Good afternoon, and thank you for joining Airbnb's earnings conference call for the second quarter of 2022. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded and will be available for replay from the Investor Relations section of Airbnb's website following this call. I'll now hand the call over to Ellie Mertz, VP of Finance. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon and welcome to Airbnb's second quarter of 2022 earnings call. Thank you for joining us today. On the call today, we have Airbnb's Co-founder and CEO, Brian Chesky, and our Chief Financial Officer, Dave Stephenson. Earlier today, we issued a shareholder letter with our financial results and commentary for our second quarter of 2022. These items were posted on the Investor Relations section of Airbnb's website. During the call, we'll make brief opening remarks and then spend the remainder of time on Q&A. Before I turn it over to Brian, I would like to remind everyone that we will be making forward-looking statements on this call that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements due to a variety of factors.
These factors are described under forward-looking statements in our shareholder letter and in our most recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We urge you to consider these factors and remind you that we undertake no obligation to update the information contained on this call to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. You should be aware that these statements should be considered estimates only and are not a guarantee of future performance. Also, during this call, we will discuss some non-GAAP financial measures. We've provided reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures in the shareholder letter posted to our investor relations website. These non-GAAP measures are not intended to be substitutes for our GAAP results. With that, I will pass the call to Brian.
All right. Thank you, Ellie, and good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining. Our Q2 results demonstrate that Airbnb has achieved growth and profitability at scale. From a growth perspective, we exceeded 103 million nights and experiences booked. Now, this was our largest quarterly number ever. Revenue was $2.1 billion, up 58% from last year, or 64% excluding foreign exchange. Gross booking value was $17 billion, up 27% from last year, or 34% if you exclude foreign exchange. Now both revenue and GBV were 73% higher than Q2 2019, significantly outperforming the travel industry. Now from a profitability perspective, we had our most profitable Q2 ever. Net income of $379 million was a nearly $700 million dollar improvement from Q2 2019. Adjusted EBITDA was $711 million.
This represents a 34% adjusted EBITDA margin, which is significantly up from the 16% margin in Q2 2021, a -4% in Q2 2019. Finally, we generated $795 million of free cash flow. This is a $1.1 billion improvement from the nearly $300 million cash burn two years ago at the depth of the pandemic. Over the last 12 months, Airbnb generated $3 billion in free cash flow, nearly $3 billion, and ended the quarter with nearly $10 billion in cash. What explains this transformation in our business? Well, first, our business model is adaptable. We have nearly every type of space in nearly every location, so however travel changes, we can adapt.
Regardless of the economic environment, our guests come to Airbnb because they can find great value and our hosts can earn extra income. Second, we relentlessly innovated while all still staying focused and disciplined. When the pandemic began in 2020, we made some incredibly difficult decisions. We significantly reduced spending, making us a leaner and more focused company. We've kept this discipline ever since, allowing us to keep the hiring and investment plans made in the beginning of the year. Airbnb is well-positioned for whatever lies ahead. In fact, we're so confident in our long-term growth and profitability that today we're announcing a $2 billion share repurchase program. This is coming only a year and a half after our IPO. Now returning to our Q2 results. Our strong financial performance is driven by a number of positive business trends.
First, guest demand on Airbnb is as high as ever. In Q2, we surpassed 103 million nights and experiences booked, marking our highest quarterly number ever. Now despite broader macroeconomic concerns, we still saw a 25% increase in nights and experiences booked compared to the quarter of 2021. Now, early in Q2, strong guest demand exceeded our expectations. This was because guests in Europe and North America booked earlier than they have historically. Now, given this earlier booking, growth rates compared to last year decelerated in May and June. Since the end of Q2, what we've seen is growth in nights booked re-accelerate from June to July as we enter peak travel season. Second, guests continue to return to cities and cross borders.
In previous quarters, we've talked about how we saw significant growth driven by surges in domestic travel, as well as travel to rural destinations. Now these trends continue, but we're also seeing guests returning to cities and crossing borders above pre-pandemic levels. Third, guests continue to stay longer on Airbnb. They're not just traveling on Airbnb, they're now living on Airbnb. We saw long-term stays of 28 days or more remain our fastest-growing category by trip length compared to 2019. Long-term stays has increased nearly 25% from a year ago. Actually, long-term stays have increased almost 90% since Q2 2019. Fourth, guest demand is driving growth of our host community. We continue to see the strongest supply increases in areas of greatest demand, with non-urban active listings up 50% compared to Q2 2019.
As demand is returning to cities, we're also seeing an increase in total urban supply. We believe the upgrades we introduced last year, including our new host onboarding flow and AirCover, are supporting this growth. We're not stopping there. You're gonna see some exciting new product features to recruit the next generation of hosts later this year. Finally, I'd like to share a few highlights from the 2022 summer release. In May, we introduced Airbnb Categories. Since launch, listings in Airbnb Categories have been viewed more than 180 million times. Through Categories, we are distributing guest discovery across more destinations and dates. Now we also introduced AirCover for Guests. Since launch, the Net Promoter Score for guests that had an issue with their stay has already improved.
In the rare instance where a host cancels, AirCover has led to 10% more rebookings. To recap, we achieved significant milestones this quarter with our results. Nights and experiences booked were our highest ever. Revenue and adjusted EBITDA were records for Q2, and free cash flow was $795 million. In the last 12 months, we generated nearly $3 billion in free cash flow. Now, before I go to questions, I want to talk about an update on my co-founder, Joe Gebbia. Last month, Joe announced that he'll be stepping back from his full-time operating role. Joe will continue to serve on the board of directors of both Airbnb and Airbnb.org. Airbnb is a founder-led company, so he's gonna continue to take a role at Airbnb, and this will be as an advisor to Nate and me on future concepts and creative culture.
You know, since the beginning, Joe has always been focused on big ideas to help others. He's our uncompromising true north, so it will be fun to be able to spend more time with him on dreaming up new ideas, just like the early days. As I reflect back on the last 14 years together, I just can't believe how lucky Joe, Nate, and I have been. You know, if anything had just gone a few degrees in a different direction, I wouldn't be doing this call with you right now. That's how fragile ideas are, and it's what gives me gratitude to know Joe and Nate. What I'm most thankful for is that we're still together, still meeting every Sunday, 14 years after we started. We built a dream together, and now, after all these years, we still continue to dream. Thank you, Joe.
With that, Dave and I look forward to answering your questions.
If you'd like to ask a question, please press star then one on your telephone keypad. Our first question is from Lloyd Walmsley with UBS. Your line is open.
Thanks a lot. Two questions if I can. First, just, you know, it looks like room nights and experiences booked grew a little bit sequentially less in 2Q this year than it did in 2019. Similarly, the guidance looks like it's calling for a little bit slower sequential growth. Just wondering if there's anything you'd call out, that's behind that. Then, secondly, can you give us an update on what you're seeing around just how people are using the platform post some of the new search and discovery innovations this summer? You know, are you seeing demand move into a wider dispersion of areas or, you know, any changes in conversion rates? What are early learnings from some of those innovations this past summer? Thanks.
Yeah, thank you very much. Dave, why don't you take the first question about Q2, Q3 growth, and I could talk a little bit about how the launch of Airbnb Categories has affected how people use Airbnb.
Yeah. Sorry. You know, our Q2 gross nights, you know, before the cancellations, they came in actually above our internal expectations. You know, we did see some elevated cancellations in the back half of the quarter relative to our forecast. We believe that some of the elevated cancellations related to flight cancellations around the world, but it was mostly in North America towards the end of Q2 2022. We were just seeing strong overall, you know, nights and growth. The 25% year-over-year growth in nights and experiences, we feel very confident in. Having the same results for Q3, we also feel quite good about. We're just seeing strong demand for guest travel all around the world.
Just to answer the second question, just to give a little bit of background, you know, for decades, travel searches work the same way. There's a box, a search box, and you are asked to enter a location. The problem with that is that Airbnb is in 100,000 locations all over the world, and so people can't think to type in 100,000 destinations into a search box. People miss millions of unique Airbnbs they would have never known to search for. The reason this is important, as you asked, is because we think that Categories, Airbnb Categories can allow us to point demand to where we have supply. This, I think, is one of the really big opportunities.
As I said, since release, listings in Airbnb Categories have been viewed over 180 million times. We've also seen that guests are now showing more flexibility with their dates and their destinations than before. For example, a typical search, properties are 30 miles further apart than they would have been before. We are seeing search radiuses increase. Additionally, we are seeing more people continue to use the flexible dates feature. We believe our theory is working. Airbnb Categories allows us to highlight what makes us unique. It allows us to point demand where we have supply. I also think it helps us be in the inspiration business, where people can start to travel on Airbnb.
Okay, thank you.
Our next question is from Mario Lu with Barclays. Your line is open.
Great. Thanks for taking questions. The first one's on new initiatives. If we look at the third quarter guidance, seems like bookings is expected to contract by, you know, more than 10 points in 3Q, versus 2019 versus the second quarter. Does that change the timing or focus on these other new initiatives, such as experiences, or are more resources now, you know, being focused back on the core business?
No, I mean, we have a very consistent strategy, and our strategy is, number one, we wanna unlock the next generation of hosts. We have 4 million hosts on Airbnb, and I think that millions more could turn to hosting, especially during these economic times. That, I think, is really priority number one. As we add more hosts, we continue to grow. We want Airbnb to be the ultimate host to our guests and hosts. That's why we offered AirCover, and continue to provide better service all over the world to continue to up-level. You know, guests aren't just traveling Airbnb, they're now living on Airbnb, and so we wanna continue to offer more opportunities for them to travel and live on Airbnb. We are still focused on our core business. That is the priority for us.
We are also continuing to invest in long-term stays and other initiatives, and most importantly, providing an incredible service that people love. I would also just say, and again, we're feeling really, really solid and good about Q3.
Yeah. I'll double click on Brian's comment. Yeah, I mean, we do really feel good about the stable bookings in Q3. I mean, in particular, given we have long lead times that we're seeing some pull forward for summer travel here in Q2, and just the broader economic conditions overall. You know, If you look at our gross booking value growth versus 2019, you know, Q1 was 73%, Q2 was 73%. We're just seeing, you know, strong gross booking value growth relative to 2019. To see further kind of quarter-over-quarter acceleration, we'll just need to see continued recovery in Europe and APAC, which remains significantly depressed.
Great. Just to follow up, speaking of APAC, you guys mentioned that, you know, the domestic business is shutting down in China, which I believe you guys said was around 1% of your business. Is there any other color you can provide in terms of the P&L impacts from shutting that down and any color on how large the outbound bookings for China is? Thanks.
Dave?
Yeah. I mean, the China business has been a small part of our business overall. I mean, it's had less than a 1% impact on our revenue. One of the things that has been important in us getting out of the domestic business in China is maintaining a focus on what we think is the most valuable and important part of China, which is the outbound business. Really what we've done is we've shifted all the resources that we're applying and splitting between both domestic and outbound travel. We focused all that on outbound, which we think is the greater prize and the most important part for the long term.
Until, you know, China has their COVID policy kind of in place and allowing people to kind of travel outbound from China, it will kind of remain to be depressed. As, you know, as that evolves and Chinese travelers travel again, we think that will be a nice unlock for our Asia Pacific business. It's not gonna have a material impact on our P&L.
Great. Thanks, Dave.
Our next question is from Bernie McTernan with Needham & Company. Your line is open.
Great. Thanks for taking the questions. ADRs are hanging in there better than feared, I believe. Still expecting them to be up year- over- year. Can you just talk through some of the puts and takes, you know, demand-driven pricing versus mix shift?
Dave?
Yeah. If you kind of rewind to what we've seen with ADRs back at the beginning of the pandemic, all of the increase was driven by mix, right? It was the initial resurgence of the travel for North America, whole home, non-urban. Over time, we've seen mix become less and less a part of the increase in the ADR. Here in both Q1 and Q2, what we've seen is that, you know, ADRs were up, you know, 40% year over two, you know, three years back to 2019, and about 2/3` of that increase has been price appreciation and about 1/3 , you know, due to mix. You know, we do anticipate that over time, as, you know, more people return to travel to urban, more cross-border, ADRs may moderate.
Yes, as you see, you know, two-thirds of that has actually been price appreciation. It's been stickier than even what we anticipated, you know, maybe six months ago.
Got it. The dip in May and June from the earlier booking windows and then re-acceleration in July, is that re-acceleration for near term bookings in terms of late summer, or is that kind of early bookings for the fall and winter period?
Well, it's a bit of both. I mean, really, we have on the books for Q4 of this year, we have, you know, more nights on the books in Q4, you know, than, you know, relative to the same kind of period a year ago. It's very strong. We're seeing really strong demand in the back half of the year, so we're seeing a bit of both.
Got it. Thank you.
Our next question is from Justin Patterson with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is open.
Great. Thank you. Two if I can. Brian, when you look at hosts right now and just the friction to onboarding, what are you looking to really solve with this upcoming release? Secondly, perhaps for both you and Dave, you've clearly shown a lot of margin progress, free cash flow progress over the next few years. As we think about just the puts and takes between overall growth and showing more margin, more free cash flow generation ahead. Thank you.
Just to confirm, you're talking about with this upcoming release, right? This winter?
Yeah. Well, I mean, it couldbe a little broader in there, of just where the friction point on onboarding is.
That's a great question. Let me— Why don't I answer the first question, and then, Dave, you can talk about margin improvement, and then I can potentially elaborate on that answer as well. You know, we have, as we said, we have 4 million hosts on Airbnb, but we think there are millions more people that could turn to hosting. I mean, honestly, hosting is one of the easiest ways to be able to make money with an asset that you already have. For most people, they don't even have a startup cost, and the majority of people get a booking within the first week.
There are a number of things that we're gonna be doing this fall, this winter and beyond, but one of the most important things we wanna do is continue to make it easier to host. One of the things I wanna highlight that we launched last year was Ask a Superhost. Ask a Superhost pairs our very best Superhost with prospective hosts. This is really cool because basically what it does is it allows our community to help train new community members, new hosts, to come on the platform. That's made a big difference. We're gonna continue to double down on that product. We're looking at some other opportunities to continue to reduce friction. You're gonna see some really cool products to just continue to make it even easier to host.
That's probably the primary thing that we're gonna be focused on this fall. We're also looking at some additional protections for hosts, and just ways to really try to get everyday people with their primary home that wanna host occasionally to host on Airbnb. You know, a lot of people don't realize that the top professions for a host in the United States, for example, are school teachers, they're healthcare workers, they're students. These are the top three kind of professions and vocations in Airbnb. What we really think the big opportunity is to continue to attract regular people to become hosts. We think one of the biggest sources of new hosts are prior guests on Airbnb. 36% of new hosts last quarter were prior guests. This is where we're gonna be focused on.
It's a really big opportunity for us. I think, again, Airbnb was founded during a recession. 2008 financial crisis. People were worried about being able to pay their bills, pay for their homes and their income, and so they turned to hosting. We think a lot of people may turn to hosting once again. This is a big opportunity for us. Dave, if you wanna talk about the margin improvement.
Yeah. Thanks. You know, we're really proud of the progress we made to reduce our fixed costs and make improvements in our variable costs. You know, we've really exercised discipline on our spending here in 2022, and we're gonna continue to do so. You know, while we're thrilled with this margin expansion, we're heavily in growth mode. We are not in profit maximization mode. You know, we really wanna balance profitability with growth. One of the things we're very proud of in Q2 is that we are showing both growth and profitability at scale. We'll continue to invest in growth. We're gonna prioritize things. We'll grow the business over the long haul.
Thank you.
Our next question is from Doug Anmuth with JP Morgan. Your line is open.
Thanks for taking the questions. Just hoping you can talk a little bit about just kind of macro environment and just what you're seeing in terms of consumer activity or types of trips being booked. Also just to get your view on long-term stays. I think you talked about 25% growth year-over-year. Just the trends there going forward. Thanks.
Dave?
Sure. Well, if you start with the macro environment, again, we are, you know, very pleased with our results despite any kind of macroeconomic. You know, we're seeing strong demand here in Q3. As I said, the Q2 nights and experiences grew 25% year-over-year, seeing a similar growth for Q3. You know, our demand in Q4 reservations is really strong, as I mentioned kind of earlier. What we've seen so far is North America and Europe have been our strengths. But we are seeing an uptick in more cross-border and more urban, so those are historic strength areas for us, and we're starting to see those parts of the businesses come back. Ultimately, if you just kind of step back, you just see the resilience of our business overall, right?
You know, that because we have so much different kinds of supply in so many places around the world, we have any kind of place for anyone that wants to travel. There's just so much pent-up demand for travel and just so much demand for travel in general, that people would like to spend money on the experience of travel and getting out of their home more than on, you know, things that, you know, we're just continuing to see that great strength in our business. Then in terms of long-term stays, you know, it continues to be the fastest growing business by tripling. If you look at nights of 28 days or longer, that part of the business is growing faster since 2019 than any other, you know, segment of stays.
Actually, if you kind of sub-segment it, you know, nearly 50% of our nights are of seven days or longer, and which I think, again, you start to stay anyplace seven days or more, and Airbnb is the best way to kind of experience that stay. The long-term stay trend continues to be very solid, you know, growing faster than any other part of the business.
Great. Thank you.
The next question is from Nick Jones with JMP Securities. Your line is open.
Great. Thanks for taking the questions. Two, I guess first, can you just kind of give us an update on the I'm Flexible option and, you know, how that's kind of playing out and what kind of experiences you're able to provide in those markets that maybe are less dense? Then a follow-up.
Yeah, yeah. Nick, I'm Flexible essentially was a product that we launched last year. It really has two components. There's flexible dates that allow people to say, "I'm flexible when to travel." We can say, "I'm really interested in traveling anywhere for a weekend, a week, or a month, anytime in the, you know, the next year." We also had I'm Flexible destinations. We rebuilt I'm Flexible destinations from the ground up, and that became Airbnb Categories. That's the product that has been used or people have seen listings that have been featured in Airbnb Categories over 180 million times since May 11th. This has definitely been like a huge boon for us.
What we're seeing is that people are in fact discovering homes they would've never otherwise seen or booked. We're seeing the search radius widen, by, I think it was 30 mi is what I cited before. The other thing we're seeing is that people are continuing to be more flexible about their dates, so more and more people are using the I'm Flexible dates feature as well. We're really excited about this. I think this is a really big thing that we're gonna be focusing on, and we're gonna continue to be investing in this product. Because I think this is a bit of a paradigm shift for how people will travel.
Not everyone is gonna be flexible about how they travel, but for anyone that's not traveling for business or not visiting family, if you are doing leisure travel, almost by definition you probably have some flexibility. As fewer and fewer people are gonna be required to go into office five days a week, I think this option's gonna be more and more important. Our business model works uniquely for this because we have a lot of unique inventory. It has been used quite a lot, and hopefully that answers your question.
Yeah. I guess a follow-up is, you know, in some of the areas, you know, that are, you know, outside of urban areas, less dense, less, I guess, arguably activities, how are you know, thinking about adding more optionality to make these types of experience more engaging for the guests?
Sorry. Can you elaborate how outside of urban areas?
Like if you're in a rural area, and there's less activities, you know, arguably because there's less population, how are you adding, you know, looking to add more experiences for those guests in those regions?
Oh, I see. Yeah. Well, this is a great question. Number one, you know, Airbnb Categories and the new products we're doing are great ways to highlight really interesting homes in communities you'd never know existed, right? We have like these incredible barns and farm stays and castles and tree houses, and many of these are in towns you've probably never even heard of, most of them. There's another good question is, if you go to Paris, see the Eiffel Tower, but if you go to a rural area, in upstate New York or in California or some other place, what do you do when you're there? We do think Airbnb Experiences are great, you know, obviously for like, places that are not iconic tourism destinations. That's why we're continuing to invest in that product. People really love Airbnb Experiences.
They actually have a higher five-star rating even than homes. I think this is a great opportunity for rural destinations. We have a lot of really popular experiences. Like if you go on a farm, you can do a farm stay, and then you can have interesting experiences on that farm. That'd just be like one example. You know, we have really popular experiences. For example, in Tuscany, you can make pasta with a nearly 90-year-old grandmother who's been making pasta the same way for more than half a century. These are experiences you would've never been able to find. We're really excited about them.
Great. Thanks.
Yeah.
The next question is from James Lee with Mizuho. Your line is open.
Great. Thanks for taking my question. And maybe as we look into FY 2023, obviously we have a lot of economic uncertainties here. If the economy indeed slow down and consumers start to trade down, how do you think that impacts Airbnb's business? And also on the other hand, if you look at expenses, if demand slow down, is there anything in your cost structure you could optimize to offset any potential headwinds? Thanks.
Dave, do you want to take this?
Sure. I think we've highlighted this a bit on the call that, you know, you don't know what the economy's gonna bring, but we do know that Airbnb is resilient to almost any kind of economic shock. As Brian mentioned, we were founded in a recession, and we've obviously thrived in the era of COVID, despite COVID. What we're just finding is that people can come to Airbnb because we have any kind of property, whether it's, you know, a small shared room or a private room to, you know, luxury stays. We have something for anyone depending on their travel needs. Like we saw in COVID, if they can't cross borders, they're gonna stay domestically. They get in the car, and they go down the road.
If air travel gets too expensive, you know, again, they can stay domestically, and they can basically, within their budget, find the perfect place for them because we have such a diversity of types of offerings for them. I think that is one of the things that just gives us this great resilience. Then, you know, in terms of expenses, if the business slows down, I mean, again, we've already made the hard choices. In 2020, you know, we substantially reduced our fixed costs. We eliminated a number of positions. We moved from being divisional to functional. We are a leaner, tighter machine, and we will remain that way. We're gonna continue to grow.
We're growing headcount. You know, maybe high single-digit percentage rates, but that is gonna be able to support us for the very long term, and we're gonna remain very focused and disciplined in our investments. I feel really good about, you know, the position that we're in with our investment model.
Great. Thanks so much.
The next question is from Brian Fitzgerald with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.
Thanks, guys. We wanted to ask about the recovery of supply that you continue to see, maybe particularly in urban areas. Are you seeing hosts who had come off the platform now coming back, wondering how you're making these hosts aware of the increased urban demand and helping to reactivate them and any color there on that, maybe latent supply capacity, if you could. That'd be awesome.
Dave, you wanna take this?
Yeah. A couple notes on the supply growth. You know, we just continue to see strong supply growth. Like, since 2019, you know, our nights and experiences booked, they grew 24% and our active listings have grown 23%. You know, we have over 6 million active listings now, even taking down the domestic listings in China. You mentioned on the urban side, you know, the active listings. Well, I'll start with the non-urban. In non-urban, increased 7% quarter-over-quarter and 16% from Q2 2021. Then, in North America, they've increased 23%. To your specific question, yes, as demand returns to cities, we're seeing a return to growth in the total urban supply.
Exactly right, the people that have properties, they come back onto Airbnb and are ready to host again. I mean, if you kind of step back and think about it, because the vast majority of our hosts are individual hosts, and then therefore the vast majority of their listings are either their primary home or maybe a secondary home, they don't get rid of those, you know, in a recessionary environment or other things. I mean, you know, it's not like a professional host, which may be looking at the pure return on investment on a particular property at a particular point in time. With those individual hosts, when the demand comes back, they come back onto Airbnb, and the listings are there. It's precisely what we're seeing. When the demand comes back, the supply is right there, ready for them to stay.
Awesome. Thanks, Dave. Appreciate it.
The next question is from Mark Mahaney with Evercore ISI. Your line is open.
Okay. I think I'll ask two questions. Just talk about the China outbound market and how you tap into that, how material that's been for you to date. Then on experiences, I know that's you know on that list of long list of things that you've been working on in terms of product innovations, it seems like it's been less of a priority, but is there anything that suggests that it's rising a little bit in your you know list of priorities and that you want to lean into it more aggressively in 2023? Thank you.
Yeah. Dave, why don't you take China? I can expand on the answer, and I'll take experiences.
Yeah. I mean, we're very bullish on China over the longer term. I mean, it's obviously been significantly impacted due to COVID. People are not traveling outbound. I mean, that's actually, right, how we started the business is seeing great outbound travel from China all around the world. I mean, that is still the prize for us to kind of continue to focus on. Right now, APAC is still significantly depressed. I mean, if you look at our overall nights growth, as we've said, it's 25% up from Q2 of 2019. If you exclude APAC, it's actually up 35%. You can see what kind of a drag that has, and I think the re-acceleration, you know, further acceleration of the business from where we're at today, will be benefited by having China outbound come back and resurrecting our APAC business.
Yeah. I would just add to that we have absolutely seen in every other geography in the world that there is pent-up demand. In North America, there was pent-up demand. In Europe, there was pent-up demand. We expect there will probably be a lot of pent-up demand for travel from China outbound and more broadly in APAC. How we've been preparing, well, number one way to prepare for the China outbound business to make sure we have really great supply in the corridors where people in China are traveling to. This includes, like, Japan and Korea, Southeast Asia and beyond. The next thing is just making sure that once people are ready to travel, our product, you know, is continuing to be updated, and we have the marketing campaign ready to go. It's a pretty simple strategy.
The great thing is we don't have to make a lot of changes. We think our product as it is gonna be great once the China outbound rebounds, and we think it will. We expect everything suggests it will, just like every other market. We're pretty excited about that. I think that, you know, in the coming years, this will actually be a pretty important part of our APAC business. Now, with regards to experiences, yeah, I mean, Mark, let me just give a little bit of context. You know, 2018, 2019, experiences was going along pretty well, and we expected that 2020 was going to be a breakout year for experiences. We were gonna focus quite a lot of our energy on it. Then, of course, the opposite happened. There was a pandemic.
We had to pause the business. People were not comfortable gathering in person, let alone meeting strangers. During the depths of the pandemic, we got focused back on our core business. We got back to basics, and I think that explains a lot of the business transformation we experienced, especially now that we've generated nearly $3 billion in free cash flow. That being said, we remain incredibly bullish about the long-term potential of experiences. The average five-star rating for experiences, as I mentioned, is higher than the average five-star ratings even for homes. We just think people need to know more about this product. It needs to be, like, continually integrated into the search flow, and we need to continue to market it.
To answer your question, yes, experiences will become once again a rising priority, and we are making quite a few investments in the product to continue to highlight experiences. I think it's gonna be a big part of our story in 2023 and beyond over really the next five years. I'm really excited about them.
Okay. Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Dave.
Our next question is from John Colantuoni with Jefferies. Your line is open.
Thanks for taking my questions. Last quarter you mentioned an expectation for marketing as a percentage of revenue to remain relatively flat compared to 2021. Is it possible for you to update us on whether or not that's still your expectation, following marketing in the first half coming in a few hundred basis points below last year? I have a follow-up.
Yes. The short answer is we anticipate, you know, marketing as a percentage of revenue in 2022 to be consistent with 2021. A modest increase in the back half of the year.
Okay, great. A second question on take rate. It looks like outlook for the third quarter implies a take rate that's better than what we were expecting and up a decent chunk versus the same quarter in 2019. Any chance you can give us some detail about the puts and takes driving that take rate? Thanks.
Yeah. The underlying kind of if you shifted take rate is unchanged. You know, any of the variation in take rate is just a timing difference between revenue stays versus timing of bookings.
Okay. Thank you.
Our next question is from Stephen Ju with Credit Suisse. Your line is open.
Okay. Thank you. Brian, I think you yourself signed up to be a digital nomad and, you know, joined your employees who can now, I guess, work from anywhere. Is there anything you can share in terms of what you're seeing from the organization overall regarding pickups or declines in productivity or your ability to innovate? Dave, at the time of the IPO, I think you guys had disclosed that the different cohorts of guests were, you know, displaying pretty similar revenue retention as they age. But as we enter the pandemic, you probably had a pretty good influx of new users who signed up to experience, you know, Airbnb for the first time ever. Is there anything you can share in terms of the behavior of the 2020 into 2021 cohorts, you know, relative to what you have seen for the folks who are arguably the earlier adopters? Thanks.
Yeah. Why don't I take the first question on really remote work. In April, we announced that Airbnb employees can live and work anywhere. Why do we do this? Well, there were a couple of reasons. Number one, you know, we had the most productive two years in our company history, and those two years were two years where we rebuilt the company from the ground up, you know, fixed our cost base, accelerated growth, and all this was done on Zoom. It was very clear to me that, like, the most productive we've ever been is on Zoom. I thought, you know, there was no question that we can maintain that productivity. Additionally, you know, I think a really good way to predict the future is to look at what young companies do, right?
20 years ago, young companies had open floor plans, and they had a lot of perks on site, and that became the dominant way that people worked in offices around the world. If you look at a lot of young companies today, they have a lot of flexibility. They're embracing remote work. I think this is a really good leading indicator of what the office space, office place, office, environment of the future will look like in the next 10 years. Now that being said, we do think in-person interaction is really important, but I don't think that requires you to have to come to an office three days a week. The guideline that we've given is we like to gather employees at least one week a quarter.
Rather than kind of coming in every week, we want more meaningful, less frequent interactions and gatherings. Otherwise, we think Zoom is really, really efficient for productivity. The other thing I'll just say is I know a lot of CEOs are kind of nervous about productivity if their employees aren't in an office, but we have a pretty unique way we run the company. You know, we do these two releases every year, and it's a really great mechanism for accountability. You can see the productivity of everyone in the organization because all the work is kind of coming together twice a year to make these really big leaps in the organization. It's actually, in a sense, kind of easier to track productivity when everything is really online. That's something that we're really embracing.
Great. Relative to cohorts, you know, what we're starting to see is, you know, we believe to start with that we have some of the highest guest retention rates in travel. We still, you know, stated that at our IPO, and we still believe that to be true. Our booking frequency remains quite strong. It's getting closer to 2019 levels. As we look at the cohorts, really what we're seeing in 2020 and 2021, the new guest cohorts, they've been actually very retentive, you know, even maybe more so than kind of historical levels, likely due to some self-selection. You know, new guests who join in the years of pandemic are willing to kind of travel now are probably more inclined to kind of travel, you know, than others.
In terms of rebooking rates of past guests, you know, we've seen nice improving rates of those trends, here in 2022 above kind of 2021 levels, but maybe still, you know, a bit below 2019. Again, just given, you know, the nature of self-selection of who's willing to kind of travel at this time.
Thank you.
The next question is from Kevin Kopelman with Cowen. Your line is open.
Thanks. Can you give us a sense of what listings growth looks like ex the China shutdown? Qualitatively, if you could talk about the key drivers and trends you're seeing there in listings. Thanks.
Dave, do you want to take that?
I mean, in terms of the growth, you know, what we've stated is that we're still well above 6 million active listings, even excluding the takedown of the China domestic. You know, as we kind of mentioned, you know, in our results, we're seeing strong listings growth specifically in the areas where, you know, we have the strongest kind of bookings.
Yeah. Did you give the number of China listings?
We have not specifically mentioned the China listings, no.
Okay. Thanks. Just a quick follow-up on the Q2 guide. You talked about slowing later in the quarter, but you were still pretty much where you had guided for nights. Is it safe to assume for the third quarter, you're also assuming some slowdown in the remainder of the quarter?
Well, if anything, what we're seeing is an acceleration of the business here in July and actually kind of a very stable overall nights booked growth for the quarter on nights and experiences booked. I mean, obviously then for, you know, our revenue has a modest decel on a year-over-year basis, but actually could, you know, will be up from kind of year over three years.
Okay. Thank you.
The next question is from Brian Nowak with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.
Thanks for taking my questions. I have two. The first one, just any update on the number of I'm Flexible queries or sort of how big that's gotten? I know that's a number that y'all were disclosing for a couple quarters. Then secondly, you know, there remains to be an ongoing debate about you know how much of the shift toward Airbnb long-term accommodations was sort of you know COVID, and now you're gonna have a mean reversion back toward hotels. What are two or three of the KPIs that you look at that sort of give you confidence that your addressable market of users of the hosts everything has really expanded? Like, what are you seeing on the internal KPIs that you watch now in July and August that give you confidence that you're still gonna have outsized market share growth into 2023?
Dave, do you want to take this?
Yeah. I mean, you know, we've continued to see, you know, just really strong growth in our new guests. You know, obviously looking at our new guests, our new guest retention, which is one of the questions just had, which remains quite strong with people coming back on. We're continuing to see just overall utilization of Airbnb versus hotels. We didn't ever dip as much as hotels did, and we introduced Airbnb to millions of new customers. We see the new use cases. I mean, we've highlighted things like our long-term stays, and use cases where people, you know, aren't gonna wanna be at a hotel for more than seven days.
You know, the portion of our business, nearly 50% that are over seven days, is really helpful in that regard, and over 28 days, you know, is nearly, you know, 1/5 of our business. You know, we look at just the destinations that people are able to kind of travel. The robustness of us, you know, historically have been cross-border and urban, and now what we've seen is great growth in suburban and non-urban. The distribution of the nights around the world, I think that is also giving us, you know, great confidence in the growth of our business overall. Because we don't just tap out. If we were only, say, a vacation rental destination type company, you can tap out in, you know, either supply and even demand in those kind of areas.
We have such a diversity of supply around the world that we're able to continue to grow quite well.
Hey, Brian. Maybe I'll just add a little bit of context. You know, it's good to remember that before the pandemic, our bread and butter was cross-border and urban. Right? That was our bread and butter, was cross-border travel and urban travel. Of course, when the pandemic occurred, that got primarily shut off, and yet our business recovered because people were using Airbnb differently. I think really the key important thing here is that our model is obviously incredibly adaptable. We are in nearly every community in the world. We have nearly every type of space and nearly every type of price point. I think that the reasons that people would use Airbnb will continue to endure. People are looking for value. They wanna they wanna feel like they live like a local.
As more and more people have flexibility and trip length continues to increase, nearly a half of our business is a week or longer, it's prohibitive probably to stay in hotels. There's a lot of new use cases that we think are here to stay. The thing I'm pretty excited about is that a lot of the older use cases, cross-border and urban, are coming back.
That's helpful. Thank you both.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question is from Naved Khan with Truist Securities. Your line is open.
Hi. Thanks. I'm a little surprised by the continued strength in North America and in the U.S. I think you talk about a 37% growth in nights and experiences versus EMEA maybe at 25%. Is it just that EMEA continues to lag or, you know, just from everything that we've been hearing, it seems like EMEA saw like a burst of demand in the second quarter. Just trying to reconcile that.
Dave?
Yeah. I mean, EMEA is still lagging behind the acceleration that we've seen in North America. We think that is actually one of the opportunities for, you know, future acceleration of the business. I mean, clearly things like, you know, the impact of the war on Ukraine certainly has had an impact. You know, there's obviously the economic impact of, even just foreign exchange rates, you know, lower euro and British pound relative to the US dollar. You know, there are some reasons why Europe's been lagging. It's still a strong business for us. It's still doing well, but it could even do better.
Maybe just as a follow-up. If I have to think about the back half and the advertising channels, do you see opportunity to increase the branded ad spend, or you think you're pretty much maxed out and might just stay around these levels?
Well, again, I think we have a modest increase in our overall marketing spend in the back half of the year. We're very happy with the approach to our brand spend. I mean, again, if you step back, one of the big strengths of Airbnb is our ability to market to both guests and hosts at the same time, to be able to bring guests, you know, with 90% of our traffic remaining direct or unpaid. You know, I think this brand strategy, frankly, it's more of a product marketing strategy that we have to market the features and capabilities that we have at Airbnb and what makes us different, has been a huge strength for us. Yeah, we're really happy with that investment. We think we're investing fully at the moment there.
We will look over time to maybe expand the countries that we're doing more of that investment. You know, later this year and into early next year, you could see us expanding into more countries, 'cause we're seeing such good success with our investment right now.
Thank you.
The next question is from Jed Kelly with Oppenheimer. Your line is open.
Hey. Great. Thanks for taking my question. Two, if I may. Just one, on the non-urban listings, it continues to grow well and you're adding a lot of supply. Can you sort of touch on where the share gains are coming from? Like, where those listings are coming from? Is it coming from people not using their second home as much and going back to, you know, more urban destination, or are you taking more share with property managers, or are you opening up with new destinations? Then my second question just relates to overall seasonality this year. It seems like the room nights is falling a consistent, you know, seasonal trend as 2019. So should we expect a similar 4Q seasonality as 2019? Thank you.
I can at least answer the first non-urban listings at a high level, and Dave, you can answer maybe more specifically and also talk about seasonality. Hey, Jed. At the highest level, I would say that one of the things that we've seen is that we have a global network where the fastest-growing markets from a supply basis are typically the fastest-growing markets from a demand basis. This is not surprising, because the number one source of hosts are prior guests. Specifically in non-urban listings, it's not a uniquely different composition. It's not like it's a lot more property managers or anything like that. It's pretty consistent composition from years prior.
The vast majority of listings are individuals, but there are also property managers that are continuing to come on the platform. We're also seeing people continue to open up more nights on their calendar. You know, as demand goes up, people are often motivated to add more availability on their calendar. Also, as people get more business, they tend to tell their friends about it. This is one of the great things about having a business where the vast majority of your supply are individuals. We continue to see really strong growth in non-urban listings, but as urban recovers, we are anticipating that we're gonna see some solid supply growth in urban areas as well. Dave, feel free to elaborate on that and take the second question as well.
No, I think you covered the first really well. I mean, I'll just say on the nights and experiences booked kind of seasonality, now that we kind of enter Q3 and Q4, it's probably just better to look at the year-over-year growth rates as kind of being more normalized. I think that's the better way to kind of look at the overall seasonal growth.
Thank you.
The next question is from Tom White with D.A. Davidson. Your line is open.
Great. Thanks for taking my question. Brian, during the early days of the pandemic, you talked about narrowing your focus on Airbnb's most perishable opportunities. You guys have now achieved profitability at scale. Your cash balance has grown significantly. Could you update us on maybe your latest thinking about those non-perishable opportunities? Are any of them particularly attractive to you, or should we maybe infer from the buyback announcement that maybe you're not super close to, you know, really exploring those opportunities again?
Hey, Tom. Yeah. Again, when the 2020 pandemic occurred, just to recap, we got really focused. We got back to basics. Over the last two years, I think we've really benefited by perfecting our core product. That being said, we are now looking, and we are thinking very expansively. You should look at our stock buyback as our confidence in our long-term growth and profitability. That's all you should read that stock buyback about. That being said, we are gonna continue to be investing aggressively over the coming years. We are not pulling on the brakes, we are now stepping on the gas. Remember, like the biggest innovations I had aren't gonna be in my 20s and 30s, right? We have some pretty big opportunities coming up.
I'm excited about some of the things we're gonna be releasing later this year. We have another release coming next spring in time for the summer release and the following winter. We're gonna continue to focus on unlocking the next generation of hosts. We have some really exciting new products built to attract the next generation of hosts, especially individuals that wanna host occasionally. We are gonna continue to think of radical innovations around Airbnb becoming the ultimate host to our guests and hosts. We're gonna continue to innovate on our search technology, and we have a lot of opportunities around helping people travel and live on Airbnb. There is gonna be some pretty exciting opportunities coming forward, and I'm pretty bullish about it. I don't know if, Dave, there's anything you wanna add to that.
Yeah. I'll just reemphasize. Our priority is investing in growth, and if $10 billion of cash is more than we need, $8 billion is more than sufficient to aggressively invest in growth in the business. That is our number one priority. At the same time, we're able to both invest and grow, just given the profitability profile of our business overall. I'm proud that we can do both, but the priority for us is investment and growth.
Great. Maybe just one quick follow-up on FX. You know, over the years, I remember some of the kinda traditional OTAs talking about how maybe it's less about kinda the absolute level of one currency relative to another, but you know, it's maybe more like the volatility of foreign exchange rates that kinda dictate customer booking behavior. Curious whether you'd say that was a similar dynamic in your business or just generally how the changes in FX rate, you know, impacts are you seeing kind of in terms of customer behavior?
Well, I think the biggest impact you see with FX is, you know, [cross biz] in the cross-border travel, obviously, right? A strengthening dollar gives you the ability for Americans to travel abroad, specifically right now probably Europe and to the U.K., and a weakening euro and pound makes it more difficult for them to kinda travel back. But again, if you look at Airbnb, the fact is that people adjust their travel to, you know, meet their overall kind of budgets. As we saw in COVID, people are more willing to maybe they stay domestically if their budget doesn't allow the cross-border travel, or maybe they stay domestically if they don't feel like they can afford the cost of airline travel.
Yeah, the FX impact from a consumer standpoint, you know, is usually this kind of cross-border impact. Then to our overall business, we're just seeing that as we, you know, generate, you know, nights stayed in euro and pounds, and then we bring them back to the, you know, the U.S., you know, and into the US dollar, we're just seeing the headwind of foreign exchange, which was material in Q1. It was 600 basis points of revenue growth driven by the FX move. I'd anticipate Q3 probably would be something less than that to our overall P&L.
Thank you.
That will conclude our question and answer session for today. I'll hand it over to Brian Chesky for any closing remarks.
All right. Well, thank you everyone for joining us today. I just wanna say I'm incredibly proud of what we delivered this quarter. Record nights and experiences booked. We had our most profitable Q2, and we generated $795 million of free cash flow, bringing our total free cash flow over the last 12 months to nearly $3 billion. You know, this transformation in our business was only possible because of our adaptable model and a relentless innovation. Regardless of economic environment, we believe guests will continue to come to Airbnb because they can find great value, and hosts can earn extra income. Airbnb is ready for whatever lies ahead, and we're so confident in our long-term growth and profitability that today we're announcing a $2 billion share repurchase program.
Thank you all for joining us today, and I'll see you next quarter.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.