The author misread the actual predictions from Cowen & Co, which predict 500 million "room nights" per year — a term that we refer to internally as "nights book

The author misread the actual predictions from Cowen & Co, which predict 500 million "room nights" per year — a term that we refer to internally as "nights booked" per year — which would mean that a total of 500 million nights were booked across all hosts over the course of a year. A single "booking" may count as multiple "nights," since often you'll be staying at (and have booked) a place for more than one night. Here's a better report of the Cowen & Co analysis: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-11/one-wall-street-firm-expects-airbnb-to-book-a-billion-nights-a-year-within-a-decade http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-11/one-wall-s... — it's a far, far cry from "500 million bookings a night." You're 100% correct that the size of the total world population makes it spectacularly unlikely that we'll ever have 500 million bookings per night.