The stock never attained the peak it reached post-ipo (only this month it's gotten close), while Booking Holdings roughly doubled in the same period.
The sentiment online seems to be against them (or at least in my bubble). Poor customer service and overprotected hosts seem to be recurring issues.
Booking Holdings generates more revenue and profit from having more products in more markets, and was underpriced rather than overpriced in 2020. People moan about them at least as much as AirBnB, but ultimately people moan about their websites or policies because they're using them...
With hotels being the same price, or cheaper, they are just easier. They have the basics reliably covered, if there is an issue they have a staff ready to take care of it, no extra cleaning fees, room service, etc.
For a whole house with 10 people, maybe AirBnb makes sense. As a hotel room replacement, I don’t even bother looking anymore. As soon as people started buying places just to rent out on AirBnb, that was the beginning of the end. It was no longer people renting out an extra bedroom for extra pocket change, it was landlords trying to turn it into a full time business, wanting hotel prices for motel service.
Airbnb falls in an interesting category of business. It had the first mover advantage of getting into a market segment which was not regulated and not available for general public. Its a great option in some cases, benefits the economy in areas where regular hotels are not available.
However they do not have anything additional to offer on the top of what they are already offering so far. In other words their services, attractions segment did not get enough attention from the users that the users would pay money for it.
Secondly and most importantly, even though they had an advantage of getting into unregulated market which worked fine for hosts and guests alike, the local and government bodies are trying to get their fair share of taxes from all this transaction. This just increases the costs. On the top of it the big players are investing into Airbnb rentals (big businesses managing rentals) and trying to maximize their profits by any means which is making the whole experience worse for the value of money.
So it's good when it works, and can ruin your trip otherwise. I have no use for that range of outcome.
2. To the degree the market is efficient the peak IPO era price must have been dumb money.
3. AirBnB is an attractive alternative to hotels for a limited set of use cases and users and what it sells is a fungible commodity (no differentiation on location, service, convenience, or price with VRBO, etc.).
4. Market regulation. Citizens have used democratic processes to limit short term rentals and beyond that, pre-existing lodging regulations regarding safety and sanitation and nuisance have been applied.
5. The supply of hosts is limited by cost-of-doing-business.
Customers have plenty of time to browse and look for alternatives. So competing in the market with price or service is much easier. Thus capturing the whole market is much harder. In general it is lot less sticky marketplace.