Topic

ABNB

A collection of 28 issues

Thoughts on Last Week

Programming Note: I will take tomorrow off as I have some family commitment. I will be back on Monday. Ouch! Last week was quite terrible for MBI portfolio. I will share some thoughts on how I am thinking through the portfolio behind the paywall. In addition to “Daily Dose” (yes,

Why AI Is Unlikely to Kill OTAs

Online Travel Agency (OTA) stocks such as Booking and Expedia both reacted very positively yesterday after The Information reported OpenAI’s retreat from direct checkouts. From The Information: OpenAI is scaling back its plan to introduce shopping directly inside ChatGPT, marking a change in its high-profile effort to put checkouts

Booking vs Airbnb's 4Q'25, Booking's Response to Existential Question

Now that both Booking and Airbnb reported its 4Q’25, I will first compare and contrast their respective quarter through different KPIs. Then I will discuss some key takeaways from the call behind the paywall. In addition to “Daily Dose” (yes, DAILY) like this, MBI Deep Dives publishes one Deep

Airbnb 4Q'25 Update

Programming Note: I will be traveling with my family for the next three days. Hence, I will take some time off, but will be back on Tuesday next week. Earnings for most internet or SaaS stocks these days appear to be just another event for these stocks to go further

Spotify's Teachable Moments

Spotify launched its premium subscription plan back in 2009 and it took them nearly a decade to reach the milestone of 100 million premium subscribers back in 1Q’19. It took them 16 quarters to add the next 100 million premium subscribers. As they are set to reach 300 million

Some thoughts from last week

Phew! What a week. I will share some thoughts behind the paywall. In addition to “Daily Dose” (yes, DAILY) like this, MBI Deep Dives publishes one Deep Dive on a publicly listed company every month. You can find all the 64 Deep Dives here. Subscribe

Airbnb: Inbound Headwinds, AI Moat Question, and a CTO Shakeup

The travel industry has received some not-so-encouraging news in the last couple of days. First, Skift reported that international travel to the US went down for eight consecutive months. Overall overseas visitation to the US fell 2.5% in 2025. With this year’s Football (Soccer) World Cup in sight,

Adobe and Airbnb

Yesterday, I stumbled onto this time-series chart of Adobe and Airbnb’s EV to LTM Gross Profit (GP) multiple. I thought it was quite interesting that they trade at almost the same LTM EV/GP multiple. While Adobe consistently grew gross profit at low double digit rate, Airbnb used to

My experience on Airbnb Experience: Part 2

My first Airbnb Experience can be found here. One of the benefits of living in Sacramento is it’s just two hours driving distance from both San Francisco and Lake Tahoe. You can basically organize a day trip to see mountains, beach, or forest and you only have to pay

Behind the scenes: Airbnb vs Booking

A subscriber from Thailand recently reached out to me and let me know that he has experience of hosting his home through Booking.com, Airbnb, and Agoda. He was gracious enough to allow me access by making me a co-host. It was intriguing to observe these platforms through the eyes