Airbnb’s average home prices have gone up, so now it’s refocusing on rooms to give users more affordable alternatives

Airbnb started out of an idea of renting out spare beds and rooms in private homes to people as an affordable alternative to hotels, but as it has scaled it’s spent years going upmarket from that, evolving into a wider platform for any kind of private accommodation, with a big emphasis on travelers taking entire homes, not just rooms. That’s helped the company land its first profitable year in 2022, but there is a looming problem: Airbnb homes are getting more expensive to rent, with average prices up 36% since 2019 — and with the current state of the economy, travelers are looking for more affordable alternatives again. So today, Airbnb is changing tack: it’s taking the wraps off a new single-room rental option, making it once again a more prominent part of the search flow for would-be travelers.

“Everyone’s talking about the economy. And, you know, we know that people want to travel,” said co-founder and chief strategy officer Nate Blecharczyk in an interview. “We just also know that affordability is on people’s minds. And so we think that rooms are once again, highly relevant.” He added that 300 million guests are expected to use Airbnb this year.

Airbnb said it has around 1 million rooms listed on the platform at the moment alongside its entire-home inventory. Now, to help you find those single rooms, it’s added a dedicated search category; and from our own experience, it looks like the company’s search algorithm is also pushing more private room options as a default on city search results.