As filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on December 1, 2020.

Registration No. 333-250118

 

 

 

UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20549

 

 

AMENDMENT NO. 1 TO

FORM S-1

REGISTRATION STATEMENT

UNDER

THE SECURITIES ACT OF 1933

 

 

Airbnb, Inc.

(Exact Name of Registrant as Specified in Its Charter)

 

 

 

Delaware		7372		26-3051428
(State or Other Jurisdiction of Incorporation or Organization)		(Primary Standard Industrial Classification Code Number)		(I.R.S. Employer Identification Number)

888 Brannan Street

San Francisco, California 94103

(415) 510-4027

(Address, Including Zip Code, and Telephone Number, Including

Area Code, of Registrant’s Principal Executive Offices)

 

 

Brian Chesky

Chief Executive Officer

Airbnb, Inc.

888 Brannan Street

San Francisco, California 94103

(415) 510-4027

(Name, Address, Including Zip Code, and Telephone Number, Including

Area Code, of Agent for Service)

 

 

Copies to:

 

Tad J. Freese Kathleen M. Wells Anthony J. Richmond Latham & Watkins LLP 140 Scott Drive Menlo Park, California 94025 (650) 328-4600		Kevin P. Kennedy Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP 2475 Hanover Street Palo Alto, California 94304 (650) 251-5000

Approximate date of commencement of proposed sale to the public:

As soon as practicable after this registration statement becomes effective.

If any of the securities being registered on this Form are to be offered on a delayed or continuous basis pursuant to Rule 415 under the Securities Act, check the following box:  ☐

If this Form is filed to register additional securities for an offering pursuant to Rule 462(b) under the Securities Act, please check the following box and list the Securities Act registration statement number of the earlier effective registration statement for the same offering.  ☐

If this Form is a post-effective amendment filed pursuant to Rule 462(c) under the Securities Act, check the following box and list the Securities Act registration statement number of the earlier effective registration statement for the same offering.  ☐

If this Form is a post-effective amendment filed pursuant to Rule 462(d) under the Securities Act, check the following box and list the Securities Act registration statement number of the earlier effective registration statement for the same offering.  ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, a smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer,” “smaller reporting company” and “emerging growth company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.

 

Large accelerated filer		☐		Accelerated filer		☐
Non-accelerated filer		☒		Smaller reporting company		☐
				Emerging growth company		☐

If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 7(a)(2)(B) of the Securities Act.  ☐

 

 

CALCULATION OF REGISTRATION FEE

 

 

Title of Each Class of Securities to be Registered		Amount to    be Registered(1)		Proposed Maximum   Offering Price Per Share		Proposed Maximum Aggregate Offering Price(2)		Amount of Registration Fee(3)
Class A common stock, $0.0001 par value per share		56,914,894		$50.00		$2,845,744,700		$310,471

 

(1)	Includes 5,000,000 shares of Class A common stock that the underwriters have the option to purchase.

(2)	Estimated solely for the purpose of calculating the registration fee in accordance with Rule 457(a) under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended.

 

(3)	The registrant previously paid a total of $109,100 in connection with the previous filing of the registration statement.

 

 

The registrant hereby amends this registration statement on such date or dates as may be necessary to delay its effective date until the registrant shall file a further amendment which specifically states that this registration statement shall thereafter become effective in accordance with Section 8(a) of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or until the registration statement shall become effective on such date as the Securities and Exchange Commission, acting pursuant to said Section 8(a), may determine.

 

 

 

Subject to Completion, dated December 1, 2020

The information in this preliminary prospectus is not complete and may be changed. We and the selling stockholders may not sell these securities until the registration statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission is effective. This preliminary prospectus is not an offer to sell these securities and we are not soliciting offers to buy these securities in any jurisdiction where the offer or sale is not permitted.

 

 

Class A Common Stock		51,914,894 Shares

This is an initial public offering of shares of Class A common stock of Airbnb, Inc. We are offering 50,000,000 shares of our Class A common stock. The selling stockholders identified in this prospectus are offering 1,914,894 shares of Class A common stock. We will not receive any of the proceeds from the sale of shares by the selling stockholders. Prior to this offering, there has been no public market for our Class A common stock. It is currently estimated that the initial public offering price will be between $44.00 and $50.00 per share. We have applied to list our Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol “ABNB.”

We have four series of common stock, Class A, Class B, Class C, and Class H common stock (collectively, our “common stock”). The rights of holders of Class A, Class B, Class C, and Class H common stock are identical, except voting and conversion rights, and with respect to our Class H common stock, redemption rights. Each share of Class A common stock is entitled to one vote, each share of Class B common stock is entitled to 20 votes and is convertible at any time into one share of Class A common stock, each share of Class C common stock is entitled to no votes, and each share of Class H common stock is entitled to no votes and will convert into a share of Class A common stock on a share-for-share basis upon the sale of such share of Class H common stock to any person or entity that is not our subsidiary. Holders of our outstanding shares of Class B common stock will beneficially own 81.7% of our outstanding capital stock and represent 99.0% of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock immediately following this offering, with our directors, executive officers, and 5% stockholders and their respective affiliates beneficially owning 49.1% of our outstanding capital stock as a group, representing approximately 58.8% of the voting power. See the section titled “Description of Capital Stock.”

Investing in our Class A common stock involves risks. See the section titled “Risk Factors” beginning on page 31.

 

		Per Share				Total
Initial public offering price		$				$
Underwriting discounts and commissions(1)		$				$
Proceeds to us, before expenses		$				$
Proceeds to selling stockholders, before expenses		$				$

 

(1)	See the section titled “Underwriting” for a description of the compensation payable to the underwriters.

At our request, the underwriters have reserved up to 3,500,000 shares of Class A common stock, or up to 7.0% of the shares offered by us in this offering, for sale at the initial public offering price through a directed share program to eligible hosts on our platform and certain individuals identified by our officers and directors. See the section titled “Underwriting — Directed Share Program.”

We have granted to the underwriters the option for a period of 30 days to purchase up to an additional 5,000,000 shares of Class A common stock from us on the same terms as set forth above.

Neither the Securities and Exchange Commission nor any state securities commission has approved or disapproved these securities, or determined if this prospectus is truthful or complete. Any representation to the contrary is a criminal offense.

The underwriters expect to deliver the shares of Class A common stock to purchasers on                     , 2020.

Morgan Stanley    Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC

Allen & Company LLC  BofA Securities  Barclays  Citigroup

BNP PARIBAS  Mizuho Securities  Credit Suisse  Deutsche Bank Securities  Jefferies  Wells Fargo Securities

Baird  Canaccord Genuity  Cowen  D.A. Davidson & Co.  JMP Securities  KeyBanc Capital Markets  Needham & Company

Oppenheimer & Co.  Piper Sandler  Raymond James  Stifel  Wedbush Securities  William Blair

Academy Securities  Blaylock Van, LLC  CastleOak Securities, L.P.  C.L. King & Associates

Guzman & Company  Loop Capital Markets  MFR Securities, Inc.  Mischler Financial Group, Inc.  Ramirez & Co., Inc.

Siebert Williams Shank  Telsey Advisory Group  Tigress Financial Partners

 

Prospectus dated                     , 2020

In the beginning, two friends opened their door.

Brian and Joe, our first hosts.

Thirteen years later, four million Airbnb hosts have opened theirs.

 

Table of Contents

 

		Page
Prospectus Summary			1
Risk Factors			31
Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements			107
Market and Industry Data			110
Use of Proceeds			111
Dividend Policy			112
Capitalization			113
Dilution			117
Selected Consolidated Financial and Other Data			122
Glossary of Terms			135
Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations			136
Business			199
Management			263
Compensation Discussion and Analysis			274
Certain Relationships and Related Party Transactions			310
Principal and Selling Stockholders			315
Description of Capital Stock			320
Description of Certain Indebtedness			334
Shares Eligible for Future Sale			341
Material U.S. Federal Income Tax Consequences to Non-U.S. Holders			346
Underwriting			351
Legal Matters			368
Experts			368
Where You Can Find Additional Information			368
Index to Consolidated Financial Statements			F-1

 

 

You should rely only on the information contained in this prospectus or contained in any free writing prospectus filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”). Neither we, the selling stockholders, nor any of the underwriters have authorized anyone to provide any information or make any representations other than those contained in this prospectus or in any free writing prospectus we have prepared. Neither we, the selling stockholders, nor the underwriters take responsibility for, and can provide no assurance as to the reliability of, any other information that others may give you. This prospectus is an offer to sell only the shares of Class A common stock offered by this prospectus, but only under circumstances and in jurisdictions where it is lawful to do so. The information contained in this prospectus is accurate only as of the date of this prospectus, regardless of the time of delivery of this prospectus or of any sale of the Class A common stock. Our business, results of operations, financial condition, and prospects may have changed since such date.

For investors outside of the United States: Neither we, the selling stockholders, nor any of the underwriters have done anything that would permit this offering or possession or distribution of this prospectus or any free writing prospectus we may provide to you in connection with this offering in any jurisdiction where action for that purpose is required, other than in the United States. Persons outside of the United States who come into possession of this prospectus and any free writing prospectus must inform themselves about and observe any restrictions relating to this offering and the distribution of this prospectus outside of the United States.

Prospectus Summary

 

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Risk Factors

Risk Factors

Investing in our Class A common stock involves a high degree of risk. You should carefully consider the risks and uncertainties described below, together with all of the other information in this prospectus, before making a decision to invest in our Class A common stock. If any of the risks actually occur, our business, results of operations, financial condition, and prospects could be harmed. In that event, the trading price of our Class A common stock could decline, and you could lose part or all of your investment. Additional risks and uncertainties not presently known to us or that we currently deem immaterial also may impair our business operations.

Risks Related to Our Business

The COVID-19 pandemic and the impact of actions to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic have materially adversely impacted and will continue to materially adversely impact our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

In March 2020, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak of COVID-19 a pandemic. In an attempt to limit the spread of the virus, governments have imposed various restrictions, including emergency declarations at the federal, state, and local levels, school and business closings, quarantines, “shelter at home” orders, restrictions on travel, limitations on social or public gatherings, and other social distancing measures, which have had and may continue to have a material adverse impact on our business and operations and on travel behavior and demand.

The COVID-19 pandemic, which has required and may continue to require cost reduction measures, has materially adversely affected our near-term operating and financial results and will continue to materially adversely impact our long-term operating and financial results. During the fourth quarter of 2020, another wave of COVID-19 infections emerged. As a result, countries imposed strict lockdowns, in particular in Europe. Similar to the impact of the initial COVID-19 wave in March 2020, we are seeing a decrease in bookings in the most affected regions. As a result, we expect significantly greater year-over-year decline in Nights and Experiences Booked and GBV in the fourth quarter of 2020 than in the third quarter of 2020 and greater year-over-year increases in cancellations and alterations in the fourth quarter of 2020 than in the third quarter of 2020. In light of the evolving nature of COVID-19 and the uncertainty it has produced around the world, we do not believe it is possible to predict the COVID-19 pandemic’s cumulative and ultimate impact on our future business, results of operations, and financial condition. The extent of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our business and financial results will depend largely on future developments, including the duration and extent of the spread of COVID-19 both globally and within the United States, the prevalence of local, national, and international travel restrictions, significantly reduced flight volume, the impact on capital and financial markets and on the U.S. and global economies, foreign currencies exchange, and governmental or regulatory orders that impact our business, all of which are highly uncertain and cannot be predicted. Moreover, even after shelter-in-place orders and travel advisories are lifted, demand for our offerings, particularly those related to cross-border travel, may remain depressed for a significant length of time, and we cannot predict if and when demand will return to pre-COVID-19 levels. In addition, we cannot predict the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had and will have on our business partners and third-party vendors and service providers, and we may continue to be materially adversely impacted as a result of the material adverse impact our business partners and third-party vendors suffer now and in the future. To the extent the COVID-19 pandemic continues to materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition, it may also have the effect of heightening many

 

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of the other risks described in these “Risk Factors” or elsewhere in this prospectus. Any of the foregoing factors, or other cascading effects of the COVID-19 pandemic that are not currently foreseeable, will materially adversely impact our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

In response to the economic challenges and uncertainty resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on our business, in May 2020, we announced a reduction in our workforce of approximately 1,800 employees. This reduction in workforce particularly impacted our marketing, design, customer service, transportation, Airbnb Studios, Hotels, and Airbnb Luxe teams. This reduction in workforce also resulted in the loss of institutional knowledge, relationships, and expertise for critical roles, which may not have been effectively transferred to continuing employees and may divert attention from operating our business, create personnel capacity constraints, and hamper our ability to grow, develop innovative products, and compete. Any of these impacts could materially adversely impact our business and reputation and impede our ability to operate or meet strategic objectives. This has led to increased attrition and could lead to reduced employee morale and productivity and problems retaining existing and recruiting future employees, which could have a material adverse impact on our business, results of operations, and financial condition. The reduction in force and other restructuring activities are expected to result in charges of $135 million to $150 million in 2020.

Most of our employees and third-party vendors and service providers are working remotely, and it is possible that widespread remote work arrangements could have a materially negative impact on host and guest satisfaction resulting from potential delays or slower than usual response times in receiving assistance from our customer support organization. The negative impact on our hosts’ and guests’ satisfaction could adversely impact our operations, the execution of our business plans, and productivity and availability of key personnel and other employees necessary to conduct our business, and of third-party service providers that perform critical services for us, or otherwise cause operational failures due to changes in our normal business practices necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic and related governmental actions. If a natural disaster, power outage, connectivity issue, or other event occurs that impacts our employees’ ability to work remotely, it may be difficult or, in certain cases, impossible, for us to continue our business for a substantial period of time. The increase in remote working may also result in material consumer privacy, information technology security, and fraud risks. The reduction in force in May 2020 and remote work arrangements resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic caused us to recognize an impairment of certain of our real property lease arrangements, and depending on the duration and extent of the remote work arrangements, we may incur additional impairment charges related to our real property lease agreements. The manner in which we have adjusted our business following the COVID-19 pandemic is based on our understanding of applicable legal and regulatory requirements, as well as the latest guidance from regulatory authorities, and is subject to legal or regulatory challenge, particularly as regulatory guidance evolves in response to future developments.

We have incurred net losses in each year since inception, and we may not be able to achieve profitability.

We incurred net losses of $70.0 million, $16.9 million, $674.3 million, and $696.9 million for the years ended December 31, 2017, 2018, and 2019 and the nine months ended September 30, 2020, respectively. As of December 31, 2019 and September 30, 2020, we had an accumulated deficit of $1.4 billion and $2.1 billion, respectively. Historically, we have invested significantly in efforts to grow our host and guest community, introduced new or enhanced offerings and features, increased our marketing spend, expanded our operations, hired additional employees, and enhanced our platform. Beginning in the second quarter of 2020, as a result of COVID-19 pandemic, we have significantly reduced our fixed and variable costs including a reduction in force and a suspension of substantially all discretionary marketing program spend. However, overall, we expect to resume making significant investments in our business and our host and guest community, including improvements to our payments platform, trust and safety on our platform,

 

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technology, and infrastructure in the future. These efforts may prove more expensive than we currently anticipate, and we may not succeed in increasing our revenue sufficiently to offset these higher expenses. In particular, we expect the ongoing economic impact from the COVID-19 pandemic to have a material adverse impact on our revenue and financial results for 2020 and beyond. While we have enacted measures to reduce our expenses, we expect to incur a significant net loss for 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and we are utilizing a significant portion of our cash to support our operations in 2020 resulting from a material decrease in bookings and revenue as compared to 2019.

Certain of our offerings and certain regions in which we operate result in listings with lower service fees and will require significant additional investments from us, which could have a materially negative impact on our overall operating margins as these offerings and regions increase in size over time relative to other areas in which we operate. For example, seats for Airbnb Experiences are generally booked at lower prices than nights booked for stays. In addition, we have changed, and may in the future reduce, our service fees for strategic or competitive reasons. Any failure to increase our revenue or any failure to manage the increase in our operating expenses could prevent us from achieving or sustaining profitability as measured by net income, operating income, or Adjusted EBITDA.

We have granted RSUs to our employees and certain non-employees, with substantially all of such RSUs vesting upon the satisfaction of both a service-based vesting condition and a liquidity-based vesting condition. During the quarter in which this offering is completed, we will begin recording stock-based compensation expense for these RSUs with a liquidity-based vesting condition. If this offering had occurred on September 30, 2020, we would have recognized $2.7 billion of cumulative stock-based compensation expense related to RSUs for which the service-based vesting condition was satisfied or partially satisfied, and the remaining unrecognized stock-based compensation expense relating to these RSUs would have been $0.8 billion as of September 30, 2020. At the time of the offering, we expect to recognize stock-based compensation expense of approximately $2.8 billion for which the service-based vesting condition was satisfied or partially satisfied as of November 25, 2020 and for which we expect the liquidity-based vesting condition to be satisfied in connection with this offering. Following this offering, our future operating expenses, particularly during the quarter in which this offering is completed, will include a substantial amount of stock-based compensation expense with respect to these RSUs, as well as any other equity awards we have granted and may grant in the future, which will have an adverse impact on our ability to achieve profitability. For additional information, see the section titled “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations — Critical Accounting Policies and Estimates — Stock-Based Compensation — Restricted Stock Units.”

Our Adjusted EBITDA and Free Cash Flow have been declining, and this trend could continue.

We had Adjusted EBITDA of $60.0 million, $170.6 million, $(253.3) million, and $(230.2) million for the years ended December 31, 2017, 2018, and 2019 and for the nine months ended September 30, 2020, respectively. Our Free Cash Flow was $151.0 million, $504.9 million, $97.3 million, and $(520.1) million for the years ended December 31, 2017, 2018, and 2019 and for the nine months ended September 30, 2020, respectively. Our Adjusted EBITDA and Free Cash Flow declined in 2019, as a result of our decision to make 2019 a year in which we made significant investments in new product and growth initiatives, including in China, and to improve our technical infrastructure. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting impact on the travel industry, we have experienced further declines in 2020, and will continue to experience declines in future periods as long as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to materially adversely impact our business. Other adverse developments in our business, including lower than anticipated revenue, higher than anticipated operating expenses, and net unfavorable changes in working capital, could hinder our ability to reverse the recent negative trend in our Adjusted EBITDA and Free Cash Flow. If our future Adjusted EBITDA

 

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or Free Cash Flow fail to meet investor or analyst expectations, it is likely to have a materially negative effect on our stock price. Adjusted EBITDA and Free Cash Flow are supplemental metrics that are not calculated and presented in accordance with GAAP. See the section titled “Selected Consolidated Financial and Other Data — Non-GAAP Financial Measures” for additional information.

Our revenue growth rate has slowed, and we expect it to continue to slow in the future.

We have experienced significant revenue growth in the past; however, our revenue growth has slowed in recent periods and there is no assurance that historic growth rates will return. Our year-over-year growth rate in revenue decreased in 2019 as compared to 2018 and also decreased in 2018 as compared to 2017. In the first nine months of 2020, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, our revenue decreased significantly compared to the first nine months of 2019. Our future revenue growth depends on the growth of supply and demand for listings on our platform, and our business is affected by general economic and business conditions worldwide as well as trends in the global travel and hospitality industries. In addition, we believe that our revenue growth depends upon a number of factors, including:

 

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the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the travel and accommodations industries;

 

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our ability to retain and grow the number of guests and Nights and Experiences Booked;

 

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our ability to retain and grow the number of hosts and the number of available listings on our platform;

 

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events beyond our control such as pandemics and other health concerns, increased or continuing restrictions on travel and immigration, trade disputes, economic downturns, and the impact of climate change on travel, including fires, floods, severe weather and other natural disasters, and the impact of climate change on seasonal destinations;

 

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competition;

 

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the legal and regulatory landscape and changes in the application of existing laws and regulations or adoption of new laws and regulations that impact our business, hosts, and/or guests, including changes in short-term occupancy and tax laws;

 

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the attractiveness of home sharing to prospective hosts and guests;

 

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the level of consumer awareness and perception of our brand;

 

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our ability to build and strengthen trust and safety on our platform and among members of our community;

 

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the level of spending on brand and performance marketing to attract hosts and guests to our platform;

 

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our ability to grow new offerings and tiers, such as Airbnb Experiences, and to deepen our presence in certain geographies;

 

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timing, effectiveness, and costs of expansion and upgrades to our platform and infrastructure; and

 

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other risks described elsewhere in this prospectus.

A softening of demand, whether caused by events outside of our control, such as COVID-19, changes in host and guest preferences, any of the other factors described above, or in this prospectus or otherwise, will result in decreased revenue. If our revenue does not improve, we may not achieve profitability and our business, results of operations, and financial condition would be materially adversely affected.

 

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If we fail to retain existing hosts or add new hosts, or if hosts fail to provide high-quality stays and experiences, our business, results of operations, and financial condition would be materially adversely affected.

Our business depends on hosts maintaining their listings on our platform and engaging in practices that encourage guests to book those listings, including increasing the number of nights and experiences that are available to book, providing timely responses to inquiries from guests, offering a variety of desirable and differentiated listings at competitive prices that meet the expectations of guests, and offering exceptional hospitality, services, and experiences to guests. These practices are outside of our direct control. If hosts do not establish or maintain a sufficient number of listings and availability for listings, the number of Nights and Experiences Booked declines for a particular period, or the price charged by hosts declines, our revenue would decline and our business, results of operations, and financial condition would be materially adversely affected.

Hosts manage and control their spaces and experiences and typically market them on our platform with no obligation to make them available to guests for specified dates and with no obligation to accept bookings from prospective guests. We have had many hosts list their properties on our platform in one period and cease to offer these properties in subsequent periods for a variety of reasons. While we plan to continue to invest in our host community and in tools to assist hosts, these investments may not be successful in growing our hosts and listings on our platform. In addition, hosts may not establish or maintain listings if we cannot attract prospective guests to our platform and generate bookings from a large number of guests. If we are unable to retain existing hosts or add new hosts, or if hosts elect to market their listings exclusively with a competitor or cross-list with a competitor, we may be unable to offer a sufficient supply and variety of properties or experiences to attract guests to use our platform. In particular, it is critical that we continue to attract and retain individual hosts who list their spaces, including private rooms, primary homes, or vacation homes on Airbnb. We attract individual hosts predominantly through organic channels such as word of mouth and our strong brand recognition. If we are unable to attract and retain individual hosts in a cost-effective manner, or at all, our business, results of operations, and financial condition would be materially adversely affected.

Professional hosts, including property management companies, serviced apartment providers, and boutique hotels, expand the types of listings available to our guests. These professional hosts often list on our platform as well as on the platforms of our competitors. We do not control whether professional hosts provide us with a sizable allocation of rooms and competitive pricing relative to the same properties listed with other services. If we are not able to effectively deploy professional tools, application programming interfaces, and payment processes, work with third-party channel managers, and develop effective sales and account management teams that address the needs of these professional hosts, we may not be able to attract and retain professional hosts. If our fee structure and payment terms are not as competitive as those of our competitors, these professional hosts may choose to provide less inventory and availability with us. Historically, we have seen an increase in the number of, and revenue from, professional hosts on our platform. The uniqueness of listings on our platform will be negatively impacted if the number of individual hosts does not grow at the same rate.

In addition, the number of listings on Airbnb has declined and may continue to decline as a result of a number of other factors affecting hosts, including: the COVID-19 pandemic; enforcement or threatened enforcement of laws and regulations, including short-term occupancy and tax laws; private groups, such as homeowners, landlords, and condominium and neighborhood associations, adopting and enforcing contracts that prohibit or restrict home sharing; leases, mortgages and other agreements, or regulations that purport to ban or otherwise restrict home sharing; hosts opting for long-term rentals on other third-

 

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party platforms as an alternative to listing on our platform; economic, social, and political factors; perceptions of trust and safety on and off our platform; negative experiences with guests, including guests who damage host property, throw unauthorized parties, or engage in violent and unlawful acts; and our decision to remove hosts from our platform for not adhering to our host standards or other factors we deem detrimental to our community. We believe a number of our hosts are individuals who rely on the additional income generated from our platform to pay their living expenses or mortgages or have acquired properties specifically for listing. It is not yet clear what financial impact the severe travel reduction occurring during the COVID-19 pandemic will have on these individuals or whether they will be able to keep their homes or operate their businesses as travel resumes. Our business, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected if our hosts are unable to return to normal operations in the near to immediate term.

We believe that our host protection programs are integral to retaining and acquiring hosts. Our Host Protection Insurance and Experience Protection Insurance provide liability coverage to our hosts, with amounts paid to claimants, for up to $1 million per occurrence in the event of a third-party claim of bodily injury or property damage related to a stay or experience, and our Host Guarantee Program provides reimbursement of up to $1 million for loss or damages to a host property caused by guests during a reservation. While we intend to continue these programs, if we discontinue these programs, whether because our payouts under these programs or our insurance premiums become cost prohibitive or for any other reason, then the number of hosts who list with us may decline.

In addition to a reduction in the number of bookings, we have incurred, and expect to continue to incur, higher than normal payments via refunds and travel credit issuance to guests who cancel for reasons related to COVID-19. Under our extenuating circumstances policy, guests who made reservations on or before March 14, 2020 and cannot travel due to the pandemic have been eligible to cancel their reservations for a full cash refund or in some cases travel credit. Similarly, hosts with reservations confirmed on or before March 14, 2020 who cannot host due to the pandemic have been eligible to cancel under this policy without adverse consequences. A large number of guest cancellations under the policy caused lost earnings for our hosts. To support our hosts and lessen the impact of cancellations under our extenuating circumstances policy, we have made a $250 million commitment, the majority of which has been distributed as of September 30, 2020, which provides hosts a portion of the amount they expected to earn from bookings that were canceled under this policy. The eligible reservations for this support program were defined as reservations made on or before March 14, 2020 with a check-in date between March 14, 2020 and May 31, 2020. For these reservations, eligible hosts are entitled to receive 25% of the amount they would have received from guests under the host’s cancellation policies. Because this commitment is limited in amount and timeframe, hosts will not receive full payment related to guest cancellations, and some hosts may remove their listings from our platform if they are not satisfied with our policies during the COVID-19 pandemic. We have not seen a material change in the number of active listings on our platform between December 2019 and September 2020. For the nine months ended September 30, 2020, we recorded in our consolidated statement of operations $204.4 million in payments to customers under this policy.

Hosts and guests whose reservations are canceled under our extenuating circumstances policy have had and may continue to have a negative view of such policy and may experience negative financial impacts as a result of such cancellations. This could materially negatively impact our relationship with our hosts and guests, resulting in hosts leaving our platform, removing their listings and/or offering less availability, or fewer repeat guests, which in turn could have a material adverse impact on our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

 

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If we fail to retain existing guests or add new guests, our business, results of operations, and financial condition would be materially adversely affected.

Our success depends significantly on existing guests continuing to book and attracting new guests to book on our platform. Our ability to attract and retain guests could be materially adversely affected by a number of factors discussed elsewhere in these “Risk Factors,” including:

 

•

events beyond our control such as the COVID-19 pandemic, other pandemics and health concerns, increased or continuing restrictions on travel, immigration, trade disputes, economic downturns, and the impact of climate change on travel, including fires, floods, severe weather and other natural disasters, and the impact of climate change on seasonal destinations;

 

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hosts failing to meet guests’ expectations, including increased expectations for cleanliness in light of the COVID-19 pandemic;

 

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increased competition and use of our competitors’ platforms and services;

 

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hosts failing to provide differentiated, high-quality, and an adequate supply of stays or experiences at competitive prices;

 

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guests not receiving timely and adequate community support from us;

 

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our failure to provide new or enhanced offerings, tiers, or features that guests value;

 

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declines or inefficiencies in our marketing efforts;

 

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negative associations with, or reduced awareness of, our brand;

 

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actual or perceived racial discrimination by hosts in deciding whether to accept a requested reservation;

 

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negative perceptions of the trust and safety on our platform; and

 

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macroeconomic and other conditions outside of our control affecting travel and hospitality industries generally.

In addition, if our platform is not easy to navigate, guests have an unsatisfactory sign-up, search, booking, or payment experience on our platform, the listings and other content provided on our platform is not displayed effectively to guests, we are not effective in engaging guests across our various offerings and tiers, or we fail to provide an experience in a manner that meets rapidly changing demand, we could fail to convert first-time guests and fail to engage with existing guests, which would materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

Any further and continued decline or disruption in the travel and hospitality industries or economic downturn would materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

Our financial performance is dependent on the strength of the travel and hospitality industries. The outbreak of COVID-19 has caused many governments to implement quarantines and significant restrictions on travel or to advise that people remain at home where possible and avoid crowds, which has had a particularly negative impact on cross-border travel. In addition, most airlines have suspended or significantly reduced their flights during this period, further decreasing opportunities for travel. This has led to a decrease in our bookings and an increase in cancellations and associated claims brought against us. We expect that COVID-19 will continue to materially adversely impact our bookings and business in 2020 and beyond. The extent and duration of such impact over the longer term remains uncertain and is

 

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dependent on future developments that cannot be accurately predicted at this time, such as the severity and transmission rate of COVID-19, the timing, availability, and effectiveness of a vaccine, the extent and effectiveness of containment actions taken, including mobility restrictions, and the impact of these and other factors on travel behavior in general, and on our business in particular. See our risk factor titled “— The COVID-19 pandemic and the impact of actions to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic have materially adversely impacted and will continue to materially adversely impact our business, results of operations, and financial condition.”

Other events beyond our control, such as unusual or extreme weather or natural disasters, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, fires, tsunamis, floods, severe weather, droughts, and volcanic eruptions, and travel-related health concerns including pandemics and epidemics such as Ebola, Zika, and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, restrictions related to travel, trade or immigration policies, wars, terrorist attacks, sources of political uncertainty, such as the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union (“Brexit”), protests, foreign policy changes, regional hostilities, imposition of taxes or surcharges by regulatory authorities, changes in regulations, policies, or conditions related to sustainability, including climate change, work stoppages, labor unrest or travel-related accidents can disrupt travel globally or otherwise result in declines in travel demand. Because these events or concerns, and the full impact of their effects, are largely unpredictable, they can dramatically and suddenly affect travel behavior by consumers, and therefore demand for our platform and services, which would materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition. Events such as sudden outbreaks of wars or regional instability have led to a large number of localized cancellations and safety concerns, which harm our business and our relationship with our hosts and guests. In addition, increasing awareness around the impact of air travel on climate change and the impact of over-tourism may adversely impact the travel and hospitality industries and demand for our platform and services.

Our financial performance is also subject to global economic conditions and their impact on levels of discretionary consumer spending. Some of the factors that have an impact on discretionary consumer spending include general economic conditions, worldwide or regional recession, unemployment, consumer debt, reductions in net worth, fluctuations in exchange rates, residential real estate and mortgage markets, taxation, energy prices, interest rates, consumer confidence, tariffs, and other macroeconomic factors. Consumer preferences tend to shift to lower-cost alternatives during recessionary periods and other periods in which disposable income is adversely affected, which could lead to a decline in the bookings and prices for stays and experiences on our platform and an increase in cancellations, and thus result in lower revenue. Leisure travel in particular, which accounts for a substantial majority of our current business, is dependent on discretionary consumer spending levels. Downturns in worldwide or regional economic conditions, such as the current downturn resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, have led to a general decrease in leisure travel and travel spending, and similar downturns in the future may materially adversely impact demand for our platform and services. Such a shift in consumer behavior would materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

The business and industry in which we participate are highly competitive, and we may be unable to compete successfully with our current or future competitors.

We operate in a highly competitive environment and we face significant competition in attracting hosts and guests.

 

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Hosts. We compete to attract, engage, and retain hosts on our platform to list their spaces and experiences. Hosts have a range of options for listing their spaces and experiences, both online and offline. It is also common for hosts to cross-list their offerings. We compete for hosts based on many factors, including the volume of bookings generated by our guests; ease of use of our platform

 

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(including onboarding, community support, and payments); the service fees we charge; host protections, such as our Host Protection Insurance, Experience Protection Insurance and Host Guarantee Program; and our brand. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we have also competed based on our cancellation and extenuating circumstances policies.

 

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Guests. We compete to attract, engage, and retain guests on our platform. Guests have a range of options to find and book spaces, hotel rooms, serviced apartments, and other accommodations and experiences, both online and offline. We compete for guests based on many factors, including unique inventory and availability of listings, the value and all-in cost of our offerings relative to other options, our brand, ease of use of our platform, the relevance and personalization of search results, the trust and safety of our platform, and community support. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we have also competed based on the availability of inventory close to where guests live and in non-urban markets as well as the perceived safety and cleanliness of listings on our platform.

We believe that our competitors include:

 

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Online travel agencies (“OTAs”), such as Booking Holdings (including the brands Booking.com, KAYAK, Priceline.com, and Agoda.com); Expedia Group (including the brands Expedia, Vrbo, HomeAway, Hotels.com, Orbitz, and Travelocity); Trip.com Group (including the brands Ctrip.com, Trip.com, Qunar, Tongcheng-eLong, and SkyScanner); Meituan Dianping; Fliggy (a subsidiary of Alibaba) Despegar; MakeMyTrip; and other regional OTAs;

 

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Internet search engines, such as Google, including its travel search products; Baidu; and other regional search engines;

 

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Listing and meta search websites, such as TripAdvisor, Trivago, Mafengwo, AllTheRooms.com, and Craigslist;

 

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Hotel chains, such as Marriott, Hilton, Accor, Wyndham, InterContinental, OYO, and Huazhu, as well as boutique hotel chains and independent hotels;

 

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Chinese short-term rental competitors, such as Tujia, Meituan B&B, and Xiaozhu; and

 

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Online platforms offering experiences, such as Viator, GetYourGuide, Klook, Traveloka, and KKDay.

Our competitors are adopting aspects of our business model, which could affect our ability to differentiate our offerings from competitors. Increased competition could result in reduced demand for our platform from hosts and guests, slow our growth, and materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

Many of our current and potential competitors enjoy substantial competitive advantages over us, such as greater name and brand recognition, longer operating histories, larger marketing budgets, and loyalty programs, as well as substantially greater financial, technical, and other resources. In addition, our current or potential competitors have access to larger user bases and/or inventory for accommodations, and may provide multiple travel products, including flights. As a result, our competitors may be able to provide consumers with a better or more complete product experience and respond more quickly and effectively than we can to new or changing opportunities, technologies, standards, or host and guest requirements or preferences. The global travel industry has experienced significant consolidation, and we expect this trend may continue as companies attempt to strengthen or hold their market positions in a highly competitive industry. Consolidation amongst our competitors will give them increased scale and may enhance their capacity, abilities, and resources, and lower their cost structures. In addition, emerging start-ups may be

 

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able to innovate and focus on developing a new product or service faster than we can or may foresee consumer need for new offerings or technologies before us.

There are now numerous competing companies that offer homes for booking, which can be available on our platform, on competing platforms, and through direct booking sites. Some of these competitors also aggregate property listings obtained through various sources, including the websites of property managers. Some of our hosts have chosen to cross-list their properties, which reduces the availability of such properties on our platform. When properties are cross-listed, the price paid by guests on our platform may be or may appear to be less competitive for a number of reasons, including differences in fee structure and policies, which may cause guests to book through other services, which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition. Certain property managers reach out to our hosts and guests to incentivize them to list or book directly with them and bypass our platform, and certain hosts may encourage transactions outside of our platform, which reduces the use of our platform and services.

Some of our competitors or potential competitors have more established or varied relationships with consumers than we do, and they could use these advantages in ways that could affect our competitive position, including by entering the travel and accommodations businesses. For example, some competitors or potential competitors are creating “super-apps” where consumers can use many online services without leaving that company’s app, e.g., in particular regions, such as Asia, where e-commerce transactions are conducted primarily through apps on mobile devices. If any of these platforms are successful in offering services similar to ours to consumers, or if we are unable to offer our services to consumers within these super-apps, our customer acquisition efforts could be less effective and our customer acquisition costs, including our brand and performance marketing expenses, could increase, any of which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition. We also face increasing competition from search engines including Google. How Google presents travel search results, and its promotion of its own travel meta-search services, such as Google Travel and Google Vacation Rental Ads, or similar actions from other search engines, and their practices concerning search rankings, could decrease our search traffic, increase traffic acquisition costs, and/or disintermediate our platform. These parties can also offer their own comprehensive travel planning and booking tools, or refer leads directly to suppliers, other favored partners, or themselves, which could also disintermediate our platform. In addition, if Google or Apple use their own mobile operating systems or app distribution channels to favor their own or other preferred travel service offerings, or impose policies that effectively disallow us to continue our full product offerings in those channels, it could materially adversely affect our ability to engage with hosts and guests who access our platform via mobile apps or search.

Laws, regulations, and rules that affect the short-term rental and home sharing business have limited and may continue to limit the ability or willingness of hosts to share their spaces over our platform and expose our hosts or us to significant penalties, which have had and could continue to have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

Since we began our operations in 2008, there have been and continue to be legal and regulatory developments that affect the short-term rental and home sharing business. Hotels and groups affiliated with hotels have engaged and will likely continue to engage in various lobbying and political efforts for stricter regulations governing our business in both local and national jurisdictions. Other private groups, such as homeowners, landlords, and condominium and neighborhood associations, have adopted contracts or regulations that purport to ban or otherwise restrict short-term rentals, and third-party lease agreements between landlords and tenants, home insurance policies, and mortgages may prevent or restrict the ability of hosts to list their spaces. In Europe, a group of mayors representing 22 cities (including Amsterdam, Barcelona, and London) has been meeting with the European Commission to seek increased regulatory control in relation

 

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to short-term rental platforms. These groups and others cite concerns around affordable housing and over-tourism in major cities, and some state and local governments have implemented or considered implementing rules, ordinances, or regulations governing the short-term rental of properties and/or home sharing. Such regulations include ordinances that restrict or ban hosts from short-term rentals, set annual caps on the number of days hosts can share their homes, require hosts to register with the municipality or city, or require hosts to obtain permission before offering short-term rentals. In addition, some jurisdictions regard short-term rental or home sharing as “hotel use” and claim that such use constitutes a conversion of a residential property to a commercial property requiring a permitting process. Macroeconomic pressures and public policy concerns could continue to lead to new laws and regulations, or interpretations of existing laws and regulations, that limit the ability of hosts to share their spaces. If laws, regulations, rules, or agreements significantly restrict or discourage hosts in certain jurisdictions from sharing their properties, it would have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

While a number of cities and countries have implemented legislation to address short-term rentals, there are many others that are not yet explicitly addressing or enforcing short-term rental laws, and could follow suit and enact regulations. A discussion of short-term rental regulations in our top 10 cities by revenue in 2019 is included in “Business — Regulatory Considerations in Our Largest Cities.” New laws, regulations, government policies, or changes in their interpretations in the approximately 100,000 cities where we operate entail significant challenges and uncertainties. In the event of any such changes, pre-existing bookings may not be honored and current and future listings and bookings could decline significantly, and our relationship with our hosts and guests could be negatively impacted, which would have a materially adverse effect on our business, results of operations, and financial condition. For example, listings in New York City generated approximately 2% of our revenue in 2019, and when new regulations requiring us to share host data with the city are implemented, our revenue from listings there may be substantially reduced due to the departure from our platform of hosts who do not wish to share their data with the city and related cancellations. A reduction in supply and cancellations could make our platform less attractive to guests, and any reduction in the number of guests could further reduce the number of hosts on our platform.

While we seek to work with governments, we have in the past, and are likely in the future to, become involved in disputes with government agencies regarding such laws and regulations. For example, some governments have attempted to impose fines on us regarding what they contend is illegal offering of short-term accommodations in violation of applicable laws. Certain jurisdictions have adopted laws and regulations that seek to impose lodging taxes, often known as transient or occupancy taxes, on our guests, collection and remittance obligations on our hosts and/or us, and withholding obligations on us, as more fully described in our risk factor titled “— Uncertainty in the application of taxes to our hosts, guests, or platform could increase our tax liabilities and may discourage hosts and guests from conducting business on our platform.” In addition, some third parties and regulators have asserted that we, through our operations, are subject to regulations with respect to short-term rentals, host registration, licensing, and other requirements for the listing of accommodations and experiences, such as real estate broker or agent licenses, travel agency licenses, and insurance-related licenses. We could be held liable and incur significant financial and potential criminal penalties if we are found to have violated any of these regulations. In certain jurisdictions, we have resolved disputes concerning the application of these laws and regulations by agreeing, among other things, to share certain data with government agencies to assist in the enforcement of limits on short-term rentals as well as the enforcement of safety regulations, and to implement measures to confirm to the government that hosts are operating in compliance with applicable law. When a government agency seeks to apply laws and regulations in a manner that limits or curtails hosts’ or guests’ ability or willingness to list and search for accommodations in that particular geography, we have attempted and may continue to attempt through litigation or other means to defend against such

 

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application of laws and regulations, but have sometimes been and may continue to be unsuccessful in certain of those efforts. Further, if we or our hosts and guests were required to comply with laws and regulations, government requests, or agreements with government agencies that adversely impact our relations with hosts and guests, our business, results of operations, and financial condition would be materially adversely affected. Moreover, if we enter an agreement with a government or governmental agency to resolve a dispute, the terms of such agreement will likely be publicly available and could create a precedent that may put us in a weaker bargaining position in future disputes with other governments.

We are subject to a wide variety of complex, evolving, and sometimes inconsistent and ambiguous laws and regulations that may adversely impact our operations and discourage hosts and guests from using our platform, and that could cause us to incur significant liabilities including fines and criminal penalties, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

Hosts list, and guests search for, stays and experiences on our platform in more than 220 countries and regions, and in approximately 100,000 cities throughout the world. There are national, state, local, and foreign laws and regulations in jurisdictions that relate to or affect our business. Moreover, the laws and regulations of each jurisdiction in which we operate are distinct and may result in inconsistent or ambiguous interpretations among local, regional, or national laws or regulations applicable to our business. Compliance with laws and regulations of different jurisdictions imposing varying standards and requirements is burdensome for businesses like ours, imposes added cost and increases potential liability to our business, and makes it difficult to realize business efficiencies and economies of scale. For example, we incur significant operational costs to comply with requirements of jurisdictions and cities that have disparate requirements around tax collection, tax reporting, host registration, limits on lengths of stays, and other regulations, each of which require us to dedicate significant resources to provide the infrastructure and tools needed on our platform for our hosts to meet these legal requirements and for us to fulfill any obligations we may have. The complexity of our platform and changes required to comply with the large number of disparate requirements can lead to compliance gaps if our internal resources cannot keep up with the pace of regulatory change and new requirements imposed on our platform, or if our platform does not work as intended or has errors or bugs.

It may be difficult or impossible for us to investigate or evaluate laws or regulations in all cities, countries, and regions. The application of existing laws and regulations to our business and platform can be unclear and may be difficult for hosts, guests, and us to understand and apply, and are subject to change, as governments or government agencies seek to apply legacy systems of laws or adopt new laws to new online business models in the travel and accommodations industries, including ours. Uncertain and unclear application of such laws and regulations to host and guest activity and our platform could cause and has caused some hosts and guests to leave or choose not to use our platform, reduce supply and demand for our platform and services, increase the costs of compliance with such laws and regulations, and increase the threat of litigation or enforcement actions related to our platform, all of which would materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition. See also our risk factor titled “— We could face liability for information or content on or accessible through our platform.”

There are laws that apply to us, and there are laws that apply to our hosts and/or guests. While we require our hosts and guests to comply with their own independent legal obligations under our terms of service, we have limited means of enforcing or ensuring the compliance of our hosts and guests with all applicable legal requirements. Sometimes governments try to hold us responsible for laws that apply to our hosts and/or guests. Whether applicable to us, our hosts, and/or our guests, the related consequences arising out of such laws and regulations, including penalties for violations of and costs to maintain compliance

 

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with such laws and regulations, have had and could continue to have a material adverse effect on our reputation, business, results of operations, and financial condition.

We take certain measures to comply, and to help hosts comply, with laws and regulations, such as requiring registration numbers to be displayed on a listing profile for listings in some jurisdictions where such registration is required. These measures, changes to them, and any future measures we adopt could increase friction on our platform, and reduce the number of listings available on our platform from hosts and bookings by guests, and could reduce the activity of hosts and guests on our platform. We may be subject to additional laws and regulations which could require significant changes to our platform that discourage hosts and guests from using our platform. Our newer offerings, such as Airbnb Experiences, are subject to similar or other laws, regulations, and regulatory actions. In particular, if we become more involved in hosts’ listings and conduct related to bookings, then we are more likely to draw scrutiny and additional regulations from governments and undercut various defenses we may have to claims or attempts to regulate us, which further constrain our business and impose additional liability on us as a platform.

In addition to laws and regulations directly applicable to the short-term rental and home sharing business as discussed in our risk factor titled “— Laws, regulations, and rules that affect the short-term rental and home sharing business have limited and may continue to limit the ability or willingness of hosts to share their spaces over our platform and expose our hosts or us to significant penalties, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, and financial condition,” we are subject to laws and regulations governing our business practices, the Internet, e-commerce, and electronic devices, including those relating to taxation, privacy, data protection, pricing, content, advertising, discrimination, consumer protection, protection of minors, copyrights, distribution, messaging, mobile communications, electronic device certification, electronic waste, electronic contracts, communications, Internet access, competition, and unfair commercial practices. We are also subject to laws and regulations governing the provision of online payment services, the design and operation of our platform, and the operations, characteristics, and quality of our platform and services.

We are also subject to federal, state, local, and foreign laws regulating employment, employee working conditions, including wage and hour laws, employment dispute and employee bargaining processes, collective and representative actions, and other employment compliance requirements.

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many jurisdictions have also adopted laws, rules, regulations, and/or decrees intended to address the COVID-19 pandemic, including implementing travel restrictions or restricting access to city centers or limiting accommodation offerings in surrounding areas. In addition, many jurisdictions have limited social mobility and gatherings. As the COVID-19 pandemic develops, governments, corporations, and other authorities may continue to implement restrictions or policies that could further restrict the ability of our hosts and guests to participate on our platform.

There is increased governmental interest in regulating technology companies in areas including privacy, tax, data localization and data access, algorithm-based discrimination, and competition. In addition, climate change and greater emphasis on sustainability could lead to regulatory efforts to address the carbon impact of housing and travel. As a result, governments may enact new laws and regulations and/or view matters or interpret laws and regulations differently than they have in the past, and in a manner that could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

Any new or existing laws and regulations applicable to existing or future business areas, including amendments to or repeal of existing laws and regulations, or new interpretations, applications, or

 

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enforcement of existing laws and regulations, could expose us to substantial liability, including significant expenses necessary to comply with such laws and regulations, and materially adversely impact bookings on our platform, thereby materially adversely affecting our business, results of operations, and financial condition. For example, the laws and regulations that impact our United Kingdom and European Union operations, including payment processing, privacy and data protection, legal protection for platforms, workers’ rights, and intellectual property, may change after the end of the transitional period following the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union. In addition, the European Union’s new Platform to Business Regulation, which came into effect in July 2020, required us to make updates to the terms that apply to our business customers, introduce new dispute resolution procedures with business customers, and make changes to our community support operations. Furthermore, some of our hosts or some of our offerings may now or in the future be subject to the European Package Travel Directive, which imposes various obligations upon package providers and upon marketers of travel packages, such as disclosure obligations to consumers and liability to consumers. Our efforts to influence legislative and regulatory proposals have an uncertain chance of success, could be limited by laws regulating lobbying or advocacy activity in certain jurisdictions, and even if successful, could be expensive and time consuming, and could divert the attention of management from operations.

We are subject to regulatory inquiries, litigation, and other disputes, which have materially adversely affected and could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

We have been, and expect to continue to be, a party to various legal and regulatory claims, litigation or pre-litigation disputes, and proceedings arising in the normal course of business. The number and significance of these claims, disputes, and proceedings have increased as our company has grown larger, the number of bookings on our platform has increased, there is increased brand awareness, and the scope and complexity of our business have expanded, and we expect they will continue to increase.

We have been, and expect to continue to be, subject to various government inquiries, investigations, and proceedings related to legal and regulatory requirements such as compliance with laws related to short-term rentals and home sharing, tax, consumer protection, pricing, advertising, discrimination, data protection, data sharing, payment processing, privacy, and competition. In many cases, these inquiries, investigations, and proceedings can be complex, time consuming, costly to investigate, and require significant company and also management attention. For certain matters, we are implementing recommended changes to our products, operations, and compliance practices, including enabling tax collection, tax reporting, display of host registration numbers, and removal of noncompliant listings. We are unable to predict the outcomes and implications of such inquiries, investigations, and proceedings on our business, and such inquiries, investigations, and proceedings could result in large fines and penalties and require changes to our products and operations, and materially adversely affect our brand, reputation, business, results of operations, and financial condition. In some instances, applicable laws and regulations do not yet exist or are being adapted and implemented to address certain aspects of our business, and such adoption or change in their interpretation could further alter or impact our business and subject us to future government inquiries, investigations, and proceedings.

We have been involved in litigation with national governments, trade associations and industry bodies, municipalities, and other government authorities, including as a plaintiff and as a defendant, concerning laws seeking to limit or outlaw short-term rentals and to impose obligations or liability on us as a platform. In the United States, we have been involved in various lawsuits concerning whether our platform is responsible for alleged wrongful conduct by hosts who engage in short-term rentals. Claims in such cases have alleged illegal hotel conversions, real estate license requirements, violations of municipal law around

 

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short-term occupancy or rentals, unlawful evictions, or violations of lease provisions or homeowners’ association rules. For example, a property owner sued us and other parties in Broward County for the short-term rental of units in her building in alleged violation of the building’s homeowners’ association rules. Legal claims have been asserted for alleged discriminatory conduct undertaken by hosts against certain guests, and for our own platform policies or business practices. Changes to the interpretation of the applicability of fair housing, civil rights or other statutes to our business or the conduct of our users could materially adversely impact our business, results of operations, and financial condition. We may also become more vulnerable to third-party claims as U.S. laws such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”), the Stored Communications Act, and the Communications Decency Act (“CDA”), and non-U.S. laws such as the European E-Commerce Directive are interpreted by the courts or otherwise modified or amended, as our platform and services to our hosts and guests continue to expand, and as we expand geographically into jurisdictions where the underlying laws with respect to the potential liability of online intermediaries such as ourselves are either unclear or less favorable.

In addition, we face claims and litigation relating to fatalities, shootings, other violent acts, illness (including COVID-19), cancellations and refunds, personal injuries, property damage, carbon monoxide incidents, and privacy violations that occurred at listings or experiences during a booking made on our platform. We also have putative class action litigation and government inquiries, and could face additional litigation and government inquiries and fines relating to our business practices, cancellations and other consequences due to natural disasters or other unforeseen events beyond our control such as wars, regional hostilities, health concerns, including epidemics and pandemics such as COVID-19, or law enforcement demands and other regulatory actions.

Notwithstanding the decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) on December 19, 2019 ruling that Airbnb is a provider of information society services under the E-Commerce Directive, there continue to be new laws and government initiatives within the European Union attempting to regulate Airbnb as a platform. In several cases, national courts are evaluating whether certain local rules imposing obligations on platforms can be enforced against us. For example, we are challenging an Italian law requiring short-term rental platforms to act as withholding tax agent for host income taxes, to collect and remit tourist taxes, and to disclose user data. Adverse rulings in these national cases are possible and could result in changes to our business practices in significant ways, increased operating and compliance costs, and lead to a loss of revenue for us.

In addition, in the ordinary course of business, disputes may arise because we are alleged to have infringed third parties’ intellectual property or in which we agree to provide indemnification to third parties with respect to certain matters, including losses arising from our breach of such agreements or from intellectual property infringement claims, or where we make other contractual commitments to third parties. We also have indemnification agreements with certain of our directors, executive officers, and certain other employees that require us, among other things, to indemnify them against certain liabilities that may arise by reason of their status or service as directors or officers. We may be subject to litigation stemming from these obligations.

Adverse results in any regulatory inquiry, litigation, legal proceedings, or claims may include awards of potentially significant monetary damages, including statutory damages for certain causes of action in certain jurisdictions, penalties, fines, injunctive relief, royalty or licensing agreements, or orders preventing us from offering certain services. Moreover, many regulatory inquiries, litigation, legal proceedings, or claims are resolved by settlements that can include both monetary and nonmonetary components. Adverse results or settlements may result in changes in our business practices in significant ways, increased operating and compliance costs, and a loss of revenue. In addition, any litigation or pre-litigation

 

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claims against us, whether or not meritorious, are time consuming, require substantial expense, and result in the diversion of significant operational resources. We use various software platforms that in some instances have limited functionality which may impede our ability to fully retrieve records in the context of a governmental inquiry or litigation. In addition, our insurance may not cover all potential claims to which we are exposed and may not be adequate to indemnify us for all liability that may be imposed. As we continue to grow, regulatory inquiries, litigation, legal proceedings, and other claims will continue to consume significant company resources and adverse results in future matters could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

We could face liability for information or content on or accessible through our platform.

We could face claims relating to information or content that is published or made available on our platform. Our platform relies upon content that is created and posted by hosts, guests, or other third parties. Although content on our platform is typically generated by third parties, and not by us, claims of defamation, disparagement, negligence, warranty, personal harm, intellectual property infringement, or other alleged damages could be asserted against us, in addition to our hosts and guests. While we rely on a variety of statutory and common-law frameworks and defenses, including those provided by the DMCA, the CDA, the fair-use doctrine in the United States and the E-Commerce Directive in the European Union, differences between statutes, limitations on immunity, requirements to maintain immunity, and moderation efforts in the many jurisdictions in which we operate may affect our ability to rely on these frameworks and defenses, or create uncertainty regarding liability for information or content uploaded by hosts and guests or otherwise contributed by third-parties to our platform. Moreover, regulators in the United States and in other countries may introduce new regulatory regimes that increase potential liability for information or content available on our platform. For example, in the United States, laws such as the CDA, which have previously been interpreted to provide substantial protection to interactive computer service providers, may change and become less predictable or unfavorable by legislative action or juridical interpretation. There have been various federal legislative efforts to restrict the scope of the protections available to online platforms under the CDA, in particular with regards to Section 230 of the CDA, and current protections from liability for third-party content in the United States could decrease or change. There is proposed U.S. federal legislation seeking to hold platforms liable for user-generated content, including content related to short-term rentals. We could incur significant costs investigating and defending such claims and, if we are found liable, significant damages. The European Union is also reviewing the regulation of digital services, and it has been reported that the European Union plans to introduce the Digital Services Act (“DSA”), a package of legislation intended to update the liability and safety rules for digital platforms, products, and services, which could negatively impact the scope of the limited immunity provided by the E-Commerce Directive. Some European jurisdictions have also proposed or intend to pass legislation that imposes new obligations and liabilities on platforms with respect to certain types of harmful content. In parallel, the European Commission is working on a legislative proposal to introduce new ex ante regulation of online platforms and new market investigation powers as a separate piece of legislation, the Digital Markets Act (“DMA”). If the DMA is enacted, it may contain certain regulatory requirements and/or obligations that negatively impact our business. Some European jurisdictions (such as the United Kingdom and Germany) are also reviewing their competition rules in relation to digital platforms which could lead to new regulations similar to the DMA at national level. While the scope and timing of these proposals are currently uncertain, if enacted and applied to our platform, the new rules may adversely affect our business. In countries in Asia and Latin America, generally there are not similar statutes as the CDA or E-Commerce Directive. The laws of countries in Asia and Latin America generally provide for direct liability if a platform is involved in creating such content or has actual knowledge of the content without taking action to take it down. Further, laws in some Asian countries also

 

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provide for primary or secondary liability, which can include criminal liability, if a platform failed to take sufficient steps to prevent such content from being uploaded. Because liability often flows from information or content on our platform and/or services accessed through our platform, as we continue to expand our offerings, tiers, and scope of business, both in terms of the range of offerings and services and geographical operations, we may face or become subject to additional or different laws and regulations. Our potential liability for information or content created by third parties and posted to our platform could require us to implement additional measures to reduce our exposure to such liability, may require us to expend significant resources, may limit the desirability of our platform to hosts and guests, may cause damage to our brand or reputation, and may cause us to incur time and costs defending such claims in litigation, thereby materially adversely affecting our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

In the European Union, the Consumer Rights Directive and the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive harmonized consumer rights across the EU member states. In 2018, the European Commission and a group of European consumer protection authorities (through the Consumer Protection Cooperation Network) investigated our customer terms and price display practices, which required us to make certain changes to our terms and price display practices. If Consumer Protection Regulators find that we are in breach of consumer protection laws, we may be fined or required to change our terms and processes, which may result in increased operational costs. Consumers and certain Consumer Protection Associations may also bring individual claims against us if they believe that our terms and/or business practices are not in compliance with local consumer protection laws. Currently, class actions may also be brought in certain countries in the European Union, and the Collective Redress Directive will extend the right to collective redress across the European Union.

Home sharing may not achieve global acceptance.

While home sharing has grown in popularity, home sharing may not achieve global acceptance, particularly in regions where home sharing may not be deemed attractive to hosts and guests due to cultural considerations. The attractiveness of our platform for hosts and guests is impacted by a number of factors, including the willingness of individual hosts to offer their homes on our platform, the willingness of guests to book stays at homes in lieu of more traditional options, such as hotels, our ability to continue to extend our operating model internationally and offer localized services that are desirable to our hosts and guests, and our ability to offer cost-effective alternatives to traditional accommodations. Furthermore, both hosts and guests may be reluctant or unwilling to use our platform because of concerns regarding their safety or the quality of their stays. Many hosts and guests are apprehensive about or not willing to share homes due to concerns surrounding the transmission of COVID-19, and if they are willing to share homes, their ability to do so may be restricted by laws, rules, regulations, or decrees adopted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This uncertainty surrounding acceptance of home sharing is exacerbated by the legacy system of laws and regulations that govern short and long-term accommodations, travel services, real estate brokerage services, and taxes, which generally does not directly address the online home sharing business model. If home sharing does not achieve global acceptance, our growth could be limited, which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

Maintaining and enhancing our brand and reputation is critical to our growth, and negative publicity could damage our brand and thereby harm our ability to compete effectively, and could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

Our brand and our reputation are among our most important assets. Maintaining and enhancing our brand and reputation is critical to our ability to attract hosts, guests, and employees, to compete effectively, to

 

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preserve and deepen the engagement of our existing hosts, guests, and employees, to maintain and improve our standing in the communities where our hosts operate, including our standing with community leaders and regulatory bodies, and to mitigate legislative or regulatory scrutiny, litigation, and government investigations. We are heavily dependent on the perceptions of hosts and guests who use our platform to help make word-of-mouth recommendations that contribute to our growth.

Any incident, whether actual or rumored to have occurred, involving the safety or security of listings, hosts, guests, or other members of the public, fraudulent transactions, or incidents that are mistakenly attributed to Airbnb, and any media coverage resulting therefrom, could create a negative public perception of our platform, which would adversely impact our ability to attract hosts and guests. In addition, when hosts cancel reservations or if we fail to provide timely refunds to guests in connection with cancellations, guest perception of the value of our platform is adversely impacted and may cause guests to not use our platform in the future. The impact of these issues may be more pronounced if we are seen to have failed to provide prompt and appropriate community support or our platform policies are perceived to be too permissive, too restrictive, or providing hosts and/or guests with unsatisfactory resolutions. We have been the subject of media reports, social media posts, blogs, and other forums that contain allegations about our business or activity on our platform that create negative publicity. As a result of these complaints and negative publicity, some hosts have refrained from, and may in the future refrain from, listing with us, and some guests have refrained from, and may in the future refrain from, using our platform, which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

In addition, our brand and reputation could be harmed if we fail to act responsibly or are perceived as not acting responsibly, or fail to comply with regulatory requirements as interpreted by certain governments or agencies thereof, in a number of other areas, such as safety and security, data security, privacy practices, provision of information about users and activities on our platform, sustainability, human rights, diversity, non-discrimination, and support for employees and local communities. Media, legislative, or government scrutiny around our company, including the perceived impact on affordable housing and over-tourism, neighborhood nuisance, privacy practices, provision of information as requested by certain governments or agencies thereof, content on our platform, business practices and strategic plans, impact of travel on the environment, and public health policies that may cause geopolitical backlash, our business partners, private companies where we have minority investments, and our practices relating to our platform, offerings, employees, competition, litigation, and response to regulatory activity, could adversely affect our brand and our reputation with our hosts, guests, and communities. Social media compounds the potential scope of the negative publicity that could be generated and the speed with which such negative publicity may spread. Any resulting damage to our brand or reputation could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

In addition, we rely on our hosts and guests to provide trustworthy reviews and ratings that our hosts or guests may rely upon to help decide whether or not to book a particular listing or accept a particular booking and that we use to enforce quality standards. We rely on these reviews to further strengthen trust among members of our community. Our hosts and guests may be less likely to rely on reviews and ratings if they believe that our review system does not generate trustworthy reviews and ratings. We have procedures in place to combat fraud or abuse of our review system, but we cannot guarantee that these procedures are or will be effective. In addition, if our hosts and guests do not leave reliable reviews and ratings, other potential hosts or guests may disregard those reviews and ratings, and our systems that use reviews and ratings to enforce quality standards would be less effective, which could reduce trust within our community and damage our brand and reputation, and could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

 

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Host, guest, or third-party actions that are criminal, violent, inappropriate, or dangerous, or fraudulent activity, may undermine the safety or the perception of safety of our platform and our ability to attract and retain hosts and guests and materially adversely affect our reputation, business, results of operations, and financial condition.

We have no control over or ability to predict the actions of our users and other third parties, such as neighbors or invitees, either during the guest’s stay, experience, or otherwise, and therefore, we cannot guarantee the safety of our hosts, guests, and third parties. The actions of hosts, guests, and other third parties have resulted and can further result in fatalities, injuries, other bodily harm, fraud, invasion of privacy, property damage, discrimination, brand and reputational damage, which have created and could continue to create potential legal or other substantial liabilities for us. We do not verify the identity of all of our hosts and guests nor do we verify or screen third parties who may be present during a reservation made through our platform. Our identity verification processes rely on, among other things, information provided by hosts and guests, and our ability to validate that information and the effectiveness of third-party service providers that support our verification processes may be limited. In addition, we do not currently and may not in the future require users to re-verify their identity following their successful completion of the initial verification process. Certain verification processes, including legacy verification processes on which we previously relied, may be less reliable than others. We screen against certain regulatory, terrorist, and sanctions watch lists, conduct certain criminal background checks for U.S. hosts, U.S. guests, and hosts in India, and conduct additional screening processes to flag and investigate suspicious activities. These processes are beneficial but not exhaustive and have limitations due to a variety of factors, including laws and regulations that prohibit or limit our ability to conduct effective background checks in some jurisdictions, the unavailability of information, and the inability of our systems to detect all suspicious activity. There can be no assurances that these measures will significantly reduce criminal or fraudulent activity on our platform. The criminal background checks for U.S. hosts, U.S. guests, and hosts in India, and other screening processes rely on, among other things, information provided by hosts and guests, our ability to validate that information, the accuracy, completeness, and availability of the underlying information relating to criminal records, the digitization of certain records, the evolving regulatory landscape in this area such as in the data privacy space, and on the effectiveness of third-party service providers that may fail to conduct such background checks adequately or disclose information that could be relevant to a determination of eligibility, and we do not run criminal background checks and other screening processes on third parties who may be present during a reservation made through our platform.

In addition, we have not in the past and may not in the future undertake to independently verify the safety, suitability, location, quality, compliance with Airbnb policies or standards, and legal compliance, such as fire code compliance or the presence of carbon monoxide detectors, of all our hosts’ listings or experiences. We have not in the past and may not in the future undertake to independently verify the location, safety, or suitability of experiences for individual guests, the suitability, qualifications, or credentials of experiences hosts, or the qualifications of individual experiences guests. In the limited circumstances where we have undertaken the verification or screening of certain aspects of host qualifications, listings or experiences, the scope of such processes may be limited and rely on, among other things, information provided by hosts and guests and the ability of our internal teams or third-party vendors to adequately conduct such verification or screening practices. In addition, we have not in the past taken and may not in the future take steps to re-verify or re-screen host qualifications, listings, or experiences following initial review. We have in the past relied, and may in the future, rely on hosts and guests to disclose information relating to their listings and experiences and such information may be inaccurate or incomplete. We have created policies and standards to respond to issues reported with listings, but certain listings may pose heightened safety risks to individual users because those issues have not been reported to us or because our customer support

 

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team has not taken the requisite action based on our policies. We rely, at least in part, on reports of issues from hosts and guests to investigate and enforce many of our policies and standards. In addition, our policies may not contemplate certain safety risks posed by listings or individual hosts or guests or may not sufficiently address those risks.

We have also faced civil litigation, regulatory investigations, and inquiries involving allegations of, among other things, unsafe or unsuitable listings, discriminatory policies, data processing, practices or behavior on and off our platform or by hosts, guests, and third parties, general misrepresentations regarding the safety or accuracy of offerings on our platform, and other host, guest, or third-party actions that are criminal, violent, inappropriate, dangerous, or fraudulent. While we recognize that we need to continue to build trust and invest in innovations that will support trust when it comes to our policies, tools, and procedures to protect hosts, guests, and the communities in which our hosts operate, we may not be successful in doing so. Similarly, listings that are inaccurate, of a lower than expected quality, or that do not comply with our policies may harm guests and public perception of the quality and safety of listings on our platform and materially adversely affect our reputation, business, results of operations, and financial condition.

If hosts, guests, or third parties engage in criminal activity, misconduct, fraudulent, negligent, or inappropriate conduct or use our platform as a conduit for criminal activity, consumers may not consider our platform and the listings on our platform safe, and we may receive negative media coverage, or be subject to involvement in a government investigation concerning such activity, which could adversely impact our brand and reputation, and lower the adoption rate of our platform. For example:

 

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there have been shootings, fatalities, and other criminal or violent acts on properties booked on our platform, including as a result of unsanctioned house parties;

 

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there have been incidents of sexual violence against hosts, guests, and third parties, and we have seen higher incident rates of such conduct associated with private room and shared space listings;

 

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there have been undisclosed hidden cameras at properties; and

 

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there have been incidents of hosts and guests engaging in criminal, fraudulent, or unsafe behavior and other misconduct while using our platform.

The methods used by perpetrators of fraud and other misconduct are complex and constantly evolving, and our trust and security measures have been, and may currently or in the future be, insufficient to detect and help prevent all fraudulent activity and other misconduct; for example:

 

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there have been incidents where hosts have misrepresented both the quality and location of their properties, in some instances to send guests to different and inferior properties;

 

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there have been incidents where guests have caused substantial property damage to listings or misrepresented the purpose of their stay and used listings for unauthorized or inappropriate conduct including parties, sex work, drug-related activities, or to perpetrate criminal activities;

 

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there have been instances where users with connected or duplicate accounts have circumvented or manipulated our systems, in an effort to evade account restrictions, create false reviews, or engage in fraud or other misconduct; and

 

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situations have occurred where hosts or guests mistakenly or unintentionally provide malicious third parties access to their accounts, which has allowed those third parties to take advantage of our hosts and guests.

 

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In addition, certain regions where we operate have higher rates of violent crime or more relaxed safety standards, which can lead to more safety and security incidents, and may adversely impact the adoption of our platform in those regions and elsewhere.

If criminal, inappropriate, fraudulent, or other negative incidents continue to occur due to the conduct of hosts, guests, or third parties, our ability to attract and retain hosts and guests would be harmed, and our business, results of operations, and financial condition would be materially adversely affected. Such incidents have prompted, and may in the future prompt, stricter home sharing regulations or regulatory inquiries into our platform policies and business practices. In the United States and other countries, we have seen listings being used for parties in violation of Airbnb’s policies which have in some cases resulted in neighborhood disruption or violence. Further, claims have been asserted against us from our hosts, guests, and third parties for compensation due to fatalities, accidents, injuries, assaults, theft, property damage, privacy and security issues, fraudulent listings, and other incidents that are caused by other hosts, guests, or third parties while using our platform. These claims subject us to potentially significant liability and increase our operating costs and could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition. We have obtained some third-party insurance, which is subject to certain conditions and exclusions, for claims and losses incurred based on incidents related to bookings on our platform. Even where we do have third-party insurance, such insurance may be inadequate to fully cover alleged claims of liability, investigation costs, defense costs, and/or payouts. Even if these claims do not result in liability, we could incur significant time and cost investigating and defending against them. As we expand our offerings and tiers, such as the addition of Airbnb Experiences, or if the quantity or severity of incidents increases, our insurance rates and our financial exposure will grow, which would materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

Measures that we are taking to improve the trust and safety of our platform may cause us to incur significant expenditures and may not be successful.

We have taken and continue to take measures to improve the trust and safety on our platform, combat fraudulent activities and other misconduct and improve community trust, such as requiring identity and other information from hosts and guests, attempting to confirm the location of listings, removing suspected fraudulent listings or listings repeatedly reported by guests to be significantly not as described, and removing hosts and guests who fail to comply with our policies. These measures are long-term investments in our business and the trust and safety of our community; however, some of these measures increase friction on our platform by increasing the number of steps required to list or book, which reduces host and guest activity on our platform, and could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition. Implementing the trust and safety initiatives we have announced, which include, among other things, limited verification of hosts and listings, restrictions on “party” houses, manual screening of high-risk reservations, restrictions on certain types of bookings, and our neighbor hotline, or other initiatives, has caused and will continue to cause us to incur significant ongoing expenses and may result in fewer listings and bookings or reduced host and guest retention, which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition. As we operate a global platform, the timing and implementation of these measures will vary across geographies. We have invested and plan to continue to invest significantly in the trust and safety of our platform, but there can be no assurances that these measures will be successful, significantly reduce criminal or fraudulent activity on or off our platform, or be sufficient to protect our reputation in the event of such activity.

Furthermore, we have established community standards, but those standards may not always be effectively enforced, communicated to, or consistently understood by all parts of our community. For example, while we require and communicate to hosts and guests to make certain commitments with

 

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respect to diversity and belonging when they join Airbnb, these standards and requirements are not always well understood by all parts of our community. As a result, hosts and guests may be surprised or disappointed when their expectations are not met.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have instituted a number of policies and measures to address the use of our platform during the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, we have launched cleaning programs and safety practices that are intended to help prevent transmission of COVID-19. All hosts outside of China are asked to commit to these standards, including a uniform five-step cleaning process (hosts in China maintain a separate cleaning program). We provide substantial additional resources and best practices to help hosts implement the cleaning process, including an enhanced cleaning protocol, checklists, and other written and visual materials. Each host is responsible for implementing the cleaning process. We are unable to control or verify the implementation of this process by each host, and following these programs may cause our hosts to incur significant expenditures, which may impact the attractiveness of our platform and may impact hosts’ willingness to list on our platform. Hosts who do not agree to follow these standards may also be suspended or removed from the platform, and our hosts may choose to list on other platforms instead of participating in our cleaning programs. If a significant number of hosts are removed or decide to list on other platforms as a result of our cleaning programs, our business, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected. Hosts and guests must also agree to follow COVID-19-related safety practices, such as social distancing. If our hosts or guests do not follow the guidelines, they may suffer financial or other repercussions, which may make our platform less appealing and may impact our business. Further, such policies may not be successful in preventing the transmission of COVID-19. Cases of suspected COVID-19 exposure or infection during Airbnb reservations have been reported to us. If guests or hosts believe that booking stays or experiences on our platform poses heightened risks for contracting COVID-19 or other diseases, our reputation and business could be materially adversely affected, and it could give rise to legal claims against us.

We rely on traffic to our platform to grow revenue, and if we are unable to drive traffic cost-effectively, it would materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

We believe that maintaining and strengthening our brand is an important aspect of our efforts to attract and retain hosts and guests. In particular, we rely on marketing to drive guest traffic to our platform. We have invested considerable resources into establishing and maintaining our brand. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, we realigned our organizational priorities to further increase our focus on individual hosts and brand marketing, while reducing performance marketing.

Our brand marketing efforts include a variety of online and offline marketing distribution channels. Our brand marketing efforts are expensive and may not be cost-effective or successful. For example, in November 2019, we announced a partnership with the International Olympic Committee for nine years to cover the next five Olympic Games. The COVID-19 pandemic has delayed the 2020 Olympics, and the continued uncertainty around COVID-19 and other geopolitical factors could undermine our ability to realize the value of the partnership. If our competitors spend increasingly more on brand marketing efforts, we may not be able to maintain and grow traffic to our platform.

We have used performance marketing products offered by search engines and social media platforms to distribute paid advertisements that drive traffic to our platform. For the year ended December 31, 2019 and the nine months ended September 30, 2020, approximately 23% and approximately 9%, respectively, of the traffic to our platform came from paid performance marketing channels. The remainder of our traffic in those periods came through direct or unpaid channels, which include brand marketing and search engine optimization (“SEO”). A critical factor in attracting hosts and guests to our platform is how prominently listings are displayed in response to search queries for key search terms. The success of home

 

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sharing and our brand has led to increased costs for relevant keywords as our competitors competitively bid on our keywords, including our brand name. We have suspended substantially all performance marketing efforts as we take mitigating actions in relation to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our strategy is to increase brand marketing and use the strength of our brand to attract more guests via direct or unpaid channels and to decrease our performance marketing spend relative to 2019. However, we may not be successful at our efforts to drive traffic growth cost-effectively. If we are not able to effectively increase our traffic growth without increases in spend on performance marketing, we may need to increase our performance marketing spend in the future, including in response to increased spend on performance marketing from our competitors, and our business, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected.

The technology that powers much of our performance marketing is increasingly subject to strict regulation, and regulatory or legislative changes could adversely impact the effectiveness of our performance marketing efforts and, as a result, our business. For example, we rely on the placement and use of “cookies” — text files stored on a host or guest’s web browser or device — to support tailored marketing to consumers. Many countries have adopted, or are in the process of adopting, regulations governing the use of cookies and similar technologies, and individuals may be required to “opt-in” to the placement of cookies used for purposes of marketing. For example, we are subject to evolving EU privacy laws on cookies and e-marketing. In the European Union, regulators are increasingly focusing on compliance with requirements in the online behavioral advertising ecosystem, and current national laws that implement the ePrivacy Directive may be replaced by an EU Regulation, known as the ePrivacy Regulation, which will significantly increase fines for non-compliance. In the European Union, informed consent may be required for the placement of a cookie on a user’s device and for direct electronic marketing. The European General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 (“GDPR”) also imposes conditions on obtaining valid consent. While the text of the ePrivacy Regulation is still under development, a recent European Court of Justice decision and regulators’ recent guidance are driving increased attention to cookies and tracking technologies under existing law. If regulators start to enforce the strict approach, this could lead to substantial costs, require significant systems changes, limit the effectiveness of our marketing activities, divert the attention of our technology personnel, adversely affect our margins, increase costs, and subject us to additional liabilities. Widespread adoption of regulations that significantly restrict our ability to use performance marketing technology could adversely affect our ability to market effectively to current and prospective hosts and guests, and thus materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

We focus on unpaid channels such as SEO. SEO involves developing our platform in a way that enables a search engine to rank our platform prominently for search queries for which our platform’s content may be relevant. Changes to search engine algorithms or similar actions are not within our control, and could adversely affect our search-engine rankings and traffic to our platform. We believe that our SEO results have been adversely affected by the launch of Google Travel and Google Vacation Rental Ads, which reduce the prominence of our platform in organic search results for travel-related terms and placement on Google. To the extent that our brand and platform are listed less prominently or fail to appear in search results for any reason, we would need to increase our paid marketing spend which would increase our overall customer acquisition costs and materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition. If Google or Apple uses its own mobile operating systems or app distribution channels to favor its own or other preferred travel service offerings, or impose policies that effectively disallow us to continue our full product offerings in those channels, there could be an adverse effect on our ability to engage with hosts and guests who access our platform via mobile apps or search.

Moreover, as guests increase their booking activity across multiple travel sites or compare offerings across sites, our marketing efficiency and effectiveness is adversely impacted, which could cause us to increase

 

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our sales and marketing expenditures in the future, which may not be offset by additional revenue, and could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition. In addition, any negative publicity or public complaints, including those that impede our ability to maintain positive brand awareness through our marketing and consumer communications efforts, could harm our reputation and lead to fewer hosts and guests using our platform, and attempts to replace this traffic through other channels will require us to increase our sales and marketing expenditures.

Our debt obligations contain restrictions that impact our business and expose us to risks that could materially adversely affect our liquidity and financial condition. If we require additional funding to support our business, this additional funding may not be available on reasonable terms, or at all.

We have outstanding long-term indebtedness with a principal amount of $1,997.5 million as of September 30, 2020. We entered into a five-year revolving credit facility in November 2020 with $500.0 million of initial borrowing commitments. As of the date of this prospectus, there were no borrowings outstanding under the revolving credit facility and outstanding letters of credit totaled approximately $21.4 million. The agreements governing our indebtedness (our “Credit Agreements”) contain various covenants that are operative so long as our Credit Agreements remain outstanding. The covenants, among other things, limit our and our subsidiaries’ abilities to:

 

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incur additional indebtedness;

 

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create or incur additional liens;

 

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engage in certain fundamental changes, including mergers or consolidations;

 

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sell or transfer assets;

 

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pay dividends and distributions on our and our subsidiaries’ capital stock;

 

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make payments and prepayments of junior or unsecured indebtedness;

 

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make acquisitions, investments, loans, or advances;

 

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engage in certain transactions with affiliates; and

 

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enter into negative pledge clauses and clauses restricting subsidiary distributions.

If we experience a decline in cash flow due to any of the factors described in these “Risk Factors” or otherwise, we could have difficulty paying interest and the principal amount of our outstanding indebtedness. If we are unable to generate sufficient cash flow or otherwise obtain the funds necessary to make required payments under our Credit Agreements, or if we fail to comply with the various requirements of our indebtedness, we could default under our Credit Agreements. Any such default that is not cured or waived could result in an acceleration of indebtedness then outstanding under our Credit Agreements, a requirement that we and our subsidiaries that have guaranteed our indebtedness pay the obligations in full, and would permit the lenders to exercise remedies with respect to all of the collateral that is securing our indebtedness, including substantially all of our and our subsidiary guarantors’ assets. In addition, lenders may be able to terminate any commitments they had made to supply us with funding under the revolving credit facility. We cannot be certain that our future operating results will be sufficient to ensure compliance with the covenants in our Credit Agreements or to remedy any defaults under our Credit Agreements.

Interest rates under our Credit Agreements are based partly on LIBOR, the London interbank offered rate, which is the basic rate of interest used in lending between banks on the London interbank market and is widely used as a reference for setting the interest rate on loans globally. LIBOR is currently expected to phase out by the end of 2021. It is unclear if at that time LIBOR will cease to exist or if new methods of calculating LIBOR will be established such that it continues to exist after 2021. The U.S. Federal Reserve has begun publishing a Secured Overnight Funding Rate which is currently intended to serve as an alternative

 

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reference rate to LIBOR. If the method for calculation of LIBOR changes, if LIBOR is no longer available, or if lenders have increased costs due to changes in LIBOR, we may suffer from potential increases in interest rates on our borrowings. Further, we may need to renegotiate our Credit Agreements or any other borrowings that utilize LIBOR as a factor in determining the interest rate to replace LIBOR with the new standard that is established.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been increased volatility in the financial and securities markets, which has generally made access to capital less certain and increased the cost of obtaining new capital. As we manage through the slowdown in our business due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we cannot be sure that additional financing will be available to us on reasonable terms, or at all. In addition, the terms of future debt agreements could include more restrictive covenants, which could further restrict our business operations. If we cannot raise additional funds when we need them, our ability to continue to support our business and to respond to business challenges would be significantly limited, and our business, results of operations, and financial condition would be materially adversely affected.

Our substantial level of indebtedness could materially adversely affect our financial condition.

We have significant indebtedness that could materially adversely affect our business by:

 

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increasing our vulnerability to general adverse economic and industry conditions;

 

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requiring us to dedicate a substantial portion of our cash flow from operations to payments on our indebtedness, thereby reducing the availability of our cash flow to fund working capital, capital expenditures, acquisitions, product development efforts, and other general corporate purposes;

 

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limiting our flexibility in planning for, or reacting to, changes in our business and the industry in which we operate; and

 

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exposing us to the risk of increased interest rates as our borrowings are, and may in the future be, at variable interest rates.

The occurrence of any one of these events could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, and financial condition, and ability to satisfy our obligations under our Credit Agreements.

If we are unable to manage the risks presented by our business model internationally, our business, results of operations, and financial condition would be materially adversely affected.

We are a global platform with hosts in more than 220 countries and regions and approximately 100,000 cities, and a global guest community. As of September 30, 2020, we had offices in 24 cities and had approximately 2,390 employees located internationally. For the year ended December 31, 2019 and the nine months ended September 30, 2020, 63% and 53% of our revenue, respectively, was generated from listings outside of the United States. We expect to continue to make investments to expand our international operations. Managing a global organization is difficult, time consuming, and expensive, and requires significant management attention and careful prioritization, and any international expansion efforts that we may undertake may not be successful. In addition, conducting international operations subjects us to risks, which include:

 

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operational and compliance challenges caused by distance, language, and cultural differences;

 

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the cost and resources required to localize our platform and services, which often requires the translation of our platform into foreign languages and adaptation for local practices and regulatory requirements;

 

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unexpected, more restrictive, differing, and conflicting laws and regulations, including those laws governing Internet activities, short-term and long-term rentals (including those implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic), tourism, tenancy, taxes, licensing, payments processing, messaging, marketing activities, registration and/or verification of guests, ownership of intellectual property, content, data collection and privacy, security, data localization, data transfer and government access to personal information, and other activities important to our business;

 

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uncertainties regarding the interpretation of national and local laws and regulations, uncertainty in the enforceability of legal rights, and uneven application of laws and regulations to businesses, in particular U.S. companies;

 

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competition with companies that understand local markets better than we do, or that have a local presence and pre-existing relationships with potential hosts and guests in those markets;

 

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differing levels of social acceptance of home sharing, our brand, and offerings;

 

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legal uncertainty regarding our liability for the listings, the services, and content provided by hosts, guests, and other third parties;

 

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uncertain resolutions of litigation or regulatory inquiries;

 

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variations in payment forms for hosts and guests, increased operational complexity around payments, and inability to offer local payment forms like cash or country specific digital forms of payment;

 

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lack of familiarity and the burden of complying with a wide variety of U.S. and foreign laws, legal standards, and regulatory requirements, which are complex, sometimes inconsistent, and subject to unexpected changes;

 

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potentially adverse tax consequences, including resulting from the complexities of foreign corporate income tax systems, value added tax (“VAT”) regimes, tax withholding rules, lodging taxes, often known as transient or occupancy taxes, hotel taxes, and other indirect taxes, tax collection or remittance obligations, and restrictions on the repatriation of earnings;

 

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difficulties in managing and staffing international operations, including due to differences in legal, regulatory, and collective bargaining processes;

 

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fluctuations in currency exchange rates, and in particular, decreases in the value of foreign currencies relative to the U.S. dollar;

 

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regulations governing the control of local currencies and impacting the ability to collect and remit funds to hosts in those currencies or to repatriate cash into the United States;

 

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oversight by foreign government agencies whose approach to privacy or human rights may be inconsistent with that taken in other countries;

 

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increased financial accounting and reporting burdens, and complexities and difficulties in implementing and maintaining adequate internal controls in an international operating environment;

 

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political, social, and economic instability abroad, terrorist attacks, and security concerns in general;

 

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operating in countries that are more prone to crime or have lower safety standards;

 

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operating in countries that have higher risk of corruption; and

 

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reduced or varied protection for our intellectual property rights in some countries.

 

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Increased operating expenses, decreased revenue, negative publicity, negative reaction from our hosts and guests and other stakeholders, or other adverse impacts from any of the above factors or other risks related to our international operations could materially adversely affect our brand, reputation, business, results of operations, and financial condition.

In addition to the factors listed above, we have invested heavily to expand our operations in China, which is an intensely competitive market, both on the consumer side and from a talent perspective. We expect to continue to incur significant expenses to operate our business in China, and we may not achieve profitability in that market. As we expand our operations in China, the above factors, sentiment of the workforce in China, and China’s policy towards foreign direct investment may particularly impact our operations in China. Further, as we expand our operations in China, we expect to continue to make modifications to the way our website, mobile apps, offerings, and features function in China as compared to other countries. In addition, we need to ensure that our business practices in China are compliant with local laws and regulations, which may be interpreted and enforced in ways that are different from our interpretation, and/or create obligations on us that are costly to meet or conflict with laws in other jurisdictions.

As we disclose to our hosts and guests regarding China, we are subject to various requirements and requests from government agencies to share information on users who use or offer services in China through our platform. Failure to comply with such requests or other requirements as interpreted by government agencies may lead to impairment or disruption to our business and operations, including failing to obtain or losing the necessary licenses to operate in China, the blocking of our platform and services in China, and/or enforcement action against our host community, corporate entities or officers. Our failure to comply with such requests or requirements, or conversely our compliance with such requests or requirements, could materially adversely affect our brand, reputation, business, results of operations, and financial condition. Further, given that our headquarters is in the United States, any significant or prolonged deterioration in U.S.-China bilateral relations or escalation of geo-political risk in China could adversely affect our business.

In China, the Chinese government has adopted regulations that govern the dissemination of content over the Internet, and China’s first cybersecurity law (“CSL”) took effect in June 2017. The CSL and related regulations and implementation measures are continuing to develop, and it is uncertain what obligations will apply to us in the future. In particular, the CSL imposes high requirements for the operational security of facilities, including data localization requirements, for operators deemed to be part of the “critical information infrastructure.” However, the definition of “critical information infrastructure” is not precise, and there are substantial uncertainties as to its ultimate interpretation and whether it applies to us. Chinese regulators are also considering additional regulation restricting the transfer of personal data and important data outside of China, and we could become subject to data localization requirements in the future as a result of this regulation and/or newly-published industry-specific rules and regulations. If we are considered as an operator of “critical information infrastructure,” or if we become subject to restrictions under other measures or data localization requirements under other Chinese laws and regulations, we would incur substantial costs to comply or have to change our business practices in a manner that materially adversely affects our business, results of operations, and financial condition. Actions by the U.S. government could also impair our ability to effectively operate in China, including through the use of Executive Orders or trade blacklists to ban or limit the use of services provided by Chinese third parties.

We conduct our business in China through a variable interest entity (“VIE”) and a wholly-foreign owned entity. We do not own shares in our VIE and instead rely on contractual arrangements with the equity holders of our VIE to operate our business in China because foreign investment is restricted or prohibited.

 

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Under our contractual arrangements, we must rely on the VIE and the VIE equity holders to perform their obligations in order to exercise our control over the VIE. The VIE equity holders may have conflicts of interest with us or our stockholders, and they may not act in our best interests or may not perform their obligations under these contracts. If our VIE or its equity holders fail to perform their respective obligations under the contractual arrangements, we may not be able to enforce our rights. In addition, if the Chinese government deems that the contractual arrangements in relation to our VIE do not comply with Chinese governmental restrictions on foreign investment, or if these regulations or their interpretation changes in the future, we could be subject to penalties, be forced to cease our operations in China, or be subject to restrictions in the future, and we may incur additional compliance costs. The contractual arrangements with our VIE may also be subject to scrutiny by the Chinese tax authorities and any adjustment of related party transaction pricing could lead to additional taxes.

We track certain operational metrics, which are subject to inherent challenges in measurement, and real or perceived inaccuracies in such metrics may harm our reputation and materially adversely affect our stock price, business, results of operations, and financial condition.

We track certain operational metrics, including metrics such as Nights and Experiences Booked, Gross Booking Value (“GBV”), active listings, active bookers, hosts, and guest arrivals, which may differ from estimates or similar metrics published by third parties due to differences in sources, methodologies, or the assumptions on which we rely. Our internal systems and tools are subject to a number of limitations, and our methodologies for tracking these metrics may change over time, which could result in unexpected changes to our metrics, including the metrics we publicly disclose. If the internal systems and tools we use to track these metrics undercount or overcount performance or contain algorithmic or other technical errors, the data we report may not be accurate. While these numbers are based on what we believe to be reasonable estimates of our metrics for the applicable period of measurement, there are inherent challenges in measuring how our platform is used across large populations globally.

Our Nights and Experiences Booked and GBV metrics are adjusted for cancellations and alterations that happen in the reporting period. However, cancellations and alterations for bookings made in the reporting period can occur beyond the current reporting period. This results in a reported amount of Nights and Experiences Booked and GBV in the quarter of the booking for which all of the bookings may ultimately not result in check-ins, and subsequently reduces our Nights and Experiences Booked and GBV metrics in subsequent quarters when we experience cancellations. Cancellations and alterations to previously booked trips increased dramatically after the COVID-19 outbreak, as guests were either unable to travel or uncomfortable traveling. While the number of nights and experiences canceled in January 2020 was 13% of the gross nights and experiences booked that month, the number of nights and experiences canceled in March and April 2020 exceeded the number of gross nights and experiences booked during those months. If we experience high levels of cancellations in the future, our performance and related business metrics will be materially adversely affected.

The calculation of Nights and Experiences Booked, GBV, and active listings requires the ongoing collection of data on new offerings that are added to our platform over time. Our business is complex, and the methodology used to calculate Nights and Experiences Booked, GBV, and active listings may require future adjustments to accurately represent the full value of new offerings.

The number of active bookers on our platform is based on activity during a certain time period. Certain individuals may have more than one guest account and therefore may be counted more than once in our count of active bookers. We count the number of hosts on our platform based on the number of hosts with an available listing as of a certain date. Some individuals may have more than one host account and therefore may be counted more than once as hosts.

 

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Our metrics, including our reported Nights and Experiences Booked, GBV, and active listings, may include fraudulent bookings, accounts, and other activities that have not been flagged by our trust and safety teams or identified by our machine learning algorithms or not yet addressed by our operational teams, which could mean these activities on our site are not identified or addressed in a timely manner or at all, reducing the accuracy of our metrics. Further, any such fraudulent activity, along with associated refunds and cancellations, would reduce our metrics, in particular Nights and Experiences Booked, GBV, and active listings, in the quarter in which it is discovered. Limitations or errors with respect to how we measure data or with respect to the data that we measure may affect our understanding of certain details of our business, which could affect our long-term strategies. If our operational metrics are not accurate representations of our business, or if investors do not perceive these metrics to be accurate, or if we discover material inaccuracies with respect to these figures, our reputation may be significantly harmed, our stock price could decline, we may be subject to stockholder litigation, and our business, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected.

Our efforts to create new offerings and initiatives are costly, and if we are unable to successfully pursue such offerings and initiatives, we may fail to grow, and our business, results of operations, and financial condition would be materially adversely affected.

We need to continue to invest in the development of new offerings and initiatives that differentiate us from our competitors, such as Airbnb Experiences. Developing and delivering these new offerings and initiatives increase our expenses and our organizational complexity, and we may experience difficulties in developing and implementing these new offerings and initiatives.

Our new offerings and initiatives have a high degree of risk, as they may involve unproven businesses with which we have limited or no prior development or operating experience. There can be no assurance that consumer demand for such offerings and initiatives will exist or be sustained at the levels that we anticipate, that we will be able to successfully manage the development and delivery of such offerings and initiatives, or that any of these offerings or initiatives will gain sufficient market acceptance to generate sufficient revenue to offset associated expenses or liabilities. It is also possible that offerings developed by others will render our offerings and initiatives noncompetitive or obsolete. Further, these efforts entail investments in our systems and infrastructure, payments platform, and increased legal and regulatory compliance expenses, could distract management from current operations, and will divert capital and other resources from our more established offerings and geographies. Even if we are successful in developing new offerings and initiatives, regulatory authorities may subject us or our hosts and guests to new rules, taxes, or restrictions or more aggressively enforce existing rules, taxes, or restrictions, that could increase our expenses or prevent us from successfully commercializing these initiatives. If we do not realize the expected benefits of our investments, we may fail to grow and our business, results of operations, and financial condition would be materially adversely affected.

If we fail to comply with federal, state, and foreign laws relating to privacy and data protection, we may face potentially significant liability, negative publicity, an erosion of trust, and increased regulation could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

Privacy and data protection laws, rules, and regulations are complex, and their interpretation is rapidly evolving, making implementation and enforcement, and thus compliance requirements, ambiguous, uncertain, and potentially inconsistent. Compliance with such laws may require changes to our data collection, use, transfer, disclosure, other processing, and certain other related business practices and may thereby increase compliance costs or have other material adverse effects on our business. As part of host and guest registration and business processes, we collect and use personal data, such as names, dates of birth, email addresses, phone numbers, and identity verification information (for example, government

 

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issued identification or passport), as well as credit card or other financial information that hosts and guests provide to us. The laws of many states and countries require businesses that maintain such personal data to implement reasonable measures to keep such information secure and otherwise restrict the ways in which such information can be collected and used.

For example, the GDPR, which became effective on May 25, 2018, has resulted and will continue to result in significantly greater compliance burdens and costs for companies like ours. The GDPR regulates our collection, control, processing, sharing, disclosure, and other use of data that can directly or indirectly identify a living individual (“personal data”), and imposes stringent data protection requirements with significant penalties, and the risk of civil litigation, for noncompliance.

Failure to comply with the GDPR may result in fines of up to 20 million Euros or up to 4% of the annual global revenue of the infringer, whichever is greater. It may also lead to civil litigation, with the risks of damages or injunctive relief, or regulatory orders adversely impacting on the ways in which our business can use personal data. Many large geographies, which are important to our success, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, and India, have passed or are in the process of passing comparable or other robust data privacy legislation or regulation, which may lead to additional costs and increase our overall risk exposure.

In addition, from the beginning of 2021 (when the transitional period following Brexit expires), we will be required to comply with the GDPR and also the UK equivalent, with each regime having the ability to fine up to the greater of 20 million Euros (17 million British Pounds) or 4% of global turnover. The relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union in relation to certain aspects of data protection law remains unclear, for example, how data transfers between EU member states and the United Kingdom will be treated and the role of the United Kingdom’s Information Commissioner’s Office with respect to the European Union following the end of the transitional period. These changes will lead to additional costs and increase our overall risk exposure.

Additionally, we are subject to laws, rules, and regulations regarding cross-border transfers of personal data, including laws relating to transfer of personal data outside the European Economic Area (“EEA”). Recent legal developments in Europe have created complexity and uncertainty regarding transfers of personal data from the EEA to the United States and other jurisdictions; for example, on July 16, 2020, the CJEU invalidated the EU-US Privacy Shield Framework (“Privacy Shield”) under which personal data could be transferred from the EEA to US entities that had self-certified under the Privacy Shield scheme. While the CJEU upheld the adequacy of the standard contractual clauses (a standard form of contract approved by the European Commission as an adequate personal data transfer mechanism, and potential alternative to the Privacy Shield), it noted that reliance on them alone may not necessarily be sufficient in all circumstances; this has created uncertainty and increased the risk around our international operations.

In addition to other mechanisms (particularly standard contractual clauses), we previously relied on our own Privacy Shield certification and, in limited instances, the Privacy Shield certifications of third parties (for example, vendors and partners) for the purposes of transferring personal data from the EEA to the United States. We continue to rely on the standard contractual clauses to transfer personal data outside the EEA, including to the United States. Additionally, in certain circumstances, we rely on derogations provided for by law.

These recent developments may require us to review and amend the legal mechanisms by which we make and, or, receive personal data transfers to the United States and other jurisdictions. As our lead supervisory authorities (the Irish Data Protection Commission, the Luxembourg National Commission for Data

 

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Protection and, until the end of 2020, the British ICO), the European Data Protection Board, and other data protection regulators issue further guidance on personal data export mechanisms, including circumstances where the standard contractual clauses cannot be used, and/or start taking enforcement action, we could suffer additional costs, complaints and/or regulatory investigations or fines, and/or if we are otherwise unable to transfer personal data between and among countries and regions in which we operate, it could affect the manner in which we provide our services, the geographical location or segregation of our relevant systems and operations, and could adversely affect our financial results.

In the United States, federal law, such as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 (“GLBA”) and its implementing regulations, restricts certain collection, processing, storage, use, and disclosure of personal information, requires notice to individuals of privacy practices and provides individuals with certain rights to prevent the use and disclosure of certain nonpublic or otherwise legally protected information. These rules also impose requirements for the safeguarding and proper destruction of personal information through the issuance of data security standards or guidelines. The U.S. government, including Congress, the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Commerce, has announced that it is reviewing the need for greater regulation for the collection of information concerning consumer behavior on the Internet, including regulation aimed at restricting certain targeted advertising practices. Numerous states have enacted or are in the process of enacting state level data privacy laws and regulations governing the collection, use, and processing of state residents’ personal data. For example, the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) took effect on January 1, 2020. The CCPA establishes a new privacy framework for covered businesses such as ours, and may require us to modify our data processing practices and policies and incur compliance related costs and expenses. The CCPA provides new and enhanced data privacy rights to California residents, such as affording consumers the right to access and delete their information and to opt out of certain sharing and sales of personal information. The law also prohibits covered businesses from discriminating against consumers (for example, charging more for services) for exercising any of their CCPA rights. The CCPA imposes severe statutory damages as well as a private right of action for certain data breaches that result in the loss of personal information. This private right of action is expected to increase the likelihood of, and risks associated with, data breach litigation. It remains unclear how various provisions of the CCPA will be interpreted and enforced. In November 2020, California voters passed the California Privacy Rights and Enforcement Act of 2020 (“CPRA”). The CPRA further expands the CCPA with additional data privacy compliance requirements that may impact our business, and establishes a regulatory agency dedicated to enforcing those requirements. The CPRA and the CCPA may lead other states to pass comparable legislation, with potentially greater penalties, and more rigorous compliance requirements relevant to our business. The effects of the CPRA, the CCPA, and other similar state or federal laws, are significant and may require us to modify our data processing practices and policies and to incur substantial costs and potential liability in an effort to comply with such legislation.

Various other governments and consumer agencies around the world have also called for new regulation and changes in industry practices and many have enacted different and often contradictory requirements for protecting personal information collected and maintained electronically. Compliance with numerous and contradictory requirements of different jurisdictions is particularly difficult and costly for an online business such as ours, which collects personal information from hosts, guests, and other individuals in multiple jurisdictions. If any jurisdiction in which we operate adopts news laws or changes its interpretation of its laws, rules, or regulations relating to data residency or localization such that we are unable to comply in a timely manner or at all, we could risk losing our rights to operate in such jurisdictions. While we have invested and continue to invest significant resources to comply with GDPR, GLBA, CCPA, and other privacy regulations around the world, many of these regulations expose us to the possibility of material penalties, significant legal liability, changes in how we operate or offer our products, and interruptions or cessation of

 

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our ability to operate in key geographies, any of which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

Furthermore, to improve the trust and safety on our platform, we conduct certain verification procedures aimed at our hosts, guests, and listings in certain jurisdictions. Such verification procedures may include utilizing public information on the Internet, accessing public databases such as court records, utilizing third-party vendors to analyze host or guest data, or physical inspection. These types of activities may expose us to the risk of regulatory enforcement from privacy regulators and civil litigation.

When we are required to disclose personal data pursuant to demands from government agencies, including tax authorities, state and city regulators, law enforcement agencies, and intelligence agencies, our hosts, guests, and privacy regulators could perceive such disclosure as a failure by us to comply with privacy and data protection policies, notices, and laws, which could result in proceedings or actions against us in the same or other jurisdictions. Conversely, if we do not provide the requested information to government agencies due to a disagreement on the interpretation of the law, we are likely to face enforcement action from such government, engage in litigation, face increased regulatory scrutiny, and experience an adverse impact on our relationship with governments or our ability to offer our services within certain jurisdictions. Any of the foregoing could materially adversely affect our brand, reputation, business, results of operations, and financial condition.

Our business also increasingly relies on artificial intelligence and automated decision making to improve our services and tailor our interactions with our customers. However, in recent years use of these methods has come under increased regulatory scrutiny. New laws, guidance and/or decisions in this area may limit our ability to use our artificial intelligence models, or require us to make changes to our operations that may decrease our operational efficiency, result in an increase to operating costs and/or hinder our ability to improve our services. For example, there are specific rules on the use of automated decision making under the GDPR that require the existence of automated decision making to be disclosed to the data subject with a meaningful explanation of the logic used in such decision making in certain circumstances, and safeguards must be implemented to safeguard individual rights, including the right to obtain human intervention and to contest any decision. Further, California recently introduced a law requiring disclosure of chatbot functionality.

Any failure or perceived failure by us to comply with privacy and data protection policies, notices, laws, rules, and regulations could result in proceedings or actions against us by individuals, consumer rights groups, government agencies, or others. We could incur significant costs in investigating and defending such claims and, if found liable, pay significant damages or fines or be required to make changes to our business. Further, these proceedings and any subsequent adverse outcomes may subject us to significant negative publicity, and an erosion of trust. If any of these events were to occur, our business, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected.

If we fail to prevent data security breaches, there may be damage to our brand and reputation, material financial penalties, and legal liability, along with a decline in use of our platform, which would materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

There are risks of security breaches both on and off our systems as we increase the types of technology we use to operate our platform, including mobile apps and third-party payment processing providers, and as we collaborate with third parties that may need to process our host or guest data or have access to our infrastructure. The evolution of technology systems introduces ever more complex security risks that are difficult to predict and defend against. An increasing number of companies, including those with significant online operations, have recently disclosed breaches of their security, some of which involved

 

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sophisticated tactics and techniques allegedly attributable to criminal enterprises or nation-state actors. While we take significant measures to guard against the type of activity that can lead to data breaches, the techniques used by bad actors to obtain unauthorized access, disable or degrade service, or sabotage systems change frequently and often are unknown until launched against a target. As such, we may be unable to anticipate these tactics and techniques or to implement adequate preventative measures.

Further, with a large geographically disparate employee base, we are not immune from the possibility of a malicious insider compromising our information systems and infrastructure. This risk has grown in light of the greater adoption of remote work as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We also have a distributed community support organization including third-party providers that have access to personal information. We and other companies in our industry have dealt with incidents involving such insiders exfiltrating the personal data of customers, stealing corporate trade secrets and key financial metrics, and illegally diverting funds. No series of measures can fully safeguard against a sufficiently determined and skilled insider threat.

In addition, bad actors have targeted and will continue to target our hosts and guests directly with attempts to breach the security of their email accounts or management systems, such as through phishing attacks where a third party attempts to infiltrate our systems or acquire information by posing as a legitimate inquiry or electronic communication, which are fraudulent identity theft schemes designed to appear as legitimate emails from us or from our hosts or guests, partners, or vendors. We have seen many instances of our hosts and guests falling prey to such schemes, which result in their accounts being taken over by fraudsters intent on perpetrating fraud against them, other users, and our platform. Bad actors may also employ other schemes aimed at defrauding our hosts or guests in ways that we may not anticipate or be able to adequately guard against. Even if phishing and spamming attacks and other fraud schemes are not carried out through our systems, victims may nevertheless seek recovery from us. Because of our prominence, we believe that we are a particularly attractive target for such attacks. Though it is difficult to determine what, if any, harm may directly result from any specific scheme or attack, any failure to maintain performance, reliability, security, and availability of our offerings, services, and technical infrastructure to the satisfaction of our hosts and guests may harm our reputation and our ability to retain existing hosts and guests and attract new hosts and guests. The ability of fraudsters to directly target our hosts and guests with fraudulent communications, or cause an account takeover, exposes us to significant financial fraud risk, including costly litigation, which is difficult to fully mitigate.

Generally, our practice is to encrypt certain sensitive data when it is in transit and at rest. However, we do not know whether our current practice will be deemed sufficient under applicable laws or whether new regulatory requirements might make our current practice insufficient. Moreover, the existence of encryption, in-and-of itself, is not a completely perfect security solution. If there is a breach of our computer systems and we know or suspect that certain personal data has been exfiltrated, accessed, or used inappropriately, we may need to inform the host or guest whose data was stolen, accessed, or used, and may be subject to significant fines and penalties. Further, under certain regulatory schemes, such as the CCPA, we may be liable for statutory damages on a per breached record basis, irrespective of any actual damages or harm to the individual. This means that in the event of a breach we could face government scrutiny or consumer class actions alleging statutory damages amounting to hundreds of millions, and possibly billions of dollars.

Our information technology infrastructure may be vulnerable to computer viruses or physical or electronic intrusions that our security measures may not detect. We have experienced security incidents in the past, and we may face additional attempted security intrusions in the future. Any circumvention of our security measures could result in the misappropriation of confidential or proprietary information, interrupt our

 

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operations, result in financial loss, damage our computers or those of our hosts and guests, or otherwise cause damage to our reputation and business. Further, the ability to bypass our information security controls could degrade our trust and safety programs, which could expose individuals to a risk of physical harm or violence.

We rely on third-party service providers, including financial institutions, to process some of our data and that of our hosts and guests, including payment information, and any failure by such third parties to prevent or mitigate security breaches or improper access to, or disclosure of, such information could have adverse consequences for us similar to an incident directly on our systems.

We have acquired and will continue to acquire companies that are vulnerable to security breaches, and we are responsible for any security breaches of these newly acquired companies. While we conduct due diligence of these companies, we do not have access to the full operating history of the companies and cannot be certain there have not been security breaches prior to our acquisition.

We expend, and expect to continue to expend, significant resources to protect against security related incidents and address problems caused by such incidents. Even if we were to expend more resources, regulators and complainants may not deem our efforts sufficient, and regardless of the expenditure, the risk of security related incidents cannot be fully mitigated. We have a heightened risk of security breaches due to some of our operations being located in certain international jurisdictions. Any actual or alleged security breaches or alleged violations of federal, state, or foreign laws or regulations relating to privacy and data security could result in mandated user notifications, litigation, government investigations, significant fines, and expenditures; divert management’s attention from operations; deter people from using our platform; damage our brand and reputation; force us to cease operations for some length of time; and materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition. Defending against claims or litigation based on any security breach or incident, regardless of their merit, will be costly and may cause reputation harm. The successful assertion of one or more large claims against us that exceed available insurance coverage, denial of coverage as to any specific claim, or any change or cessation in our insurance policies and coverages, including premium increases or the imposition of large deductible requirements, could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

Our platform is highly complex, and any undetected errors could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

Our platform is a complex system composed of many interoperating components and software. Our business is dependent upon our ability to prevent system interruption on our platform. Our software, including open source software that is incorporated into our code, may now or in the future contain undetected errors, bugs, or vulnerabilities. Some errors in our software code have not been and may not be discovered until after the code has been released. We have, from time to time, found defects or errors in our system and software limitations that have resulted in, and may discover additional issues in the future that could result in, platform unavailability or system disruption. For example, defects or errors have resulted in and could result in the delay in making payments to hosts or overpaying or underpaying hosts, which would impact our cash position and may cause hosts to lose trust in our payment operations. Any errors, bugs, or vulnerabilities discovered in our code or systems released to production or found in third-party software, including open source software, that is incorporated into our code, any misconfigurations of our systems, or any unintended interactions between systems could result in poor system performance, an interruption in the availability of our platform, incorrect payments, negative publicity, damage to our reputation, loss of existing and potential hosts and guests, loss of revenue, liability for damages, a failure to

 

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comply with certain legal or tax reporting obligations, and regulatory inquiries or other proceedings, any of which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

System capacity constraints, system or operational failures, or denial-of-service or other attacks could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

Since our founding, we have experienced rapid growth in consumer traffic to our platform. If our systems and network infrastructure cannot be expanded or are not scaled to cope with increased demand or fail to perform, we could experience unanticipated disruptions in service, slower response times, decreased customer satisfaction, and delays in the introduction of new offerings and tiers. It may be particularly difficult for us to manage these issues during the COVID-19 pandemic and the related governmentally mandated shelter at home orders, as a result of which few, if any, of our employees are physically present in our headquarters.

Our corporate headquarters, a significant portion of our research and development activities, and certain other critical business operations are located in San Francisco, built on a high-risk liquefaction zone and is near major earthquake fault lines. Our systems and operations are vulnerable to damage or interruption from human error, computer viruses, earthquakes, floods, fires, power loss, and similar events. In addition, Northern California has recently experienced, and may continue to experience power outages during the fire season and our headquarters does not have power generator backup to maintain full business continuity. A catastrophic event that results in the destruction or disruption of our headquarters, any third-party cloud hosting facilities, or our critical business or information technology systems could severely affect our ability to conduct normal business operations and result in lengthy interruptions or delays of our platform and services.

Our systems and operations are also subject to break-ins, sabotage, intentional acts of vandalism, terrorism, and similar misconduct from external sources and malicious insiders. Our existing security measures may not be successful in preventing attacks on our systems, and any such attack could cause significant interruptions in our operations. For instance, from time to time, we have experienced denial-of-service type attacks on our systems that have made portions of our platform slow or unavailable for periods of time. There are numerous other potential forms of attack, such as phishing, account takeovers, malicious code injections, ransomware, and the attempted use of our platform to launch a denial-of-service attack against another party, each of which could cause significant interruptions in our operations or involve us in legal or regulatory proceedings. Reductions in the availability and response time of our online platform could cause loss of substantial business volumes during the occurrence of any such attack on our systems and measures we may take to divert suspect traffic in the event of such an attack could result in the diversion of bona fide customers. These issues are likely to become more difficult to manage as we expand the number of places where we operate and the variety of services we offer, and as the tools and techniques used in such attacks become more advanced and available. Successful attacks could result in negative publicity and damage to our reputation, and could prevent consumers from booking or visiting our platform during the attack, any of which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

In the event of certain system failures, we may not be able to switch to back-up systems immediately and the time to full recovery could be prolonged. We have experienced system failures from time to time. In addition to placing increased burdens on our engineering staff, these outages create a significant amount of consumer questions and complaints that need to be addressed by our community support team. Any unscheduled interruption in our service could result in an immediate and significant loss of revenue, an increase in community support costs, and harm our reputation, and could result in some consumers switching to our competitors. If we experience frequent or persistent system failures, our brand and

 

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reputation could be permanently and significantly harmed, and our business, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected. While we have taken and continue to take steps to increase the reliability and redundancy of our systems, these steps are expensive and may not be completely effective in reducing the frequency or duration of unscheduled downtime. We do not carry business interruption insurance sufficient to compensate us for all losses that may occur.

We use both internally developed systems and third-party systems to operate our platform, including transaction and payment processing, and financial and accounting systems. If the number of consumers using our platform increases substantially, or if critical third-party systems stop operating as designed, we may need to significantly upgrade, expand, or repair our transaction and payment processing systems, financial and accounting systems, and other infrastructure. We may not be able to upgrade our systems and infrastructure to accommodate such conditions in a timely manner, and depending on the systems affected, our transaction and payment processing, and financial and accounting systems could be impacted for a meaningful amount of time, which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

Our business depends on the performance and reliability of the Internet, mobile, telecommunications network operators, and other infrastructures that are not under our control. As consumers increasingly turn to mobile devices, we also become dependent on consumers’ access to the Internet through mobile carriers and their systems. Disruptions in Internet access, whether generally, in a specific region or otherwise, could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

Uncertainty in the application of taxes to our hosts, guests, or platform could increase our tax liabilities and may discourage hosts and guests from conducting business on our platform.

We are subject to a variety of taxes and tax collection obligations in the United States (federal, state, and local) and numerous foreign jurisdictions. We have received communications from numerous foreign, federal, state, and local governments regarding the application of tax laws or regulations to our business or demanding data about our hosts and guests to aid in threatened or actual enforcement actions against our hosts and guests. In many jurisdictions where applicable, we have agreed to collect and remit lodging taxes, often known as transient or occupancy taxes, to local governments directly on behalf of our hosts. In other jurisdictions, hosts are responsible for collecting and remitting lodging taxes to their local government. We have been subject to complaints by, and are involved in a number of lawsuits brought by, certain government entities for alleged responsibility for indirect taxes, host income withholding taxes, and other duties relating to short-term occupancy rentals and other aspects of our business. In some jurisdictions we are in the process of discussing potential agreements to resolve alleged past-due taxes, and in other jurisdictions, the regulators have held us liable for such past and future taxes. A number of jurisdictions have proposed or implemented new tax laws or interpreted existing laws to explicitly apply their hotel and hospitality taxes to businesses like ours. Laws and regulations relating to taxes as applied to our platform, and to our hosts and guests, vary greatly among jurisdictions, and it is difficult or impossible to predict how such laws and regulations will be applied.

The application of indirect taxes, such as lodging taxes, hotel, sales and use tax, privilege taxes, excise taxes, VAT, goods and services tax, harmonized sales taxes, business tax, and gross receipt taxes (together, “indirect taxes”) to e-commerce activities such as ours and to our hosts or guests is a complex and evolving issue. Some of such tax laws or regulations hold us responsible for the reporting, collection, and payment of such taxes, and such laws could be applied to us for transactions conducted in the past as well as transactions in the future. Many of the statutes and regulations that impose these taxes were established before the adoption and growth of the Internet and e-commerce. New or revised foreign, federal, state, or local tax regulations may subject us or our hosts and guests to additional indirect, income,

 

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and other taxes, and depending upon the jurisdiction could subject us or our hosts and guests to significant monetary penalties and fines for non-payment of taxes. An increasing number of jurisdictions are considering adopting or have adopted laws or administrative practices that impose new tax measures, including digital platform revenue-based taxes, targeting online sharing platforms and online marketplaces, and new obligations to collect host income taxes, sales, consumption, value added, or other taxes on digital platforms. We may recognize additional tax expenses and be subject to additional tax liabilities, and our business, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected by additional taxes of this nature or additional taxes or penalties resulting from our failure to comply with any reporting, collection, and payment obligations. We accrue a reserve for such taxes, and upon examination or audit, such reserves may be insufficient.

New or revised taxes and, in particular, the taxes described above and similar taxes would likely increase the price paid by guests, the cost of doing business for our hosts, discourage hosts and guests from using our platform, and lead to a decline in revenue, and materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition. If we are required to disclose personal data pursuant to demands from government agencies for tax reporting purposes, our hosts, guests, and regulators could perceive such disclosure as a failure by us to comply with privacy and data protection policies, notices, and laws and commence proceedings or actions against us. If we do not provide the requested information to government agencies due to a disagreement on the interpretation of the law, we are likely to face enforcement action, engage in litigation, face increased regulatory scrutiny, and experience an adverse impact in our relationships with governments. Our competitors may arrive at different or novel solutions to the application of taxes to analogous businesses that could cause our hosts and guests to leave our platform in favor of conducting business on the platforms of our competitors. This uncertainty around the application of taxes and the impact of those taxes on the actual or perceived value of our platform may also cause guests to use OTAs, hotels, or other traditional travel services. Any of these events could materially adversely affect our brand, reputation, business, results of operations, and financial condition.

We devote significant resources, including management time, to the application and interpretation of laws and working with various jurisdictions to clarify whether taxes are applicable and the amount of taxes that apply. The application of indirect taxes to our hosts, guests, and our platform significantly increases our operational expenses as we build the infrastructure and tools to capture data and to report, collect, and remit taxes. Even if we are able to build the required infrastructure and tools, we may not be able to complete them in a timely fashion, in particular given the speed at which regulations and their interpretations can change, which could harm our relationship with governments and our reputation, and result in enforcement actions and litigation. The lack of uniformity in the laws and regulations relating to indirect taxes as applied to our platform and to our hosts and guests further increases the operational and financial complexity of our systems and processes, and introduces potential for errors or incorrect tax calculations, all of which are costly to our business and results of operations. Certain regulations may be so complex as to make it infeasible for us to be fully compliant. As our business operations expand or change, including as a result of introducing new or enhanced offerings, tiers or features, or due to acquisitions, the application of indirect taxes to our business and to our hosts and guests will further change and evolve, and could further increase our liability for taxes, discourage hosts and guests from using our platform, and materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

 

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We face possible risks associated with natural disasters and the physical effects of climate change, which may include more frequent or severe storms, hurricanes, flooding, rising sea levels, shortages of water, droughts and wildfires, any of which could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

We are subject to the risks associated with natural disasters and the physical effects of climate change, which may include more frequent or severe storms, hurricanes, flooding, rising sea levels, shortages of water, droughts, and wildfires, any of which could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, and financial condition. To the extent climate change causes changes in weather patterns, our coastal destinations could experience increases in storm intensity and rising sea-levels causing damage to our hosts’ properties and result in a reduced number of listings in these areas. Climate change may also affect our business by increasing the cost of, or making unavailable, property insurance on terms our hosts find acceptable in areas most vulnerable to such events, increasing operating costs for our hosts, including the cost of water or energy, and requiring our hosts to expend funds as they seek to repair and protect their properties in connection with such events. As a result of the foregoing and other climate-related issues, our hosts may decide to remove their listings from our platform. If we are unable to provide listings in certain areas due to climate change, we may lose both hosts and guests, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

We may experience significant fluctuations in our results of operations, which make it difficult to forecast our future results.

Our results of operations may vary significantly and are not necessarily an indication of future performance. We experience seasonal fluctuations in our financial results. We experience seasonality in our Nights and Experiences Booked and GBV, and seasonality in Adjusted EBITDA that is consistent with seasonality of our revenue, which has historically been, and is expected to continue to be, highest in the third quarter when we have the most check-ins as it is the peak travel season for North America and EMEA. We recognize revenue upon the completion of a check-in. As our business matures, other seasonal trends may develop, or these existing seasonal trends may become more extreme. In addition to seasonality, our results of operations may fluctuate as a result of a variety of other factors, some of which are beyond our control, including:

 

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reduced travel and cancellations due to other events beyond our control such as health concerns, including the COVID-19 pandemic, other epidemics and pandemics, natural disasters, wars, regional hostilities or law enforcement demands and other regulatory actions;

 

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periods with increased investments in our platform for existing offerings, new offerings and initiatives, marketing, and the accompanying growth in headcount;

 

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our ability to maintain growth and effectively manage that growth;

 

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increased competition;

 

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our ability to expand our operations in new and existing regions;

 

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changes in governmental or other regulations affecting our business;

 

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changes to our internal policies or strategies;

 

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harm to our brand or reputation; and

 

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other risks described elsewhere in this prospectus.

 

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As a result, we may not accurately forecast our results of operations. Moreover, we base our expense levels and investment plans on estimates for revenue that may turn out to be inaccurate. A significant portion of our expenses and investments are fixed, and we may not be able to adjust our spending quickly enough if our revenue is less than expected, resulting in losses that exceed our expectations. If our assumptions regarding the risks and uncertainties that we use to plan our business are incorrect or change, or if we do not address these risks successfully, our results of operations could differ materially from our expectations and our business, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected.

We currently rely on a number of third-party service providers to host and deliver a significant portion of our platform and services, and any interruptions or delays in services from these third parties could impair the delivery of our platform and services, and our business, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected.

We rely primarily on Amazon Web Services in the United States and abroad to host and deliver our platform. Third parties also provide services to key aspects of our operations, including Internet connections and networking, data storage and processing, trust and safety, security infrastructure, source code management, and testing and deployment. In addition, we rely on third parties for many aspects of our payments platform and a significant portion of our community support operations are conducted by third parties at their facilities. We also rely on Google Maps and other third-party services for maps and location data that are core to the functionality of our platform, and we integrate applications, content, and data from third parties to deliver our platform and services.

We do not control the operation, physical security, or data security of any of these third-party providers. Despite our efforts to use commercially reasonable diligence in the selection and retention of such third-party providers, such efforts may be insufficient or inadequate to prevent or remediate such risks. Our third-party providers, including our cloud computing providers and our payment processing partners, may be subject to intrusions, computer viruses, denial-of-service attacks, sabotage, acts of vandalism, acts of terrorism, and other misconduct. They are vulnerable to damage or interruption from power loss, telecommunications failures, fires, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, and similar events, and they may be subject to financial, legal, regulatory, and labor issues, each of which may impose additional costs or requirements on us or prevent these third parties from providing services to us or our customers on our behalf. In addition, these third parties may breach their agreements with us, disagree with our interpretation of contract terms or applicable laws and regulations, refuse to continue or renew these agreements on commercially reasonable terms or at all, fail to or refuse to process transactions or provide other services adequately, take actions that degrade the functionality of our platform and services, increase prices, impose additional costs or requirements on us or our customers, or give preferential treatment to our competitors. If we are unable to procure alternatives in a timely and efficient manner and on acceptable terms, or at all, we may be subject to business disruptions, losses, or costs to remediate any of these deficiencies. Our systems currently do not provide complete redundancy of data storage or processing or payment processing. Although we are in the process of developing a comprehensive business continuity and disaster recovery plans for all of our operations, there is no guarantee that such plans will be effective. The occurrence of any of the above events could result in hosts and guests ceasing to use our platform, reputational damage, legal or regulatory proceedings, or other adverse consequences, which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

 

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We may raise additional capital in the future or otherwise issue equity, which could have a dilutive effect on existing stockholders and adversely affect the market price of our common stock.

We may from time to time issue additional shares of Class A common stock. As a result, our stockholders may experience immediate dilution. We may engage in equity or debt financings to secure additional funds. If we raise additional funds through future issuances of equity or convertible debt securities, our existing stockholders could suffer significant dilution, and any new equity securities we issue could have rights, preferences, and privileges superior to those of holders of our Class A common stock. In addition, our stockholders will experience additional dilution when option holders exercise their right to purchase common stock under our equity incentive plans, when RSUs vest and settle, when we issue equity awards to our employees under our equity incentive plans, or when we otherwise issue additional equity.

Should we require additional funding, we cannot be sure that it will be available to us on reasonable terms, or at all. If we cannot raise additional funds when we need them, our ability to continue to support our business and to respond to business challenges would be significantly limited, and our business, results of operations, and financial condition would be materially adversely affected.

The coverage afforded under our insurance policies may be inadequate for the needs of our business or our third-party insurers may be unable or unwilling to meet our coverage requirements, which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

We use a combination of third-party insurance and self-insurance, including a wholly-owned captive insurance subsidiary established in 2019, to manage the exposures related to our business operations. We support our host community by maintaining a variety of host protection programs, including Host Protection Insurance. Experience Protection Insurance, and our Host Guarantee Program. Our business, results of operations, and financial condition would be materially adversely affected if (i) cost per claim, premiums or the number of claims significantly exceeds our expectations; (ii) we experience a claim in excess of our coverage limits; (iii) our insurance providers become insolvent or otherwise fail to pay on our insurance claims; (iv) we experience a claim for which coverage is not provided; or (v) the number of claims under our deductibles or self-insured retentions differs from historic averages. Our overall spend on insurance has increased as our business has grown and losses from covered claims have increased. Premiums have increased as a result, and we have experienced and expect to continue to experience increased difficulty in obtaining appropriate policy limits and levels of coverage at a reasonable cost and with reasonable terms and conditions. Our costs for obtaining these policies will continue to increase as our business grows and continues to evolve. Furthermore, as our business continues to develop and diversify, we may experience difficulty in obtaining insurance coverage for new and evolving offerings and tiers, which could require us to incur greater costs and materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition. Additionally, if we fail to comply with insurance regulatory requirements in the regions where we operate, or other regulations governing insurance coverage, our brand, reputation, business, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected.

Host Protection Insurance and Experience Protection Insurance

In order to offset our potential exposure related to stays and experiences and to comply with certain short-term rental regulatory requirements, we have procured Host Protection and Experience Protection general liability insurance from third parties, which are subject to certain terms, conditions, and exclusions, for claims from guests and third parties for bodily injury or property damage arising from bookings of stays and experiences through our platform. We and our hosts are insured parties, and landlords, homeowners or condo-owners associations, and any other similar entities, are additional insured parties. However, these insurance programs may not provide coverage for certain types of claims, including those relating to

 

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contagious diseases such as COVID-19, and may be insufficient to fully cover costs of investigation, costs of defense, and payments or judgments arising from covered claims. In addition, extensive or costly claims could lead to premium increases or difficulty securing coverage, which may result in increased financial exposure and an inability to meet insurance regulatory requirements.

Corporate Insurance

We procure insurance policies to cover various operations-related risks, including general business liability, workers’ compensation, cyber liability and data breaches, crime, directors’ and officers’ liability, and property insurance. We do not have sufficient coverage for certain catastrophic events, including certain business interruption losses, such as those resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, certain policies may not be available to us and the policies we have and obtain in the future may not be sufficient to cover all of our business exposure.

Captive Insurance Company

We have a wholly-owned captive insurance subsidiary to manage the financial exposure related to our host and experiences protection insurance programs along with certain corporate insurance programs. Our captive insurance subsidiary is a party to certain reinsurance and indemnification arrangements that transfer a portion of the risk from our insurance providers to the captive insurance subsidiary, which could require us to pay out material amounts that may be in excess of our insurance reserves. As our business continues to develop and diversify, we may choose to or have to transfer more risk to our captive insurance subsidiary as it may become more difficult to obtain insurance with current retentions or deductibles and with similar terms to cover our exposure. Our insurance reserves account includes unpaid losses, loss adjustment expenses for risks, and other associated expenses, such as defense costs retained by us through our captive insurance subsidiary. These amounts are based on actuarial estimates, historical claim information, and industry data. While these reserves are believed to be adequate, our ultimate liability could be in excess of our reserves, which could materially adversely affect our results of operations and financial position.

Host Guarantee Program

We maintain a Host Guarantee Program that provides reimbursement of up to $1 million for loss or damages to a host property caused by guests, subject to terms and conditions. While the Host Guarantee Program is a commercial agreement with our hosts and for which we are primarily responsible, we maintain a contractual liability insurance policy to provide coverage to us for claims and losses incurred by us under the Host Guarantee Program. Increased claim frequency and severity and increased fraudulent claims could result in greater payouts, premium increases, and/or difficulty securing coverage. Further, disputes with hosts as to whether the Host Guarantee Program applies to alleged losses or damages and the increased submission of fraudulent payment requests could require significant time and financial resources.

Our community support function is critical to the success of our platform, and any failure to provide high-quality service could affect our ability to retain our existing hosts and guests and attract new ones.

Our ability to provide high-quality support to our community of hosts and guests is important for the growth of our business and any failure to maintain such standards of community support, or any perception that we do not provide high-quality service, could affect our ability to retain and attract hosts and guests. Meeting the community support expectations of our hosts and guests requires significant time and resources from our community support team and significant investment in staffing, technology, including automation and machine learning to improve efficiency, infrastructure, policies, and community support tools. The failure to develop the appropriate technology, infrastructure, policies, and community support tools, or to manage or properly train our community support team, could compromise our ability

 

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to resolve questions and complaints quickly and effectively. The number of our hosts and guests has grown significantly and such growth, as well as any future growth, will put additional pressure on our community support organization and our technology organization. In addition, as we service a global customer base and continue to grow outside of North America and Europe, we need to be able to provide effective support that meets our hosts’ and guests’ needs and languages globally at scale. As part of our reduction in force announced in May 2020, we significantly reduced the number of employees in our community support organization and our technology organization, which impacted our ability to provide effective support to our hosts and guests. Our service is staffed based on complex algorithms that map to our business forecasts. Any volatility in those forecasts could lead to staffing gaps that could impact the quality of our service. We have in the past experienced and may in the future experience backlog incidents that lead to substantial delays or other issues in responding to requests for customer support, which may reduce our ability to effectively retain hosts and guests.

The vast majority of our community support is performed by a limited number of third-party service providers. We rely on our internal team and these third parties to provide timely and appropriate responses to the inquiries of hosts and guests that come to us via telephone, email, social media, and chat. Reliance on these third parties requires that we provide proper guidance and training for their employees, maintain proper controls and procedures for interacting with our community, and ensure acceptable levels of quality and customer satisfaction are achieved.

We provide community support to hosts and guests and help to mediate disputes between hosts and guests. We rely on information provided by hosts and guests and are at times limited in our ability to provide adequate support or help hosts and guests resolve disputes due to our lack of information or control. To the extent that hosts and guests are not satisfied with the quality or timeliness of our community support or third-party support, we may not be able to retain hosts or guests, and our reputation as well as our business, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected.

When a host or guest has a poor experience on our platform, we may issue refunds or coupons for future stays. These refunds and coupons are generally treated as a reduction to revenue, and we may make payouts for property damage claims under our Host Guarantee Program, which we account for as consideration paid to a customer and is also generally treated as a reduction in revenue. A robust community support effort is costly, and we expect such cost to continue to rise in the future as we grow our business. We have historically seen a significant number of community support inquiries from hosts and guests. Our efforts to reduce the number of community support requests may not be effective, and we could incur increased costs without corresponding revenue, which would materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

A significant portion of our bookings and revenue are denominated in foreign currencies, and our financial results are exposed to changes in foreign exchange rates.

A significant portion of our business is denominated and transacted in foreign currencies, which subjects us to foreign exchange risk. We offer integrated payments to our hosts and guests in over 40 currencies. Generally speaking, U.S. dollar strength adversely impacts the translation of the portion of our revenue that is generated in foreign currencies into the U.S. dollar. For the year ended December 31, 2019 and the nine months ended September 30, 2020, approximately 60% and 50% of our revenue, respectively, was denominated in currencies other than U.S. dollars. Our results of operations could also be negatively impacted by a strengthening of the U.S. dollar as a large portion of our costs are U.S. dollar-denominated. We also have foreign exchange risk with respect to certain of our assets, principally cash balances held on behalf of hosts and guests, that are denominated in currencies other than the functional currency of our

 

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subsidiaries, and our financial results are affected by the remeasurement and translation of these non-U.S. currencies into U.S. dollars, which is reflected in the effect of exchange rate changes on cash, cash equivalents, and restricted cash on the consolidated statements of cash flows. For the year ended December 31, 2019, the effects of exchange rates on our cash, cash equivalents, and restricted cash totaled $(25.3) million, due to fluctuations in exchange rates and the strengthening of the U.S. dollar. For the nine months ended September 30, 2020, the effects of exchange rates on our cash, cash equivalents, and restricted cash totaled $35.2 million due to fluctuations in exchange rates and the weakening of the U.S. dollar. Furthermore, our platform generally enables guests to make payments in the currency of their choice to the extent that the currency is supported by Airbnb, which may not match the currency in which the host elects to get paid. In those cases, we bear the currency risk of both the guest payment as well as the host payment due to timing differences in such payments. For the year ended December 31, 2019 and the nine months ended September 30, 2020, we recorded net foreign currency losses of $4.8 million and net foreign currency gains of $34.6 million, respectively, in our consolidated statement of operations. While we have and may choose to enter into transactions to hedge portions of our foreign currency translation and balance sheet exposure in the future, it is impossible to predict or eliminate the effects of foreign exchange rate exposure. Strengthening of the U.S. dollar could materially adversely affect our results of operations and financial condition.

The value of our equity investments in private companies could decline, which could materially adversely affect our results of operations and financial condition.

Our equity investments in private companies where we do not have the ability to exercise significant influence are accounted for using the measurement alternative. Such investments are carried at cost, less any impairments, and are adjusted for subsequent observable price changes, with such changes in value recognized in other income (expense), net in our consolidated statements of operations. Additionally, for our equity investments in private companies where we have the ability to exercise significant influence, but not control, we record our proportionate share of net income or loss in other income (expense), net in our consolidated statements of operations. The financial statements provided by these companies are often unaudited. Our investments in private companies are inherently risky, including early-stage companies with limited cash to support their operations and companies whose results are negatively impacted by downturns in the travel industry, such as the one currently occurring. The companies in which we invest include early-stage companies that may still be developing products and services with limited cash to support the development, marketing and sales of their products. Further, our ability to liquidate such investments is typically dependent on a liquidity event, such as a public offering or acquisition, as no public market currently exists for the securities held in the investees. Valuations of privately-held companies are inherently complex and uncertain due to the lack of a liquid market for the securities of such companies. If we determine that any of our investments in such companies have experienced a decline in value, we will recognize an expense to adjust the carrying value to its estimated fair value. We recorded impairment charges of $27.8 million for the year ended December 31, 2019 and $82.1 million for the nine months ended September 30, 2020 relating to investments in private companies, and may experience similar or greater losses on our investments in the future. Negative changes in the estimated fair value of private companies in which we invest could have a material adverse effect on our results of operations and financial condition.

We may have exposure to greater than anticipated income tax liabilities.

Our income tax obligations are based in part on our corporate operating structure and intercompany arrangements, including the manner in which we operate our business, develop, value, manage, protect, and use our intellectual property, and determine the value of our intercompany transactions. The tax laws applicable to our business, including those of the United States and other jurisdictions, are subject to

 

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interpretation and certain jurisdictions are aggressively interpreting their laws in new ways in an effort to raise additional tax revenue from companies such as Airbnb. The taxing authorities of the jurisdictions in which we operate may challenge our methodologies for valuing developed technology or intercompany arrangements, which could increase our worldwide effective tax rate and materially adversely affect our results of operations and financial condition.

We are subject to regular review and audit by U.S. federal, state, local, and foreign tax authorities. For example, our 2008 to 2019 tax years remain subject to examination in the United States and California due to tax attributes and statutes of limitations, and our 2015 to 2019 tax years remain subject to examination in Ireland. We are currently under examination for income taxes by the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) for the years 2013 and 2016. We are continuing to respond to inquiries related to these examinations. While we have not yet received a Revenue Agent’s Report generally issued at the conclusion of an IRS examination, in September 2020, we received a Draft Notice of Proposed Adjustment from the IRS for the 2013 tax year relating to the valuation of our international intellectual property which was sold to a subsidiary in 2013. The notice proposes an increase to our U.S. taxable income that could result in additional income tax expense and cash tax liability of $1.35 billion, plus penalties and interest, which exceeds our current reserve recorded in our consolidated financial statements by more than $1.0 billion. A formal Notice of Proposed Adjustment is expected from the IRS by the end of 2020. We disagree with the proposed adjustment and intend to vigorously contest it. If we are not able to resolve the proposed adjustment at the IRS examination-level, we plan to pursue all available administrative and, if necessary, judicial remedies which may include: entering into administrative settlement discussions with the IRS Independent Office of Appeals (“IRS Appeals”) in 2021, and if necessary petitioning the U.S. Tax Court (“Tax Court”) for redetermination if an acceptable outcome cannot be reached with IRS Appeals, and finally, and if necessary, appealing the Tax Court’s decision to the appropriate appellate court. If the IRS prevails in the assessment of additional tax due based on its position and such tax and related interest and penalties, if any, exceeds our current reserves, such outcome could have a material adverse impact on our financial position and results of operations, and any assessment of additional tax could require a significant cash payment and have a material adverse impact on our cash flow.

In the third quarter of 2020, we approved a restructuring plan to repatriate our intellectual property to the United States to align with our evolving operations in a post COVID-19 environment. The multiple transactions that comprise the restructuring are expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2020. The restructuring plan involves numerous intercompany arrangements and tax jurisdictions and requires the valuation of multiple intercompany transactions which could be challenged by respective tax authorities, including as a result of reduced valuations caused by forecast adjustments due to the impact of COVID-19, and any adverse outcome of any review or audit could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition. We are currently under a multilateral control audit (“MLC”) where a number of individual European state audits are combined. The MLC audit is focused on VAT characterization and compliance, access to host data, and transfer pricing. Tax authorities may disagree with certain positions we have taken and any adverse outcome of any review or audit could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

The determination of our worldwide provision for income taxes and other tax liabilities requires significant judgment by management, and there are many transactions where the ultimate tax determination is uncertain. Our provision for income taxes is also determined by the manner in which we operate our business, and any changes to such operations or laws applicable to such operations may affect our effective tax rate. Changes in accounting for intercompany transactions may also affect our effective tax rate. For example, with the adoption of ASU No. 2016-16, effective January 1, 2018, the income tax effects of an intercompany transfer are recognized in the period in which the transfer occurs, rather than

 

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amortized over time, which may increase the impact of such transfers on our effective tax rate in a particular period. Although we believe that our provision for income taxes is reasonable, the ultimate tax outcome may differ from the amounts recorded in our financial statements and could materially affect our financial results in the period or periods for which such determination is made. In addition, our future tax expense could be adversely affected by earnings being lower than anticipated in jurisdictions that have lower statutory tax rates and higher than anticipated in jurisdictions that have higher statutory tax rates, by changes in the valuation of our deferred tax assets and liabilities, or by changes in tax laws, regulations, or accounting principles. For example, we have previously incurred losses in the United States and certain international subsidiaries that resulted in an effective tax rate that is significantly higher than the statutory tax rate in the United States and this could continue to happen in the future. We may also be subject to additional tax liability relating to indirect or other non-income taxes, as described in our risk factor titled “— Uncertainty in the application of taxes to our hosts, guests, or platform could increase our tax liabilities and may discourage hosts and guests from conducting business on our platform.” Our tax positions or tax returns are subject to change, and therefore we cannot accurately predict whether we may incur material additional tax liabilities in the future, which would materially adversely affect our results of operations and financial condition.

In addition, in connection with any planned or future acquisitions, we may acquire businesses that have differing licenses and other arrangements that may be challenged by tax authorities for not being at arm’s-length or that are potentially less tax efficient than our licenses and arrangements. Any subsequent integration or continued operation of such acquired businesses may result in an increased effective tax rate in certain jurisdictions or potential indirect tax costs, which could result in us incurring additional tax liabilities or having to establish a reserve in our consolidated financial statements, and materially adversely affect our results of operations and financial condition.

Changes in tax laws or tax rulings could materially affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

The tax regimes we are subject to or operate under, including income and non-income (including indirect) taxes, are unsettled and may be subject to significant change. Changes in tax laws or tax rulings, or changes in interpretations of existing laws, could materially adversely affect our results of operations and financial condition. For example, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision in Altera Corp. v. Commissioner in June of 2019 regarding the treatment of stock-based compensation expense in a cost sharing arrangement, which had a material effect on our tax obligations and effective tax rate for the quarter in which the decision was issued. In addition, on December 22, 2017, the legislation commonly referred to as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (the “Tax Act”) was enacted, which contains significant changes to U.S. tax law, including a reduction in the corporate tax rate and a transition to a more territorial system of taxation. The primary impact of this legislation on our provision for income taxes was a reduction of the future tax benefits of our deferred tax assets as a result of the reduction in the corporate tax rate. Since we have recorded a full valuation allowance against our U.S. deferred tax assets, these changes did not have a material impact on our consolidated financial statements. However, the impact of the Tax Act will likely be subject to ongoing technical guidance and accounting interpretation, the issuance of which could materially affect our tax obligations and effective tax rate in the period issued. On March 27, 2020, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (the “CARES Act”) was enacted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The CARES Act contains certain tax provisions, including provisions that retroactively and/or temporarily suspend or relax in certain respects the application of certain provisions in the Tax Act, such as the limitations on the deduction of net operating losses and interest. In addition, many countries in Europe, as well as a number of other countries and states, have recently proposed or recommended changes to existing tax laws or have enacted new laws that could significantly increase our tax obligations

 

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in many countries and states where we do business or require us to change the manner in which we operate our business. For example, in Italy, a 2017 law requires short-term rental platforms that process payments to collect and remit host income tax and tourist tax, amongst other obligations. Airbnb has challenged this law before the Italian courts but if we are unsuccessful this will lead to further compliance and potentially significant prior and future tax obligations.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has been working on a Base Erosion and Profit Shifting Project, and issued a report in 2015 and an interim report in 2018, and is expected to continue to issue guidelines and proposals that may change various aspects of the existing framework under which our tax obligations are determined in many of the countries in which we do business. Similarly, the European Commission and several countries have issued proposals that would change various aspects of the current tax framework under which we are taxed. These proposals include changes to the existing framework to calculate income tax, as well as proposals to change or impose new types of non-income (including indirect) taxes, including taxes based on a percentage of revenue. For example, France, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom, among others, have each proposed or enacted taxes applicable to digital services, which includes business activities on digital platforms and would likely apply to our business.

The European Commission has conducted investigations in multiple countries focusing on whether local country tax rulings or tax law provide preferential tax treatment that violates European Union state aid rules and concluded that certain countries, including Ireland, have provided illegal state aid in certain cases. These investigations may result in changes to the tax treatment of our foreign operations. Due to the large and increasing scale of our international business activities, many of these types of changes to the taxation of our activities described above and in our risk factor titled “— Uncertainty in the application of taxes to our hosts, guests, or platform could increase our tax liabilities and may discourage hosts and guests from conducting business on our platform” could increase our worldwide effective tax rate, increase the amount of non-income (including indirect) taxes imposed on our business, and materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition. Such changes may also apply retroactively to our historical operations and result in taxes greater than the amounts estimated and recorded in our financial statements.

Our ability to use our net operating loss carryforwards and certain other tax attributes may be limited.

As of December 31, 2019, we had net operating loss carryforwards for U.S. federal income tax purposes of $116.7 million available to offset future taxable income. If not utilized, the federal net operating loss carryforwards will begin to expire in 2034. As of December 31, 2019, we had net operating loss carryforwards for state income tax purposes of $167.6 million, which will expire, if not utilized, beginning in 2033. While federal net operating loss carryforwards generated on or after January 1, 2018 are not subject to expiration, the deductibility of such net operating loss carryforwards is limited to 80% of our taxable income for taxable years beginning on or after January 1, 2021. In addition, we expect to generate significant stock compensation deductions as a result of this offering starting in the fourth quarter of 2020, which will substantially increase the size of our net operating loss carryforwards. Realization of these net operating loss carryforwards depends on our future taxable income, and there is a risk that our existing carryforwards could expire unused and be unavailable to offset future taxable income, which could materially adversely affect our results of operations and financial condition. In addition, under Sections 382 and 383 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended (the “Code”), if a corporation undergoes an “ownership change,” generally defined as a greater than 50% change (by value) in its equity ownership by significant stockholders or groups of stockholders over a three-year period, the corporation’s ability to use its pre-change net operating loss carryforwards and other pre-change tax attributes, such as research tax credits, to offset its post-change taxable income or tax liabilities may be

 

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limited. Similar rules may apply under state tax laws. We may have undergone ownership changes in the past, and we may experience ownership changes in the future because of shifts in our stock ownership, many of which are outside of our control. Our ability to use our pre-change net operating loss carryforwards and other tax attributes to offset future U.S. federal taxable income may be subject to limitations, which could result in increased future tax liability to us.

Our business depends on attracting and retaining capable management and employees, and the loss of any key personnel could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

Our success depends in large part on our ability to attract and retain high-quality management and employees. Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharczyk founded our company and have been instrumental in devising and implementing our strategies for growth and scaling our business. Our founders and other members of our senior management team, as well as other employees, may terminate their employment with us at any time, which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

As we continue to grow, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to attract and retain the personnel we need. Our business requires highly skilled technical, engineering, design, product, data analytics, marketing, business development, and community support personnel, including executive-level employees, who are in high demand and are often subject to competing offers. Competition for qualified employees and executive-level employees is intense in our industry and particularly in San Francisco where we have our headquarters and other jurisdictions where we operate. The loss of qualified employees, or an inability to attract, retain, and motivate employees required for the planned expansion of our business would materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition and impair our ability to grow.

To attract and retain key personnel, we use various measures, including an equity incentive program. As we continue to mature, the incentives to attract, retain, and motivate employees provided by our programs or by future arrangements may not be as effective as in the past. We have a number of current employees, including our founders, who hold equity in our company or whose equity awards are or will become substantially vested upon the completion of this offering. As a result, it may be difficult for us to continue to retain and motivate these employees, and the value of their holdings could affect their decisions about whether or not they continue to work for us. Our ability to attract, retain, and motivate employees may be adversely affected by declines in our stock price. If we issue significant equity to attract employees or to retain our existing employees, we would incur substantial additional stock-based compensation expense and the ownership of our existing stockholders would be further diluted.

In response to the economic challenges and uncertainty resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on our business, in May 2020, we announced a reduction in force of approximately 1,800 employees. This has led to increased attrition and could lead to reduced employee morale and productivity and problems retaining existing and recruiting future employees, which could have a material adverse impact on our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

Consumer use of devices and platforms other than desktop computers creates challenges. If we are unable to operate effectively on these platforms, our business, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected.

People regularly access the Internet through mobile phones, tablets, handheld computers, voice-assisted speakers, television set-top devices, smart televisions, wearables, and automobile in-dash systems. These

 

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devices enable new modalities of interaction, such as conversational user interfaces, and new intermediaries, such as “super-apps” like WeChat, where consumers can use many online services without leaving a particular app. We anticipate that the use of these means of access will continue to grow and that usage through desktop computers will continue to decline, especially in certain regions of the world experiencing the highest rate of Internet adoption. The functionality and user experiences associated with these alternative devices, such as a smaller screen size or lack of a screen, may make the use of our platform through such devices more difficult than through a desktop computer, lower the use of our platform, and make it more difficult for our hosts to upload content to our platform. In addition, consumer purchasing patterns can differ on alternative devices, and it is uncertain how the proliferation of mobile devices will impact the use of our platform and services. Mobile consumers may also be unwilling to download multiple apps from multiple companies providing similar services meaning that such consumers may opt to use one of our competitors’ services instead of ours. As a result, brand recognition and the consumer experience with our mobile app will likely become increasingly important to our business. In addition, these new modalities create opportunities for device or systems companies, such as Amazon, Apple, and Google, to control the interaction with our consumers and disintermediate existing platforms such as ours.

We need to provide solutions for consumers who are limited in the size of the app they can support on their mobile devices and address latency issues in countries with lower bandwidth for both desktop and mobile devices. Because our platform contains data-intensive media, these issues are exacerbated. As new devices, operating systems, and platforms continue to be released, it is difficult to predict the problems we may encounter in adapting our offerings and features to them, and we may need to devote significant resources to the creation, support, and maintenance of our offerings and features.

Our success will also depend on the interoperability of our offerings with a range of third-party technologies, systems, networks, operating systems, and standards, including iOS and Android; the availability of our mobile apps in app stores and in “super-app” environments; and the creation, maintenance, and development of relationships with key participants in related industries, some of which may also be our competitors. In addition, if accessibility of various apps is limited by executive order or other government actions, the full functionality of devices may not be available to our customers. Moreover, third-party platforms, services and offerings are constantly evolving, and we may not be able to modify our platform to assure its compatibility with those of third parties. If we lose such interoperability, we experience difficulties or increased costs in integrating our offerings into alternative devices or systems, or manufacturers or operating systems elect not to include our offerings, make changes that degrade the functionality of our offerings, or give preferential treatment to competitive products, the growth of our community and our business, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected. This risk may be exacerbated by the frequency with which consumers change or upgrade their devices. In the event consumers choose devices that do not already include or support our platform or do not install our mobile apps when they change or upgrade their devices, our traffic and host and guest engagement may be harmed.

If we are unable to adapt to changes in technology and the evolving demands of hosts and guests, our business, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected.

The industries in which we compete are characterized by rapidly changing technology, evolving industry standards, consolidation, frequent new offering announcements, introductions, and enhancements, and changing consumer demands and preferences. In 2018, we began making incremental investments in upgrading our technology platform to a service-oriented architecture, improving data management, and increasing our service reliability, and we invested heavily in our technology in 2019. Our future success will

 

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depend on our ability to adapt our platform and services to evolving industry standards and local preferences and to continually innovate and improve the performance, features, and reliability of our platform and services in response to competitive offerings and the evolving demands of hosts and guests. Our future success will also depend on our ability to adapt to emerging technologies such as tokenization, cryptocurrencies, new authentication technologies, such as biometrics, distributed ledger and blockchain technologies, artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality, and cloud technologies. As a result, we intend to continue to spend significant resources maintaining, developing, and enhancing our technologies and platform; however, these efforts may be more costly than expected and may not be successful. For example, we may not make the appropriate investments in new technologies, which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition. Further, technological innovation often results in unintended consequences such as bugs, vulnerabilities, and other system failures. Any such bug, vulnerability, or failure, especially in connection with a significant technical implementation or change, could result in lost business, harm to our brand or reputation, consumer complaints, and other adverse consequences, any of which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

Another critical component to our future success will be our ability to integrate new or emerging payment methods into our platform to offer alternative payment solutions to consumers. Alternate payment providers such as Alipay, Paytm, and WeChat Pay operate closed-loop payments systems with direct connections to both consumers and merchants. In many regions, particularly in Asia where credit cards are not readily available and/or e-commerce is largely carried out through mobile devices, these and other emerging alternate payment methods are the exclusive or preferred means of payment for many consumers.

We are subject to payment-related fraud and an increase in or failure to deal effectively with fraud, fraudulent activities, fictitious transactions, or illegal transactions would materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

We process a significant volume and dollar value of transactions on a daily basis. When hosts do not fulfill their obligations to guests, there are fictitious listings on our platform, or there are host account takeovers, we have incurred and will continue to incur losses from claims by hosts and guests, and these losses may be substantial. Such instances have and can lead to the reversal of payments received by us for such bookings, referred to as a “chargeback.” For the year ended December 31, 2019 and the nine months ended September 30, 2020, total chargeback expense was $92.2 million and $95.1 million, respectively. Our ability to detect and combat fraudulent schemes, which have become increasingly common and sophisticated, could be adversely impacted by the adoption of new payment methods, the emergence and innovation of new technology platforms, including mobile and other devices, and our growth in certain regions, including in regions with a history of elevated fraudulent activity. We expect that technically-knowledgeable criminals will continue to attempt to circumvent our anti-fraud systems. In addition, the payment card networks have rules around acceptable chargeback ratios. If we are unable to effectively combat fictitious listings and fraudulent bookings on our platform, combat the use of fraudulent credit cards, or otherwise maintain or lower our current levels of charge-backs, we may be subject to fines and higher transaction fees or be unable to continue to accept card payments because payment card networks have revoked our access to their networks, any of which would materially adversely impact our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

Our payments platform is susceptible to potentially illegal or improper uses, including money laundering, transactions in violation of economic and trade sanctions, terrorist financing, fraudulent listings, host account takeovers, or the facilitation of other illegal activity. Use of our payments platform for illegal or

 

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improper uses has subjected us, and may subject us in the future, to claims, lawsuits, and government and regulatory investigations, inquiries, or requests, which could result in liability and reputational harm for us. We have taken measures to detect and reduce fraud and illegal activities, but these measures need to be continually improved and may add friction to our booking process. These measures may also not be effective against fraud and illegal activities, particularly new and continually evolving forms of circumvention. If these measures do not succeed in reducing fraud, our business, results of operations, and financial condition would be materially adversely affected.

Our payments platform is subject to extensive government regulation and oversight. Our failure to comply with extensive, complex, overlapping, and frequently changing laws, rules, regulations, policies, legal interpretations, and regulatory guidance could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

Our payments platform is subject to various laws, rules, regulations, policies, legal interpretations, and regulatory guidance, including those governing: cross-border and domestic money transmission and funds transfers; stored value and prepaid access; foreign exchange; privacy, data protection, and cybersecurity; banking secrecy; payment services (including payment processing and settlement services); consumer protection; economic and trade sanctions; and anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing. As we expand and localize our international activities, we have and will become increasingly subject to the laws of additional countries or geographies. In addition, because we facilitate bookings on our platform worldwide, one or more jurisdictions may claim that we or our customers are required to comply with their laws. Laws regulating our payments platform outside of the United States often impose different, more specific, or even conflicting obligations on us, as well as broader liability. For example, certain transactions that may be permissible in a local jurisdiction may be prohibited by regulations of the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) or U.S. anti-money laundering or counter-terrorist financing regulations.

We have assessed, and will continue to assess, the adequacy of our policies, procedures, and internal controls for ensuring compliance with applicable laws, rules, regulations, policies, legal interpretations, and regulatory guidance, including the ones described below. Through these assessments, we have identified, and may in the future identify, certain gaps or weaknesses in our existing compliance programs, including in our policies, procedures, or internal controls. As a result of findings from these assessments, we have, are, and may in the future take certain actions, such as implementing enhancements to our compliance measures and amending, updating, or revising our policies, procedures, and internal controls, and other operational frameworks, designed to monitor for and ensure compliance with existing and new laws, rules, regulations, policies, legal interpretations, and regulatory guidance. Implementing appropriate measures to fully remediate or address findings from assessments of our compliance programs may require us to incur significant costs.

Any failure or perceived failure to comply with existing or new laws and regulations, including the ones described in this risk factor, or orders of any governmental authority, including changes to or expansion of their interpretations, may subject us to significant fines, penalties, criminal and civil lawsuits, forfeiture of significant assets, enforcement actions in one or more jurisdictions, result in additional compliance and licensure requirements, and increased regulatory scrutiny of our business. In addition, we may be forced to restrict or change our operations or business practices, make product changes, or delay planned product launches or improvements. Any of the foregoing could materially adversely affect our brand, reputation, business, results of operations, and financial condition. The complexity of global regulatory and enforcement regimes, coupled with the global scope of our operations and the evolving global regulatory environment, could result in a single event giving rise to a large number of overlapping investigations and

 

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legal and regulatory proceedings by multiple government authorities in different jurisdictions, and have an adverse impact on, or result in the termination of, our relationships with financial institutions and other service providers on whom we rely for payment processing services. Our ability to track and verify transactions to comply with these regulations, including the ones described in this risk factor, require a high level of internal controls. As our business continues to grow and regulations change, we must continue to strengthen our associated internal controls. Any failure to maintain the necessary controls could result in reputational harm and result in significant penalties and fines from regulators.

Payments Regulation

In the United States, our wholly-owned subsidiary, Airbnb Payments, Inc. (“Airbnb Payments”), is registered as a “Money Services Business” with the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”), and subject to regulatory oversight and enforcement by FinCEN under the Bank Secrecy Act, as amended by the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 (the “BSA”). Airbnb Payments has also obtained licenses to operate as a money transmitter (or its equivalent) in various states and territories where such licenses are required. As a licensed money transmitter, Airbnb Payments is subject to obligations and restrictions with respect to the handling and investment of customer funds, record keeping and reporting requirements, bonding requirements, and inspection by state regulatory agencies. In U.S. states and territories in which Airbnb Payments has not obtained a license to operate as a money transmitter (or its equivalent), we may be required to apply for licenses or regulatory approvals, including due to changes in applicable laws and regulations or their interpretations.

We issue gift cards in the United States for use on our platform and are subject to consumer protection and disclosure regulations relating to those services. If we seek to expand our gift cards or other stored value card products and services, or as a result of regulatory changes, we may be subject to additional regulation and may be required to obtain additional licenses and registrations, which we may not be able to obtain.

We principally provide our payment services to hosts and guests in the EEA through Airbnb Payments Luxembourg SA (“APLux”), our wholly-owned subsidiary that is licensed and subject to regulation as a payments institution in Luxembourg. EEA laws and regulations are typically subject to different and potentially inconsistent interpretations by the countries that are members of the EEA, which can make compliance more costly and operationally difficult to manage. For example, countries that are EEA members may each have different and potentially inconsistent domestic regulations implementing European Directives, including the European Union Payment Services Directive, the Revised Payment Services Directive (“PSD2”), the E-Money Directive, and the Fourth and Fifth Anti-Money Laundering Directives. Further, we provide our payments services to hosts and guests in the United Kingdom and other geographies outside the United States and the EEA through Airbnb Payments UK Limited (“APUK”), our wholly-owned subsidiary that is licensed and subject to regulation as an electronic money institution (“EMI”) in the United Kingdom, as well as through our other wholly-owned payments entities.

PSD2 imposes new standards for payment security and strong customer authentication that may make it more difficult and time consuming to carry out a payment transaction. These authentication requirements were originally scheduled to commence in September 2019, but European national supervisory authorities have decided to delay enforcing them until January 1, 2021, and they will go into force in the United Kingdom on September 14, 2021. In many cases, strong customer authentication will require our European guests to engage in additional steps to authenticate payment transactions and European hosts to perform authentication upon access to their payout account or modification of their payout account information. These additional authentication requirements may make our platform experience for hosts and guests in the European Economic Area substantially less convenient, and such loss of convenience could meaningfully reduce the frequency with which our customers use our platform or could cause some hosts

 

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and guests to stop using our platform entirely, which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

In many countries or geographies, it is and may not be clear whether we are required to be licensed as a payment services provider, electronic money institution, financial institution, or otherwise. In such instances, we partner with local banks and licensed payment processors to process payments and conduct foreign exchange transactions in local currency. Local regulators may slow or halt payments to hosts conducted through local banks and licensed payment processors or otherwise prohibit or impede us from doing business in a jurisdiction. We may be required to apply for various additional licenses, certifications, and regulatory approvals, including due to changes in applicable laws and regulations or their interpretations. There can be no assurance that we will be able to (or decide to) obtain any such licenses, certifications, and approvals.

There are substantial costs and potential changes to our offerings involved in obtaining, maintaining, and renewing licenses, certifications, and approvals globally. Our payments entities are subject to inspections, examinations, supervision, and regulation by each relevant regulating authority, including, within the United States, by each state in which Airbnb Payments is licensed. We could be subject to significant fines or other enforcement actions if we are found to violate disclosure, reporting, anti-money laundering, economic and trade sanctions, capitalization, fund management, corporate governance and internal controls, risk management, privacy, data protection and data localization, information security, banking secrecy, taxation, sanctions, or other laws and requirements, including those imposed on United Kingdom EMIs and Luxembourg payments institutions. These factors could involve considerable delay to the development or provision of our offerings or services, require significant and costly operational changes, impose restrictions, limitations, or additional requirements on our business, or prevent us from providing our offerings or services in a given geography.

Consumer Protection

We are subject to consumer protection laws and regulations in the U.S. states and countries from which we provide payment services. In the United States, the Dodd-Frank Act established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (the “CFPB”), which is empowered to conduct rulemaking and supervision related to, and enforcement of, federal consumer financial protection laws. We are subject to a number of such federal consumer financial protection laws and regulations, as well as related state consumer protection laws and regulations, including the Electronic Fund Transfer Act and Regulation E as implemented by the CFPB. Money transmitters such as Airbnb Payments are subject to direct supervision and periodic examination by the CFPB and are required to provide advance disclosure of changes to our services, follow specified error resolution procedures, and reimburse consumers for losses from certain transactions not authorized by the consumer, among other requirements. In addition, the CFPB may adopt other regulations governing consumer financial services, including regulations defining unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts or practices, and new model disclosures.

We could be subject to fines or other penalties if we are found to have violated the Dodd-Frank Act’s prohibition against unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts or practices or other consumer financial protection laws enforced by the CFPB or other agencies. The CFPB’s authority to change regulations adopted in the past by other regulators could increase our compliance costs and litigation exposure. Additionally, technical violations of consumer protection laws could result in the assessment of actual damages or statutory damages or penalties, including plaintiffs’ attorneys’ fees. The Dodd-Frank Act also empowers state attorneys general and other state officials to enforce federal consumer protection laws under specified conditions. Various government offices and agencies, including various state agencies and state attorneys general (as well as the CFPB and the U.S. Department of Justice), have the authority to conduct

 

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reviews, investigations, and proceedings (both formal and informal) involving us or our subsidiaries. These examinations, inquiries and proceedings could result in, among other things, substantial fines, penalties or changes in business practices that may require us to incur substantial costs.

We provide payment services that may be subject to various U.S. state and federal privacy laws and regulations. Relevant federal privacy laws include the GLBA, which (along with its implementing regulations) restricts certain collection, processing, storage, use, and disclosure of personal information, requires notice to individuals of privacy practices, and provides individuals with certain rights to prevent the use and disclosure of certain nonpublic or otherwise legally protected information. These rules also impose requirements for the safeguarding and proper destruction of personal information through the issuance of data security standards or guidelines. See our risk factor titled “— If we fail to comply with federal, state, and foreign laws relating to privacy and data protection, we may face potentially significant liability, negative publicity, an erosion of trust, and increased regulation could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.”

In addition to United Kingdom and Luxembourg payments-related consumer protection laws that are applicable to our business, regulators in European Union member states could notify APUK and APLux of local consumer protection laws that apply to our businesses, and could also seek to persuade the United Kingdom and Luxembourg regulators to order APUK or APLux to conduct their activities in the local country directly or through a branch office. These or similar actions by these regulators could increase the cost of, or delay, our plans to expand our business in European Union countries.

Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing

We are subject to various anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing laws and regulations around the world, including the BSA. Among other things, the BSA requires money services businesses (including money transmitters such as Airbnb Payments) to develop and implement risk-based anti-money laundering programs, report large cash transactions and suspicious activity, and maintain transaction records. The BSA prohibits, among other things, our involvement in transferring the proceeds of criminal activities. In connection with and when required by regulatory requirements, we make information available to certain U.S. federal and state, as well as certain foreign, government agencies to assist in the prevention of money laundering, terrorist financing, and other illegal activities and pursuant to legal obligations and authorizations. In certain circumstances, we may be required by government agencies to deny transactions that may be related to persons suspected of money laundering, terrorist financing, or other illegal activities, and it is possible that we may inadvertently deny transactions from customers who are making legal money transfers. Regulators in the United States and globally may require us to further revise or expand our compliance program, including the procedures we use to verify the identity of our customers and to monitor international and domestic transactions. In the European Union, the implementation of the Fourth Anti-Money Laundering Directive (“MLD4”) may make compliance more costly and operationally difficult to manage, lead to increased friction for customers, and result in a decrease in business. Penalties for non-compliance with MLD4 could include fines of up to 10% of APUK’s or APLux’s total annual turnover. In April 2018, the European Parliament adopted the European Commission’s proposal for a Fifth Anti-Money Laundering Directive (“MLD5”), containing more stringent provisions in certain areas, which will increase compliance costs. In July 2019, the UK Financial Conduct Authority (“FCA”) called on UK electronic money institutions to review their compliance with the requirements on safeguarding of customer funds and to notify the FCA in the event they identified any material non-compliance. APUK notified the FCA that it had identified gaps in its compliance and was undertaking remedial action. The FCA, in turn, appointed a third-party skilled person to perform a review of APUK’s safeguarding systems and controls, in accordance with Section 166 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (as amended) and all required actions identified by the skilled person have now been completed.

 

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As part of its review, the skilled person also identified certain issues with APUK’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing systems and controls. In August 2020, APUK submitted a gap analysis to the FCA of its compliance with the UK’s implementation of MLD4 and MLD5, which identified in-progress remedial action. The FCA closed the review in August 2020.

We are subject to governmental economic and trade sanctions laws and regulations that limit the scope of our offering. Additionally, failure to comply with applicable economic and trade sanctions laws and regulations could subject us to liability and negatively affect our business, results of operations and financial condition.

We are required to comply with economic and trade sanctions administered by governments where we operate, including the U.S. government (including without limitation regulations administered and enforced by OFAC and the U.S. Department of State), the Council of the European Union, the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation of Her Majesty’s Treasury in the United Kingdom (“OFSI”) and the Ministry of Finance and Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier of Luxembourg. These economic and trade sanctions prohibit or restrict transactions to or from or dealings with certain specified countries, regions, their governments and, in certain circumstances, their nationals, and with individuals and entities that are specially-designated, such as individuals and entities included on OFAC’s List of Specially Designated Nationals (“SDN List”), subject to EU/UK asset freezes, or other sanctions measures. Any future economic and trade sanctions imposed in jurisdictions where we have significant business could materially adversely impact our business, results of operations, and financial condition. Our ability to track and verify transactions and otherwise to comply with these regulations require a high level of internal controls. We maintain policies and procedures to implement these internal controls, which we periodically assess and update to the extent we identify compliance gaps. We routinely report to OFAC on payments we have rejected or blocked pursuant to OFAC sanctions regulations and on any possible violations of those regulations. We have also reported to OFSI on dealings with persons subject to EU/UK sanctions. There is a risk that, despite the internal controls that we have in place, we have engaged in dealings with persons sanctioned under applicable sanctions laws. Any non-compliance with economic and trade sanctions laws and regulations or related investigations could result in claims or actions against us and materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition. As our business continues to grow and regulations change, we may be required to make additional investments in our internal controls or modify our business.

Beginning in July 2019, we conducted an internal review and have been holding related discussions with OFAC regarding certain user activity on our platform that may have been inconsistent with our policies and the requirements of U.S. sanctions laws. The scope of this review included activity by users in certain countries and territories that were or are the target of U.S. sanctions laws. In July 2020, OFAC issued to us a cautionary letter and no administrative penalty with respect to certain aspects of that review concerning the Crimea region of Ukraine. The internal review also covered certain other issues concerning our compliance with OFAC’s sanctions program, focusing in particular on our business in Cuba, and as to our compliance with restrictions on transactions with specially designated nationals. We submitted the results of that internal review in final Voluntary Self Disclosures to OFAC in September 2020. In October 2020, OFAC issued to us cautionary letters and a no action letter, and no administrative penalties, with respect to the disclosed matters involving specially designated nationals. OFAC’s review of our voluntary self disclosure regarding Cuba is ongoing and we remain in close contact with OFAC. Depending upon OFAC’s assessment of the Cuba review, we could be subject to potentially significant monetary civil penalties and litigation, and our brand and reputation could be materially adversely affected.

 

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We are subject to payment network rules and any material modification of our payment card acceptance privileges could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

The loss of our credit and debit card acceptance privileges or the significant modification of the terms under which we obtain card acceptance privileges would significantly limit our business model since a vast majority of our guests pay using credit or debit cards. We are required by our payment processors to comply with payment card network operating rules, including the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (the “PCI DSS”). Under the PCI DSS, we are required to adopt and implement internal controls over the use, storage, and transmission of card data to help prevent credit card fraud. If we fail to comply with the rules and regulations adopted by the payment card networks, including the PCI DSS, we would be in breach of our contractual obligations to payment processors and merchant banks. Such failure to comply may damage our relationship with payment card networks, subject us to restrictions, fines, penalties, damages, and civil liability, and could eventually prevent us from processing or accepting payment cards, which would have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, and financial condition. Moreover, the payment card networks could adopt new operating rules or interpret or reinterpret existing rules that we or our payment processors might find difficult or even impossible to comply with, or costly to implement. As a result, we could lose our ability to give consumers the option of using payment cards to make their payments or the choice of currency in which they would like their payment card to be charged. Further, there is no guarantee that, even if we comply with the rules and regulations adopted by the payment card networks, we will be able to maintain our payment card acceptance privileges. We also cannot guarantee that our compliance with network rules or the PCI DSS will prevent illegal or improper use of our payments platform or the theft, loss, or misuse of the credit card data of customers or participants, or a security breach. We are also required to submit to periodic audits, self-assessments, and other assessments of our compliance with the PCI DSS. If an audit, self-assessment, or other assessment indicates that we need to take steps to remediate any deficiencies, such remediation efforts may distract our management team and require us to undertake costly and time-consuming remediation efforts, and we could lose our payment card acceptance privileges.

We are also subject to network operating rules and guidelines promulgated by the National Automated Clearing House Association (“NACHA”) relating to payment transactions we process using the Automated Clearing House (“ACH”) Network. Like the payment networks, NACHA may update its operating rules and guidelines at any time, which can require us to take more costly compliance measures or to develop more complex monitoring systems.

We rely on third-party payment service providers to process payments made by guests and payments made to hosts on our platform. If these third-party payment service providers become unavailable or we are subject to increased fees, our business, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected.

We rely on a number of third-party payment service providers, including payment card networks, banks, payment processors, and payment gateways, to link us to payment card and bank clearing networks to process payments made by our guests and to remit payments to hosts on our platform. We have agreements with these providers, some of whom are the sole providers of their particular service.

If these companies become unwilling or unable to provide these services to us on acceptable terms or at all, our business may be disrupted, we would need to find an alternate payment service provider, and we may not be able to secure similar terms or replace such payment service provider in an acceptable time frame. If we are forced to migrate to other third-party payment service providers for any reason, the transition would require significant time and management resources, and may not be as effective,

 

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efficient, or well-received by our hosts and guests. Any of the foregoing could cause us to incur significant losses and, in certain cases, require us to make payments to hosts out of our funds, which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

In addition, the software and services provided by our third-party payment service providers may fail to meet our expectations, contain errors or vulnerabilities, be compromised, or experience outages. Any of these risks could cause us to lose our ability to accept online payments or other payment transactions or make timely payments to hosts on our platform, which could make our platform less convenient and desirable to customers and adversely affect our ability to attract and retain hosts and guests.

Moreover, our agreements with payment service providers may allow these companies, under certain conditions, to hold an amount of our cash as a reserve. They may be entitled to a reserve or suspension of processing services upon the occurrence of specified events, including material adverse changes in our business, results of operations, and financial condition. An imposition of a reserve or suspension of processing services by one or more of our processing companies, could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

If we fail to invest adequate resources into the payment processing infrastructure on our platform, or if our investment efforts are unsuccessful or unreliable, our payments activities may not function properly or keep pace with competitive offerings, which could adversely impact their usage. Further, our ability to expand our payments activities into additional countries is dependent upon the third-party providers we use to support these activities. As we expand the availability of our payments activities to additional geographies or offer new payment methods to our hosts and guests in the future, we may become subject to additional regulations and compliance requirements, and exposed to heightened fraud risk, which could lead to an increase in our operating expenses.

For certain payment methods, including credit and debit cards, we pay interchange and other fees, and such fees result in significant costs. Payment card network costs have increased, and may continue to increase in the future, the interchange fees and assessments that they charge for each transaction that accesses their networks, and may impose special fees or assessments on any such transaction. Our payment card processors have the right to pass any increases in interchange fees and assessments on to us. Credit card transactions result in higher fees to us than transactions made through debit cards. Any material increase in interchange fees in the United States or other geographies, including as a result of changes in interchange fee limitations imposed by law in some geographies, or other network fees or assessments, or a shift from payment with debit cards to credit cards could increase our operating costs and materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

Our failure to properly manage funds held on behalf of customers could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

We offer integrated payments in over 40 currencies to allow access to guest demand from more than 220 countries and regions and the ability for many hosts to be paid in their local currency or payment method of choice. When a guest books and pays for a stay or experience on our platform, we hold the total amount the guest has paid until check-in, at which time we recognize our service fee as revenue and initiate the process to remit the payment to the host, which generally occurs 24 hours after the scheduled check-in, barring any alterations or cancellations, which may result in funds being returned to the guest. Accordingly, at any given time, we hold on behalf of our hosts and guests a substantial amount of funds, which are generally held in bank deposit accounts and in U.S. treasury bills and recorded on our consolidated balance sheets as funds receivable and amounts held on behalf of customers. In certain jurisdictions, we are required to either safeguard customer funds in bankruptcy-remote bank accounts, or

 

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hold such funds in eligible liquid assets, as defined by the relevant regulators in such jurisdictions, equal to at least 100% of the aggregate amount held on behalf of customers. Our ability to manage and account accurately for the cash underlying our customer funds requires a high level of internal controls. As our business continues to grow and we expand our offerings and tiers, we must continue to strengthen our associated internal controls. Our success requires significant public confidence in our ability to handle large and growing transaction volumes and amounts of customer funds. Any failure to maintain the necessary controls or to manage the assets underlying our customer funds accurately could result in reputational harm, lead customers to discontinue or reduce their use of our platform and services, and result in significant penalties and fines from regulators, each of which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

If one or more of our counterparty financial institutions default on their financial or performance obligations to us or fail, we may incur significant losses or be unable to process payment transactions.

We have significant amounts of cash, cash equivalents, and other investments, including certificates of deposit, highly-liquid debt instruments of the U.S. government and its agencies, commercial paper, corporate debt securities, asset-backed securities, mutual funds, and bank loan funds, with banks or other financial institutions in the United States and abroad for both our corporate balances and for funds held on behalf of our hosts and guests. We also rely on such banks and financial institutions to help process payments transactions. We have both significant funds flows from and to various financial institutions as a result of our processing of payments from guests to hosts. As part of our currency hedging activities on these balances, we enter into transactions involving derivative financial instruments with various financial institutions. We regularly monitor our exposure to counterparty credit risk and manage this exposure in an attempt to mitigate the associated risk. Despite these efforts, we may be exposed to the risk of default by, or deteriorating operating results or financial condition, or service interruptions at, or failure of, these counterparty financial institutions. If one of our counterparties were to become insolvent or file for bankruptcy, our ability to recover losses or to access or recover our assets may be limited by the counterparty’s liquidity or the applicable laws governing the insolvency or bankruptcy proceedings. Furthermore, our ability to process payment transactions via such counterparties would be severely limited or cease. In the event of default or failure of one or more of our counterparties, we could incur significant losses and be required to make payments to hosts and/or refunds to guests out of our own funds, which could materially adversely affect our results of operations and financial condition.

The failure to successfully execute and integrate acquisitions could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

We have acquired multiple businesses, including our April 2019 acquisition of Hotel Tonight, Inc. and our August 2019 acquisition of UrbanDoor Inc., and we regularly evaluate potential acquisitions. We may expend significant cash or incur substantial debt to finance such acquisitions, which indebtedness could result in restrictions on our business and significant use of available cash to make payments of interest and principal. In addition, we may finance acquisitions by issuing equity or convertible debt securities, which could result in further dilution to our existing stockholders. We may enter into negotiations for acquisitions that are not ultimately consummated. Those negotiations could result in diversion of management time and significant out-of-pocket costs. If we fail to evaluate and execute acquisitions successfully, our business, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected.

In addition, we may not be successful in integrating acquisitions or the businesses we acquire may not perform as well as we expect. While our acquisitions to date have not caused major disruptions in our business, any future failure to manage and successfully integrate acquired businesses could materially

 

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adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition. Acquisitions involve numerous risks, including the following:

 

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difficulties in integrating and managing the combined operations, technology platforms, or offerings of the acquired companies and realizing the anticipated economic, operational, and other benefits in a timely manner, which could result in substantial costs and delays, and failure to execute on the intended strategy and synergies;

 

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failure of the acquired businesses to achieve anticipated revenue, earnings, or cash flow;

 

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diversion of management’s attention or other resources from our existing business;

 

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our inability to maintain the key customers, business relationships, suppliers, and brand potential of acquired businesses;

 

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uncertainty of entry into businesses or geographies in which we have limited or no prior experience or in which competitors have stronger positions;

 

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unanticipated costs associated with pursuing acquisitions or greater than expected costs in integrating the acquired businesses;

 

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responsibility for the liabilities of acquired businesses, including those that were not disclosed to us or exceed our estimates, such as liabilities arising out of the failure to maintain effective data protection and privacy controls, and liabilities arising out of the failure to comply with applicable laws and regulations, including tax laws;

 

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difficulties in or costs associated with assigning or transferring to us or our subsidiaries the acquired companies’ intellectual property or its licenses to third-party intellectual property;

 

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inability to maintain our culture and values, ethical standards, controls, procedures, and policies;

 

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challenges in integrating the workforce of acquired companies and the potential loss of key employees of the acquired companies;

 

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challenges in integrating and auditing the financial statements of acquired companies that have not historically prepared financial statements in accordance with GAAP; and

 

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potential accounting charges to the extent goodwill and intangible assets recorded in connection with an acquisition, such as trademarks, customer relationships, or intellectual property, are later determined to be impaired and written down in value.

Because we recognize revenue upon check-in and not at booking, upticks or downturns in bookings are not immediately reflected in our results of operations.

We experience a difference in timing between when a booking is made and when we recognize revenue, which occurs upon check-in. The effect of significant downturns in bookings in a particular quarter may not be fully reflected in our results of operations until future periods because of this timing in revenue recognition. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are making certain payments to hosts and issuing guest cancellation coupons to guests, which we account for as consideration paid to a customer and result in a reduction to revenue.

 

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