The 2018 Morgan Stanley report attributed the tempered growth, in part, to a plateau in awareness of Airbnb. It found that the slowing growth applied to both leisure and business travelers. The firm had expected business travel adoption to increase from 18 percent in 2016 to 23 percent in 2017. Instead it grew to only 20
At the same time, serious concerns about Airbnb guests' safety and security were already on the rise; the number of people concerned about such issues rose from 10 percent in 2016 to 25 percent in 2017. Additionally, the percent of non-Airbnb users who cited concerns about privacy grew to 36 percent, up 700 basis points, and non-users worried about security grew to 13 percent, up 400 basis points. "This is surprising and potentially troubling for Airbnb's growth," the report stated. "Typically, consumers become more comfortable with emerging technologies as awareness/testing/adoption grow. This doesn't appear to be happening for Airbnb."
Additionally, the rise in booking alternative accommodation through online travel agencies also contributed to the findings as Morgan Stanley Research predicted this method of booking would grow 1.3 times faster than Airbnb bookings, with 59 percent of respondents reporting the use of such agencies.
Causes for the lull in activity included privacy and safety fears. By early 2019, over 50 percent of those surveyed for a subsequent report, cited concerns about safety as a reason not to book with Airbnb, with fears residing in possible scams or untrustworthy hosts (and bear in mind, this was long before the seriously damaging publicity surrounding the Orinda tragedies, and the Vice scamming article had gone viral. The 2019 MS report hasn't yet been released, but is widely expected to make interesting - if depressing - reading, when it does surface.
However, it doesn't take a bunch of business geniuses to work out that skyrocketing inventory (fuelled by Airbnb's current hyper-aggressive global recruitment drive, with its eye-wateringly costly referral bonuses to reel in armies of brand new hosts), coupled with a sharp decline in user adoption and plummeting consumer confidence/satisfaction ratings, is not a sustainable survival strategy for any business.
And the latest news...
Airbnb's New Years Eve 2019 Guest Volume Shows Its Falling Growth Rate.
https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/01/airbnbs-new-years-eve-guest-volume-shows-its-falling-growth-rate/
