Key facts
- Chesky said a very non-material number of Airbnb's nearly half a million daily bookings come from Muse or Instinct.
- Chesky said traffic from AI agents peaked in early October and had not increased since.
- Airbnb said it posted its fastest revenue growth in three years and was back in growth mode.
- Chesky said Airbnb plans to begin rolling out its own AI agent in the first half of next year.
- Chesky said 80% of travelers report enjoying the time they spend planning trips and 90% of Airbnb users message the host.
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said on the company's third quarter earnings call on November 5 that AI agents including Meta's Muse and Instinct AI are generating little traffic and even fewer bookings for the home rental platform. Of the nearly half a million bookings Airbnb handles each day, he said a very non-material number come from those agents, and traffic from agents peaked in early October and had not increased since.
Chesky said he does not see AI agents as a threat and compared them to Google as a way for more people to discover Airbnb. He said general-purpose agents are not the best option for booking travel and that people will increasingly turn to specialized agents, which is why Airbnb plans to begin rolling out its own travel-specific AI agent in the first half of next year.
Airbnb beat Wall Street estimates and reported a 19% year-over-year revenue increase for the quarter, saying it posted its fastest revenue growth in three years and was back in growth mode. Chesky said 80% of travelers report enjoying the time they spend planning trips, 90% of Airbnb users message the host, and most of the platform's traffic comes during work hours from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Executives at Booking.com and Expedia also said on earnings calls during the week that AI agents had so far resulted in very little traffic, and DoorDash CEO Tony Xu said the prior week that third-party agents had generated several hundred orders in total.