Can Airbnb really be worth more than Marriott?

(Image credit: © Airbnb)

Shares in home rental platform Airbnb “more than doubled” when the company started trading on the Nasdaq last week, says Dominic Rushe in The Guardian. Initially priced at $68 a share, the stock surged to more than $150 at one point, ending the first day of trading at $144.70.

This means that the company, founded in 2008 when the cofounders rented out air mattresses in their San Francisco apartments, is worth around $100bn, twice the value of Marriott, the largest hotel operator.

It’s no surprise that investors are bullish, says Jim Armitage in the Evening Standard. Airbnb may not “have the first clue about how to fold a doily”, but it does offer the “biggest, cheapest, perhaps quirkiest selection of rooms to sleep in across the world” and has used “brilliant technology” to do this “quickly and easily”. Even Covid-19 won’t hold it back. With “millions – perhaps hundreds of millions” of people “just desperate to travel”, demand “will bounce back like we’ve never seen before once the vaccines take hold”. What’s more, customers are likely to prefer somewhere “where as few people as possible have been congregating”.

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Investors need to calm down, says Lex in the Financial Times. It’s true that travel trends “are on Airbnb’s side” amid “persistent wariness” over “crowded hotels and planes”. Still, remember that the company is currently losing money, which means that it will need to “keep a lid on costs” at the same time as it needs “outlandish growth” to justify its “lofty valuation”. As a result, “investors seeking a bargain should stay at home”.

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Alex is an investment writer who has been contributing to MoneyWeek since 2015. He has been the magazine’s markets editor since 2019.

Alex has a passion for demystifying the often arcane world of finance for a general readership. While financial media tends to focus compulsively on the latest trend, the best opportunities can lie forgotten elsewhere.

He is especially interested in European equities – where his fluent French helps him to cover the continent’s largest bourse – and emerging markets, where his experience living in Beijing, and conversational Chinese, prove useful.

Hailing from Leeds, he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford. He also holds a Master of Public Health from the University of Manchester.