We’ve long been curious about Airbnb's (ABNB) market valuation relative to Booking.com (BKNG). In 2026, the Street estimates ABNB’s revenue and EBIT will hit $16.5bn and $4.9bn, respectively. At a current $105bn market cap, ABNB trades at ~21x 2026 EBIT.

ABNB is selling the same amount of rooms as BKNG did in 2013-14 albeit at very different unit economics. In 2014, BKNG sold 346m room nights with a 15% take rate, 40%+ EBIT margin, and generated $2.5bn+ in FCF.

Source: BKNG 10-K, In Practise
Source: BKNG 10-K, In Practise

Last year, ABNB sold 301m room nights with a 12.8% take rate and generated over $1bn in FCF net of SBC. To meet Street estimates, assuming a constant take rate, ABNB needs to compound room night growth at 18.1% to 691m nights in 2026. As we can see from the numbers above, this is a similar 5-year growth rate as BKNG achieved from 2014.

Source: ABNB 10-K, In Practise
Source: ABNB 10-K, In Practise

Given ABNB enjoys 90% direct traffic and BKNG and EXPE spend over 30% of revenue acquiring new customers, a 30%+ EBIT margin in 2026 is not unreasonable.

However, the big question we have is around ABNB’s room night TAM with individual hosts.

We’ve explored this question in various interviews including with a Former Google Travel Search Director, Former Homeaway Board Member, and recently the Former Head of Global Operations at Airbnb Experiences.

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