Airbnb Doesn't Foresee Loyalty War With Expedia

Just days after Expedia Group touted record growth of its loyalty program and said it's a long-term driver of retaining high-value guests, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said that type of points-based program isn't in the cards for his company.

During the company's fourth-quarter and full-year 2022 earnings call, Chesky said he doesn't consider travel booking platforms Expedia and Booking.com as Airbnb's sole competition. Airbnb has a lot of competitors in a lot of different categories, he said. On a fundamental level, he doesn't see the need for a loyalty arms race to drive bookings.

We generally have a slightly different approach to distribution where we think just continually innovating our product is great, he said. The best loyalty program is building a product people love so much they want to come back. We don't have to pay them to come back."

Airbnb's most recent earnings showed continued strong travel demand, with strong-enough performance to avoid the wave of layoffs and cuts that have hit almost all other major players in the tech industry. The company reported $1.9 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter and $8.4 billion for full-year 2022.