str market mapHosts need global demand plus a trusted booking, payment, and protection layer to rent their homes, while travellers need one place to find and book anything from a spare room to a whole villa, with reviews and recourse if something goes wrong.
Airbnb is a global online marketplace for short-term and vacation rentals, founded in 2008, headquartered in San Francisco, California, and publicly listed on Nasdaq. It connects hosts offering homes, apartments, private rooms, and unique stays with travellers across more than 220 countries and regions, alongside Experiences and in-stay Services.
The marketplace is the core: hosts publish listings with photos, pricing, availability, and house rules, and travellers search, book, and pay through Airbnb, which holds and releases funds and provides messaging, reviews, and dispute support. Around it sit the operational layers: a host dashboard and mobile app for calendar and reservation management, manual and automated pricing tools, AirCover host damage protection and liability cover, identity verification and Trust and Safety screening, co-host and professional-host tooling, and an API with certified channel-manager and PMS connectivity used by software such as Guesty and Hostaway so professional managers can sync inventory at scale. Airbnb earns a service fee on each booking, charged to the host, the guest, or split between them.
Individual hosts renting a single room or home, professional property managers running large multi-listing portfolios, and travellers booking leisure and longer stays worldwide, with the platform available in more than 25 languages.
Listed on STR Market Map, the short-term-rental software marketplace.