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Comment by aliston | Hacker News Reader

The seesaw in revenue over the last 3 quarters is insane: 841M, 334M, 1.3B in Q1, Q2, Q3. They even posted a profit last quarter. I've gotta say, the S1 looks appealing considering how few profitable silicon valley companies there are these days. On the other hand, I have a hard time interpreting whether this is truly a profitable company since the numbers are all over the place.

It also looks like Q3 tends to be their best quarter by far. Is that because of summer vacations?

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Compared to something like Snowflake, Airbnb's business is very seasonal (most people travel during summer & holidays), so there is always some seesaw even on good years. NYE is the most popular night of the year.

Q2 saw all travels being cancelled due to lockdown across the world. It's surprising the activity bounced back this quick, back to normal in Q3.

Widespread supposition is that AirBnB does better than hotels lately because: 1) when people do travel, they'd rather be at a single apartment or cabin than a many-person hotel (not saying that's well-founded, just that it's a widespread opinion) 2) some people who are now remote working decided that if they couldn't do anything in this city, they would live elsewhere for a little while.

I have, however, no hard data to back up if these are actually the reasons.

The CDC recommends AirBNB style vacation rentals over staying at a hotel or even with family while traveling: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/travelers/travel-r...

Yeah, it's hard to say how the numbers work out overall. But, if I were to travel at all over the next few months it would almost certainly be to a place with a kitchen (and preferably someplace separate) so I didn't need to go to restaurants for every meal or mingle generally. Certainly, couldn't find AirBnB for fall time off I was considering.

Also, when going to restaurants is impossible or a real pain due to COVID, having a full kitchen in your accommodations is very nice.

It's the same reason home sales are strong right now -- when you spend almost all your time at home, space is nice to have, especially for people with children. Not sharing walls with neighbors is also nice.

I'd bet that an AirBnb is normally a bit cheaper than a hotel suite with multiple rooms and a real kitchen.

Good point; I personally know people who were very zealous self-isolators, who bought and moved into a new house. It doesn't make much sense to me epidemologically (I'm pretty sure they used movers), but it makes sense psychologically as a way to change the scenery.

People still travel within their own country instead of abroad

It’s similar to what you see in the broader stock market - I mean we closed at all time highs today.

But Q3 was likely an anomaly since they saw a lot of tailwinds from greater demand for homes in driving distance for easier summer vacations plus Covid was only concentrated in a few hot spots over the summer.

Now Covid is more widespread plus there’s naturally less leisure travel in the winter and still very little rebound in business travel.

Still, I think long term the biggest issue is not rebounding demand, which I think will happen, but regulatory issues. Lots of questions and scrutiny around their impact on local housing and rental prices and safety issues related to home rentals for parties.

Plus a home has less exposure for COVID than a hotel.

I would also guess that long term bookings are up

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