US Airbnb Usage Will Drop 60% This Year

Airbnb usage is projected to fall 60 percent to 17 million US users this year, according to a report by eMarketer.

The short-term rental service site experienced negative user growth as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2019, the homeshare platform logged 42.2 million users.

“Airbnb has seen a significant decline in users because of the pandemic,” said Eric Haggstrom, eMarketer forecasting analyst at Insider Intelligence. “However, it is expected to outperform the travel industry as some people will continue to travel.”

Haggstrom elaborated that travelers may choose to stay closer to home and may seek out Airbnb instead of traditional hotels. The trend of travelers staying close to home and preferring to shelter-in-place has affected property owners on Airbnb, who have transitioned properties from daily and weekly rentals to seasonal vacation rentals.

The dropoff in users is industry-wide, as the homesharing economy as a whole also declined since last year, with 58.1 million users in 2019 followed by a 59.9 percent drop to 23.3 million users in 2020. Airbnb holds a majority of the homeshare market with 72.9 percent of users, but this share is expected to drop to just under 70 percent in the next two years.

The rebound for Airbnb began in May, three months after the pandemic hit the US in March, as states re-opened and Airbnb markets recovered quickly. However, the occupancy rates in Airbnb units were still down 38 percent from the previous year.

The eMarketer report predicts that the number of Airbnb users in the US will recover to levels similar to those numbers prior to the pandemic by the start of 2021.The report also estimates that the United States will begin economic recovery in late 2020 and see a “widely available vaccine” in 2021. For Airbnb property owners, the eMarketer prediction stays optimistic with users rebounding to 42.2 million in 2021 and growing steadily to 47.4 million by 2023.