Airbnb Responses in the Global Pandemic

AIRBNB RESPONSES IN
THE GLOBAL PANDEMIC

TABLE OF CONTENTS
AIRBNB RESPONSES IN THE GLOBAL PANDEMIC..............................................................1
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
AIRBNB AND THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC....................................................................3
Impact..........................................................................................................................................3
Response of Airbnb.....................................................................................................................4
Suggestions (keeping Myself in the place of the CEO of Airbnb)..............................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
All the businesses whether big or small have been impacted negatively in terms of revenue
and many more by the global pandemic of COVID-19. Especially, the businesses who depended
on revenue generated from the tourists and the people travelling are highly influenced as the
government has enforced complete restrictions on travel of any purpose. Airbnb, Inc. is one of
the multinational American rental online marketplace company which is situated in San
Francisco, California, US which is growing rapidly (Henama and Apleni, 2020).
It provides services like lodging, homestays, tourism experiences etc. by acting like a broker
which receives commission from each booking having no real estate listing. The report below
will discuss the impact of the global pandemic on Airbnb and the challenges faced by it. It will
also describe the responses of the company to this pandemic and will also suggests some better
responses that the company can do in order to overcome the challenges.
AIRBNB AND THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC
All the businesses in the travel industries were impacted greatly but Airbnb was hit hard by
the pandemic of COVID-19 (Xalilullaevna, 2020). It faced a great loss in terms of revenue,
value, employees and many more. This became a great challenge for the company to overcome
to get back near to its earlier position.
Impact
The main impact can be seen in its value which was $31billion in March 2017 and was worth
$18 billion by the end of April 2020. The CEO of the company Brian Chesky stated that the
company was forced to fire nearly 1900 individuals which was approx. 25% of the total staff
(Hosts criticize Airbnb’s refund policy in response to coronavirus outbreak for being unfair,
2020). It was also predetermined that the company’s revenue will be less than the half of the
revenue earned by the company in 2019.
Before this Coronavirus pandemic, Airbnb was facing a rapid growth having 7 million listings
worldwide and 50.2 million visits on its website whereas its main competitor VRBO saw only
14.7 million visits on its site. But this pandemic became its major challenge to overcome.
Millions and billions of tourists cancelled their plans (approx. 64%) for vacations for the
business purpose, family trips and many more (Bastola, 2020). This resulted in a rapid fall down
3