs in particular markets that we're leaning into, and it's the focus of our international markets expansion strategy going forward. Second question. Yes. I mean what we called out in terms of the dynamics of where we are finding experience booking, the call-out in the letter that we provided is about 50% of our experience bookings today come from guests that are unattached to a homes booking, meaning they are not already staying with us in a home and therefore, attached to the trip an incremental experience. They may be staying in a hotel in that market. They may not be traveling at all. And what I would say there is it's a very exciting opportunity for us in a couple of forms. One is it provides a new segment of guests that we can, in the future, convert to home guests. It also gives a sign that with these new products and offerings, we have the opportunity to have a higher frequency guest usage beyond just a big trip. For example, something that we see in Paris is that there's been a really nice uptick in terms of, in particular, our Airbnb original experiences by local Parisians, which tells us that, that category of inventory, albeit highly differentiated, is a great opportunity for us to attract global crowds to our app.
Yes. I think one of the things that I called out in my opening remarks is we're seeing a lot of momentum about getting new offerings off the ground and piloted. And our basic idea is it's not dissimilar from Amazon in the late '90s, where they started as a book retailer. The unifying idea of Amazon, though, probably was the cardboard box. In other words, everything that you could send in a cardboard box. And so you could send all these different things, and they added one category at the other. I think the unifying idea for us is the trip. We take a very broad definition of the trip, including 30-day stays and even longer. But there are so many different components that we can offer. And the basic idea is we want every new offering to be strong enough to stand alone, but better together. And so the hotel is a great example. There are some people that only stay in Airbnb. There are some people that only stay in hotels. Most people are somewhere in the middle, and some trips are better in Airbnb and then some trips, if you need a last-minute stay, you're traveling for business, you're doing more night, it's really good for hotels. So we think that all these components can make the overall offering better. There's a lot of synergies.
I guess can you give us a sense of how Reserve now, pay later cancellations have been pacing relative to your expectations, perhaps particularly in the face of weather disruptions in the first quarter? And then how you're thinking about baking in cancellation expectations to your full year adjusted EBITDA guide? And then secondly, in the past, you've talked about how AI search will preclude your deployment of sponsored ads. Can you maybe just unpack that a bit more and explain how AI search particularly may help you bring sponsored ads to market a bit more quickly?
So first, on the question of Reserve now, Pay Later and the impact of cancellations. If we stack up for a moment, before we launched Reserve Now, Pay Later in the U.S. back in the summer of 2025, we extensively tested the product to ensure that by the time the cohorts opting into the product had reached their check-in date that it was net beneficial to the business, meaning that the growth in bookings was larger than the net increase in cancellations before check-in. We're doing that level of testing for each incremental segment. We are considering expanding Reserve Now, Pay Later out to ensure that the net benefit is obviously positive for the business. What I should say is that in the segments that we have launched this offering, the cancellation curves have been very close to what we saw from a tested perspective. And so we feel frankly quite good about the progress and the performance of that offering. In terms of its impact over the full year, obviously, there is a bit of a pull forward in terms of when people make their bookings, but we are already absorbing the elevated level of cancellations from that product. I think one piece of perspective is that in terms of the aggregate nominal increase in cancellation rate, it's approximately 1%. So an average of maybe 16% cancellation rate historically going to 17%. It's obviously higher within the cohort that chooses that product, but it's not hugely material relative to the broader cancellations on the platform. Final thing I would just note on Reserve Now, Pay Later, as we've called out, it is lengthened lead times, which we think is good from a competitive perspective. And second, it has a modestly positive impact in terms of increasing ADR as consumers who don't need to extend a huge purchase on their credit cards are more likely to choose a slightly higher listing.
Yes. Concerning AI search and its effect on sponsored listings, I've received numerous inquiries about this in earnings calls. It's important to clarify that after the launch of ChatGPT, traditional search is evolving into conversational AI search. Our goal is to develop AI search and understand its functionality. If we decide to implement sponsored listings, we'll tailor that ad unit accordingly. Our primary focus is on AI search, which presents the most immediate opportunity. Interestingly, we are currently conducting tests; AI search is live to a very small percentage of traffic. We are engaging in extensive experimentation, and our approach to AI involves rapid iteration rather than large-scale launches. Over time, we aim to make AI search more conversational and incorporate it into various stages of the user journey. Ultimately, we will consider sponsored listings as a consequence of this development, but our initial aim is to perfect AI search.
Brian, maybe to go back to that last question on AI search. Maybe as you sort of another bigger picture one. As you sort of sit here in early 2026, if we're sitting here a year from now, what are the areas you're most focused on or seeing improvements to the platform using AI this year? That's one. And then two, maybe one just on the P&L impact. Any help at all on how you're thinking about the impact on gross margins from increased AI investment this year versus last year?
Yes, I can address both questions. I'll begin with the second one. A key advantage of Airbnb is our efficient innovation model. Unlike many companies, we don’t have substantial capital expenditures. Consequently, our investment in AI won't influence our profit and loss statement. You likely won't notice it reflected there. Moving on to the first question, looking ahead a year from now, if our AI initiatives succeed, we anticipate significant advancements in several areas. First off, in customer service, nearly 30% of tickets in North America that use English are currently managed by AI agents. A year from now, we expect a much higher percentage of tickets to be assisted by AI across numerous languages where we have live agents, and AI will support both chat and voice interactions. This could be transformative because it would reduce our customer service costs while enhancing service quality, allowing for rapid responses and higher productivity from AI-assisted agents. Additionally, our engineers will become much more efficient, with over 80% currently using AI tools, and we aim for that to reach 100%. However, it's important to consider the company's culture—whether it operates like a startup and adapts fluidly to the evolving AI landscape. I believe Airbnb is the most adaptable in our sector, designed to move swiftly rather than like a large, slow-moving ship. This adaptability is one reason we hired Ahmad Al-Dahle; we aim to lead in AI innovation, especially compared to companies not built on AI. We also expect to integrate AI into the booking and listing processes. Although I can't provide a specific timeline given AI's unpredictability, we aspire to be pioneers in AI-driven search and conversational search within e-commerce. This is challenging not only in travel but across all e-commerce platforms due to the visual nature of commerce. Text-based chatbot interfaces often fall short because they require comparison and multitasking between tabs, necessitating innovation in user interface design. We'll also leverage AI for easier space listings. In conclusion, if we succeed, a year from now, AI in customer service will include voice and chat support in all languages and cover more ticket types. It will significantly enhance our innovation pace and position us as an AI-native company compared to others in our industry, ultimately improving the experience for both guests and hosts.
This is Dae Lee on for Doug. I have two. First of all, looking at the 2025 revenue acceleration guide, could you help us think through the acceleration drivers across the core markets, expansion markets, services, and perhaps any tailwinds from major events like the World Cup and Olympics? And are you anticipating any top-line benefits from some of these AI innovations that you discussed?
Certainly. When considering the growth outlook for 2026, we are factoring in the momentum from the recent launches that contributed to our Q4 results. We expect these will positively impact our revenue at the start of 2026, and we plan to build on them. In addition to the initiatives I've mentioned, we are focusing on several growth opportunities, including increasing our supply, expanding into new markets, and pursuing other key projects. In the latter half of the year, we will be comparing ourselves against the launches from Q4, but we plan to have additional growth factors throughout the year to help sustain that growth. Regarding major events, we are currently experiencing the Milan Olympics and are looking forward to the FIFA World Cup this summer. While these events are significant on our platform, they represent a small fraction of our overall business. Nonetheless, we see these events as beneficial in the quarters they occur, primarily through increased brand awareness, driving additional supply in those markets, and enhancing our brand’s reputation by associating with widely cherished global events. Historically, we've observed that guests aware of our partnership with the Olympics have a more positive perception of our brand. Therefore, there are many reasons we engage in these partnerships beyond just their immediate financial impact. As for AI contributions, as Brian mentioned, we are currently piloting AI search, but we have not included any anticipated benefits from that initiative in our forecasts.
Firstly, regarding hotels, when we communicate with hotels and connectivity partners, we receive a positive response about collaborating with us, but there also seems to be some challenges with the connectivity APIs and managing multiple rates. There appears to be considerable friction currently. Are you planning to enhance or rebuild those connectivity layers? Additionally, what other initiatives are you implementing to establish a solid foundation for hotels? Secondly, looking at inventory expansion, whether that involves more mainstream hotels or experiences, it seems that embracing a more mainstream approach could significantly increase the total addressable market. Brian, what are your thoughts on incorporating more of this type of content on the site while balancing the uniqueness of our offerings against the need to reach larger segments of the market? I would appreciate your perspective on this.
Yes, that's a great question. I often refer to Amazon as a solid example for us. They began with books and became known for that category before expanding into many others. Our strategy follows a similar path. To answer your question, yes, we are broadening our focus. We're expanding in accommodations and also beyond just places to stay. One reason we can do this is that AI enables us to personalize offerings. Some users come to Airbnb exclusively looking for unique homes. Before AI, our personalization was less advanced, which might have made it surprising for them to see a hotel. Now, we can tailor the experience; those who prefer Airbnbs will see just those, while those who want hotels will eventually only see hotels. If someone is booking last minute at night, we will suggest a hotel. Conversely, if a family of five is booking in Italy, we’ll show them a home. It all comes back to personalization—the more personalized we are, the more variety of inventory we can provide. This ties into our larger strategy. Our previous approach to hotels was that they would fill gaps when homes were booked and occupancy was high. Now, we’ve developed a broader, more comprehensive strategy. We’ve discovered that many guests enjoy booking both homes and hotels. We even promoted the idea that some trips are better suited for Airbnb, while others are better for hotels. If a trip is last minute, short in duration, or for business, a hotel could be the ideal choice. Additionally, we're concentrating on boutique and independent hotels, which make up a significant portion of the hotel inventory globally. These establishments align well with the Airbnb ethos and are far from niche, representing a large percentage of the total hotel market. Feedback from these hotels shows they are excited to join another platform, appreciate their local missions, and value the merchandising approach. As we intensify our efforts with hotels, not only do we tap into a vast market of hotel options, but it also reinforces our offerings in homes.
Great. So Brian, can we revisit the halo effect that you might have seen following the Paris Olympics and how that might have helped you from either an awareness or greater user, I guess, experience or comfort perspective and how that might ripple through after the World Cup here in the United States? And Ellie, even at the low end of your revenue guidance to keep margins flat, you have to figure out a way to spend some $800 million more year-over-year. So just wondering where the larger spend buckets are going to be for this year.
Let's begin with the Paris Olympics and its potential implications for the World Cup. The Paris Olympics significantly benefited our business, not only in Paris but throughout France and globally. Events provide an excellent opportunity for us to increase our supply, often through everyday individuals listing their homes, which are frequently exclusive to Airbnb. This approach is compelling and mirrors how we began Airbnb, focusing on offering housing for events. Our platform was designed with this in mind from the start. Interestingly, many people have no intention of being hosts full-time. However, when an event occurs in their town, they may decide to list their property for a week to earn some extra income. This experience introduces them to hosting, and many end up enjoying it enough to continue. For example, 40,000 individuals who listed their homes in Paris remain active hosts, which has been incredibly impactful for us. From a policy perspective, Airbnb can transition from being perceived as a problem for cities to being viewed as part of the solution. Large events often bring accommodation challenges that hotels cannot meet, providing us with a chance to demonstrate our value to cities. Events create a unique opportunity to experience Airbnb and foster cultural exchange. The World Cup is particularly exciting as it spans three countries, allowing us to engage with key markets beyond the U.S., including Toronto and Mexico City, both vital to our growth. We anticipate the World Cup will have a significant impact. Currently, the Milan Olympics is underway, benefiting not only Milan and Northern Italy but also enhancing our relationship with the Italian government. We believe our strategy can extend beyond just the World Cup and the Olympics to also include smaller events like Lollapalooza. We can approach various local events, and this scalable event strategy is one of the most effective ways for us to recruit new supply, which is central to our growth at Airbnb.
Let me address the second question regarding EBITDA. When we consider the construction of the 2026 profit and loss statement compared to 2025, it's clear that the initial costs associated with revenue and support will increase somewhat proportionally with revenue growth, though we expect to gain some efficiencies. The additional investments aimed at driving growth will primarily focus on sales and marketing, especially our go-to-market initiatives. This includes our efforts to acquire supply, not just for homes but also for experience services and hotels. Additionally, we plan to further enhance our investments in product development to accelerate our pace of innovation. More generally, regarding the 2026 profit and loss statement, as indicated in our opening remarks and the letter, our goal is to boost the top line while maintaining stable margins compared to last year, which gives us the flexibility to invest in achieving that growth. We take pride in the level of profitability we have historically attained, and our current emphasis is on accelerating growth within those strong, stable margins.
Brian, in your prepared remarks, you talked about app improvements and obviously improving supply. Are you seeing any improvement in repeat rates or customer service scores? Or what kind of feedback are you getting on that? And then, Ellie, maybe you could talk about the U.S. room night growth. It definitely has got back to mid-singles. What's your outlook for that as we look forward?
Yes, I can start by saying that one of the key observations we've made is that the repeat rate for Airbnb largely hinges on guest satisfaction. The primary focus is on ensuring the guests are satisfied, followed closely by the quality of the homes, and if any issues arise, the effectiveness of customer service plays a crucial role. That's why our emphasis is on host quality. With guest favorites now making up about half of our bookings, the overall quality of trips, which we monitor, has improved significantly, leading to greater satisfaction and stronger repeat usage. I believe this is a key factor behind our recent growth acceleration. Additionally, our customer service is at its best level since the pandemic, according to our Net Promoter Score, which is showing strong momentum. This improvement is not solely due to the team's efforts but also reflects the enhanced management of our marketplace and our rigorous supply management practices. Our efforts in quality control have resulted in the removal of over 500,000 listings through guest favorites. We take quality control very seriously, and with our top-tier customer service supported by AI, we expect further advancements in this area. Overall, this has been a significant advantage for us.
Speaking to the U.S. or more broadly North America, certainly, at the beginning of '25, so Q1 and Q2, the growth in that region was quite modest, low single digits. We're excited to be able to accelerate that in Q3 and then once again in Q4. That is a byproduct, I think, one of a slightly stronger macro, but more importantly, the product changes that we have discussed in the letter and on this call. I would say heading into '26, we continue to see great momentum for North America at large, and it is one of the underpinning points of our optimism around '26.
I have two questions. First, when do you believe hotels will be large enough to significantly impact revenue growth? Could this be a reason for the revenue growth acceleration we’re seeing this year? Secondly, can you elaborate on the take rate dynamics in Q1? What should we expect based on your guidance? While your revenue growth appears to be accelerating compared to Q4, your room night growth seems to be slightly slowing or remaining constant, and your bookings growth, excluding foreign exchange, is also slightly decelerating. Is there a reason for an increase in the take rate in Q1 that has contributed to the accelerated revenue growth?
Sure. In terms of hotels, as of Q4, hotels made up a single-digit percentage of total nights booked but are growing at nearly double the rate of the overall platform. It will take some time for this business to scale to significantly contribute to growth, but the current momentum is strong. We plan to expand hotel supply throughout the year and aim for hotels to represent a larger percentage of the overall business by the end of 2026. Regarding the take rate expansion in Q1 and the notable growth compared to Q4, several factors are at play. First, the impact of Average Daily Rate (ADR) and foreign exchange (FX), which we highlighted in the letter, is expected to provide a strong boost in Q1 of nearly 3 percentage points. Additionally, we are benefiting from earlier booking lead times in Q4 that will translate into revenue in Q1. The implied take rate is expected to be slightly above where we were in Q1 of last year, mostly due to timing factors. Another minor aspect to consider is that Easter this year falls on April 5, which means we won't see as much of a quarterly fluctuation as in previous years when Easter's timing significantly affected Q1. However, we expect it to contribute approximately 50 basis points of extra revenue in Q1 and reduce revenue by 50 basis points in Q2.
Just, I guess, going back to hotels. And I get how the company was built, unique supply. But can you just talk about why not lean into more brand hotels just because it could give the user and open up more supply and potentially bring in more new users to the platform?
Yes. I mean, we're a large percent of the hotels are boutiques and independent. And we want to just start there. We're not saying what we will or will not do in the future, but we think that we want to like just start with a huge number of boutiques and independents that are typically paying a higher commission than the chain and have been really aggressive with us reaching out saying that they would love to have another channel. So that's our starting place. We're not saying where we're eventually going, but this is where we're focused right now. So we're focused on our top markets in the world where there's a proliferation of great boutiques, great independence. We have more than 100 hotels in New York with more than 20,000 rooms available on the site just in New York City alone.
Great. I wanted to ask about the new all-in commission structure for PMS connected host. What are some of the benefits you're seeing from that change? And could you see Airbnb moving all of its hosts over to that structure longer term?
Yes. So I think you're probably aware of our historical structure. The business was set up with a dual fee structure where there was a 3% host fee and then a variable guest fee on top of that. What we found over time is that, that dual fee structure makes it difficult for hosts to effectively price their listing. It's frankly a little bit complicated. And in particular, for those listings that are cross-listed and in particular by property managers, it often leads to incorrect pricing, meaning what the guest sees is not what the host intends. And in many cases, that means that a listing can sometimes be more expensive on Airbnb when it's cross-listed somewhere else. So from the migration that we completed back in October, which was to migrate all of our API-connected hosts to the single service fee, we've seen great results. Number one is we obviously very delicately manage the communication with our hosts to ensure that they did not perceive this as a fee increase. And in making the migration, what we found is that many of the hosts did not take up their rate. Instead, the effective ADR to guests came down modestly, which obviously you can conclude is really great from an affordability perspective as well as elasticity and that is the reason that has been a driver or contributor to growth in Q4. We are currently piloting in certain countries a further migration for our individual hosts, again, from the dual fee structure to the single service fee. We think a more expansive migration, number one, allows it to be easier for the host to understand what they should price. It allows us to make sure that we are pricing all of our listings competitively. And we also think it's a foundational move that will allow us to, one, be more dynamic with our pricing tools as well as our fees.
First, could you discuss your vision for loyalty and how it integrates across the various products and services you plan to offer on the platform? It hasn't been mentioned much in this call, and I apologize if I overlooked it. Secondly, referring to the shareholder letter where you mentioned Project Y regarding the speed of decision-making and new product releases, will this influence your approach? You've been following a bi-annual schedule for product releases, whether for consumers or hosts. How might your recent experiences with more efficient decision-making shape future product releases?
Yes, I'll address the second question first and then move to the first. We will continue with biannual product releases, but our approach will be different. Last May was a unique opportunity to rebuild our platform, transitioning our app from a home base to one where users can book any part of their trip. As a result, everything in the app has changed. Moving forward, we won't wait for a scheduled release to implement changes; we're now deploying updates continuously. We will still have a release in May to showcase our developments, but we won't hold back any features. As soon as they are ready, we will roll them out. May will serve as more of a marketing showcase for the improvements users can expect in the summer. This approach allows us to share our progress regularly with guests, hosts, and shareholders. While we believe that these releases are an effective way to communicate our story, we won't wait for them to make updates; we'll do it as soon as they are ready. In today's fast-paced environment, consistency and iteration are essential. Regarding the loyalty aspect, I want to highlight our performance without a loyalty program and sponsored listings. We believe loyalty could significantly boost our growth. We are actively exploring this and, as I've mentioned, we're not aiming to create a basic points program but something much more distinctive. We are currently testing various benefits for the loyalty program. The outcome of these tests will inform our final package before we launch the program. That covers the last question. Now, I'll move to closing remarks. I appreciate everyone joining us today. I'm very proud of what our team at Airbnb accomplished in 2025. We have established a blueprint for innovation that we’re applying company-wide, and this is reflected in our results. As our momentum grows, we believe the opportunities ahead are even greater than what you see now. I look forward to connecting with you next quarter. Thank you.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.