Assuming their costs are about 50%, and that they need to make ~$8B profit / year, they'd need to collect $16B to make $8B, so that's about $100B in rentals at 15% take. Plausible, because the USA alone is ~$90B, but why does it seem stable? If AirBNB starts to charge enough to make $8B profit per year why wouldn't you rent your suite with VRBO?
The margins can get paper thin because nobody seems to want the profitable extras - just CC processing and a listings site. I know people who rent vacation property and they do not lack for potential customers. They're on all the services, but also Craigslist, etc. They value the services for easier money handling, slightly less customer service required, and a few smaller things. But certainly not enough to warrant more than a 5% cut, but ~15% seems more common. This seems to usually be obfuscated by charging the guest, not the host, but it's still money that's not on the table for them.
They often break the rules to deal with this by suggesting customers contact them directly and pay by money transfer, so the industry is already price conscious and willing to undercut partners. Not a friendly place to expand into. And customers tend to price conscious and shop around, so it seems likely to stay this way.
Uber, to contrast, benefits from their network effect because most customers are time, not price, conscious and thus only check one service. For AirBNB you have months to shop around and contact the host out of band.
The margins can get paper thin because nobody seems to want the profitable extras - just CC processing and a listings site. I know people who rent vacation property and they do not lack for potential customers. They're on all the services, but also Craigslist, etc. They value the services for easier money handling, slightly less customer service required, and a few smaller things. But certainly not enough to warrant more than a 5% cut, but ~15% seems more common. This seems to usually be obfuscated by charging the guest, not the host, but it's still money that's not on the table for them.
They often break the rules to deal with this by suggesting customers contact them directly and pay by money transfer, so the industry is already price conscious and willing to undercut partners. Not a friendly place to expand into. And customers tend to price conscious and shop around, so it seems likely to stay this way.
Uber, to contrast, benefits from their network effect because most customers are time, not price, conscious and thus only check one service. For AirBNB you have months to shop around and contact the host out of band.