Airbnb’s business model is much more capital efficient than regular hotels. It can grow and respond to market conditions much faster than a hotel, has much lower customer acquisition/marketing costs, and operates in a wider market segment than hotels since extended stay is a much more common use case (yes, you can stay in a hotel for an extended stay, and there are extended stay hotels, but anecdotally I’ve never heard of a consumer paying for that out of pocket unless they are like homeless or temporarily homeless. It’s usually a corporation or insurance paying for it AFAIK).

I still don’t think it necessarily justifies the current market cap.