By Aishwarya Jain and Doyinsola Oladipo
Aug 6 (Reuters) – Vacation rental company Airbnb beat second-quarter revenue estimates on Thursday, helped by strong global demand for travel and a boost from first time users during the FIFA World Cup hosted in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.
Travel companies, including online agencies Expedia and Booking, have benefited from the recently concluded World Cup. Airbnb noted that its North American bookings during the second quarter recorded the highest growth in almost three years. Shares of the San Francisco-based company rose 10.8% in extended trading.
“We’ve delivered some of the strongest results in years,” Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said on an earnings call. “More new guests are trying Airbnb than we’ve seen in years.”
Globally, nights and seats booked, a metric that includes both room stays and service bookings, rose 10% to 148.3 million in the quarter. In North America, which made up over 40% of its revenue in 2025, quarterly bookings rose by a “high-single-digit” percentage.
The World Cup and growth in markets such as Brazil and India have helped the company partially offset pressure from the Iran war, which has hurt long-haul international travel through flight re-routings and higher jet fuel costs. Airbnb said it has also observed a steady recovery of demand in the Middle East.
Since last May, the company has broadened its platform to include services such as private chefs and car rentals, and thousands of boutique hotels, signifying a continued move beyond its original rental focus.
The company said as it expands into new areas of service, there are a lot of merger and acquisition opportunities. “We have quite a lot of cash, we generate a lot of cash, entrepreneurs would love part of Airbnb and to hold stock, so I think there’s a huge number of opportunities for us,” Chesky said.
Investors and analysts have closely watched Airbnb’s expansion efforts, as the shift moves it toward a more conventional online travel agency, potentially increasing its competition with heavyweights such as Booking, Expedia and Tripadvisor.
Chesky said the company’s transformation is just beginning and that after becoming a one-stop shop for travel, Airbnb would go “from traveling to living” and in its third phase, go to “other ways for people to connect” on its platform.
Airbnb’s hotel nights booked grew nearly three times faster than homes, though it still represents only a single-digit percentage of total nights booked, the company said.
It expects 2026 revenue to improve “at least mid teens”, compared with a range of “low to mid teens” forecast earlier.
The company posted earnings per share of $1.37 for the quarter ended June 30, compared with $1.03 a year ago.
Quarterly revenue was $3.61 billion, up from $3.1 billion a year earlier. Analysts, on average, estimated revenue of $3.57 billion, according to data compiled by LSEG.
(Reporting by Aishwarya Jain in Bengaluru and Doyinsola Oladipo in New York; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar and Rod Nickel)
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