Irish unit of Airbnb returns to profit as revenues surge by $1bn

The main Irish arm of Airbnb last year returned to the black by posting pretax profits of $121.49 million (€116.85m)

Dublin-based Airbnb Ireland Unlimited Company operates the Airbnb online marketplace for Airbnb outside the US, China and a portion of Japan. New accounts show that the business returned to profit as revenues surged by $1.03 billion or 57.5 per cent to $2.82 billion.

The revenues recorded by the Dublin-based entity accounted for 47 per cent of Airbnb’s global revenues of $5.99 billion last year.

The directors for the Irish arm state in 2022 “we have seen significant growth with nights booked exceeding 2019 levels”.

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Global revenues for the first nine months of this year confirm the “significant growth” with revenues of $6.49 billion – an increase of $2 billion or 33 per cent on the corresponding period for 2021.

The directors of the Irish unit state that “throughout 2021 we continued to face lower demand for long distance travel and overall depressed nights booked compared to 2109 due to the impact of Covid-19″.

The Dublin-based business made a pretax loss of $3 billion in 2020 that arose chiefly from a non-cash intellectual property impairment of $2.6 billion as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The accounts disclose that in a post-balance sheet event on June 30th of this year the company recorded a $4.33 million fixed asset impairment charge as it announced that it would shift to a remote work model allowing its employees to work remotely.

Numbers employed at the business last year declined by 83 to 361, with 350 engaged in customer support and administration, with 11 in marketing.

The business here also includes the provision of customer support service to users and it outsources a portion of marketing and business support services to other subsidiary companies.

Last year combined salary and share-based payments costs totalled $48.2 million and average pay, including the share-based payments, totalled $133,063.

Directors’ pay last year declined from $2.6 million to $1.7 million.

The company recorded a post-tax profits of $114.67 million after paying corporation tax of $6.8 million.

At the end of last year the company’s shareholder funds totalled $60.9 million, while its cash funds increased from $140 million to $558 million.

Airbnb was founded in 2007 when two “hosts” welcomed three guests to their San Francisco home, and has since grown to more than four million hosts.