More Australians are using Airbnb despite councils and state governments across the country trying to crack down on the platform.Airbnb posted quarterly financial results to the Nasdaq on Friday morning Australian time, pointing to strong global travel demand that lifted revenue 17 per cent for the past three months, with gross booking value up 16 per cent.The platform reported huge expansion in India and Japan.Despite local councils across Australia attempting to crack down on landlords listing their properties on Airbnb, the number of Aussies who booked on the platform from May to June this year was up on the same period last year.“One of the most encouraging trends in Q2 was that we saw year-over-year growth accelerate not just in our expansion markets but in many of our largest core markets as well,” the quarterly results say.“In fact, net origin nights booked in the US, France, the UK, and Australia all accelerated in Q2, reinforcing our confidence that our product innovation is driving demand across our business.”Net origin nights booked is how many nights are booked by people from a specific location – minus cancellations – and measures where travellers come from, not where they are travelling to.City of Sydney staff are formally investigating banning short stay accommodation rentals in select suburbs with critically low rental vacancy rates. Councillors voted in April for staff to research what a rental vacancy rate threshold could be, which would then apply on top of NSW’s statewide 180-day-per-year cap on short stay rentals.Since New Year’s Day 2025, Victoria has charged a levy on short stay rentals, docking 7.5 per cent of the revenue from each property. The state government expected to raise $75m in 2025; instead the tax raked in $85.8m.In 2024, the Byron Bay council brought in a 60-day-per-year cap for properties where the actual owner is not there hosting the guests.Airbnb labelled the Byron Shire move as unprecedented. Research commissioned by the platform, using state government data, found across the first year of the scheme, there were fewer long-term rentals in Byron Bay and rents had hit a new record high.Hours before the federal budget was handed down in May, Brisbane City councillors abandoned plans to effectively ban Airbnb and its competitors from renting properties in low-density suburbs. There are no statewide caps or taxes in Queensland either.Despite the pressure from state and local governments across the country, Friday’s financial returns for Airbnb show the platform remains very popular and is being used more.As well as the increase in bookings made by Australians, Americans, the French and Brits, the platform is getting stronger footholds across Asia.Booking numbers across Asia Pacific rose by a figure in the “high teens”, as did specifically nights booked by Japanese citizens.Airbnb use exploded in India, with a 60 per cent spike in bookings made by Indians year-on-year.The results also show from October 2025, Airbnb began “targeting” homeowners across 16 North American cities and recruited 150,000 new hosts ahead of the FIFA World Cup.Read related topics:AirBnB