Apptopia identified users active on each app in one half of one year and tracked them to see if they were still active in that time period the next year. This gave us our retention and churn rates. For each app, we then analyzed the churned users to determine if they exited the OTA category or churned to another OTA app (any of the top 11 OTA apps).
Apptopia’s data shows Airbnb [NASDAQ: ABNB] consistently retains its users better than its peers, and that’s without a loyalty program. Across 5 measurement periods, it averaged a retention rate of 45.2%. Expedia [NASDAQ: EXPE] averaged 40.5%, Booking.com [NASDAQ: BKNG] averaged 39.3%, and Trip.com [NASDAQ: TCOM] averaged 20.3%. Even so, Airbnb is reconsidering its position on loyalty. For years, CEO Brian Chesky has argued that a rewards program is a subsidy paid to customers a company has failed to earn, and that product quality is the real retention engine. On the Q4 2025 call he confirmed the company is testing loyalty benefits and called a program a potential accelerant, while still resisting a conventional points system.
All major players except for Trip.com took a dive when comparing their 1H25-to-1H26 retention to their 1H24-to-1H25 retention. Trip.com, while it has the lowest retention rate by far, has been growing its retention across each time period. Headquartered in China, Trip.com has been trying to eke out market share in the US but has not made great headway, sitting at roughly 10% of the MAUs the top few players have.
Expedia has spent three years building One Key across Expedia, Hotels.com and Vrbo, and in June it cut earn rates to 1% for members without status, following an earlier reduction. Its recent retention decline is the steepest in the set. However, the devaluation is too recent to explain a cohort tracked through the first half of 2026. The thing to watch is whether or not this compounds the issue.
On average since 2023, Airbnb loses less of its churned users to rivals than anyone else, at 11.5% of the churned group. Booking.com is not far behind it at only 12.5%, followed by Expedia at 14.9% and Trip.com at 31.3%. Trip.com is making progress though: Roughly 40% of its churned users appeared on another travel app two years ago. Now it is 17.1%.
Most people who churn from these top OTA apps (~74%) end up exiting the category entirely. They are either not browsing/booking on mobile, going direct, or just not planning travel. How many of these churned users turn to hotel apps would be an insightful analysis.
