Airbnb announces 500m guest arrivals

After 10 years in business, Airbnb has officially served half a billion guests in over 191 countries and 81,000 cities around the world. According to the accommodation platform, three guests check into an Airbnb listing every half-second. Although the company was not officially founded until 2008, co-founders Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia consider their first three guests to be Michael, Kat and Amol, who rented Chesky and Gebbia’s personal residence in 2007.

“These guests can now choose from 6m homes, yurts, treehouses, boats and more, scattered across six continents, as well as over 25,000 experiences available in over 1,000 cities. And today, Airbnb is proud to celebrate a new milestone: since our founding, half a billion guests have checked in at Airbnb listings worldwide,” said Airbnb in a post.

Additionally, the platform revealed that since its launch in 2008, hosts have now earned $65bn in revenue from listing their properties. Some of the most well-known Airbnb hosts are Peter, who owns a castle in Ireland, and Kitty and Michael, who rent out the popular Mushroom Dome in Aptos, California.

“Hosts Kitty and Michael have been hosting guests in the Mushroom Dome since 2009, when it became one of the first Airbnb listings located outside a city. Since then, it has amassed nearly 1,300 reviews, with guests coming from all over the world to stay in its cozy, 100-square-foot confines,” said the post.

75 cities around the world have hosted 1m or more guests, including Auckland, New Zealand; Mexico City, Mexico; Cape Town, South Africa; Havana, Cuba; Split, Croatia; Chongqing, China; and Busan, South Korea.

As of 2018, over half of Airbnb hosts are women, over 1m hosts are 50 and older, and more than 400,000 hosts are over the age of 60. Almost 70 per cent of all Airbnb guests in the past three years have been 40 or younger, and millennials around the world have accounted for over $31m spent on bookings.