Surprisingly, Airbnb managed to stop the bleeding due to the pandemic by focusing on local stays and cutting back on staff, profiting nearly $219 million. CEO Brian Chesky kept the company alive throughout 2020 by also making serious cuts in marketing, by as much as 54% in some cases. Its total expenses went down by 22%.
Chesky steered the company to focus its attention on local stays and revamped the Airbnb website to make up for the shift.
In its filing, Airbnb wrote, “In early 2020, as Covid-19 disrupted travel across the world, Airbnb’s business declined significantly,” the company wrote. “But within two months, our business model started to rebound even with limited international travel, demonstrating its resilience. People wanted to get out of their homes and yearned to travel, but they did not want to go far or to be in crowded hotel lobbies. Domestic travel quickly rebounded on Airbnb around the world as millions of guests took trips closer to home. Stays of longer than a few days started increasing as work-from-home became work-from-any-home on Airbnb. We believe that the lines between travel and living are blurring, and the global pandemic has accelerated the ability to live anywhere. Our platform has proven adaptable to serve these new ways of traveling.”
