Not an employee but overall I am quite bullish on Airbnb as ironically they will be the definition of a what a post-covid travel company will become. Couple points in their favour:
1. Work from home becomes work from anywhere: The WFH trend is here to stay and will grow. If you have an option why not stay anywhere in world and work vs. close by home? I expect we will see a big % of WFH markets be global travelers. Proving this thesis would be Airbnb can show on S1 the % of guest who book outside their home location and for stays more then 2 weeks (to account that it is not simply vacation time).
2. Stays gravitating to Tier 2 or lower vs. Tier 1: People will not want to fly or be close to other folks so you will see travel go to Tier 2 or lower cities. This helps Airbnb in two ways.. less competition as these cities won't have as much hotels...second allows them to increase their breadth of revenue based across many more cities then being dependant on just Tier 1 which have risk (regulation, disaster, etc.). Show this on S1 by % of travel that is now on Tier 2 and lower markets and how this has grown as a proportion of your overall revenue base.
3. Safety: Simple it's getting close to accepted that the #1 way of covid transmission is via airborne. Based on this you as a traveler should want to minimize as much unnecessary humans interaction as possible thus hotels suck with all the traffic that is there. You may argue that hotels have policy that are more strict on cleaning but this doesn't mean much when the way to catch covid is via airseol.
4. Inventory: With the economy still in shambles they will get more host who will monetize their living assets more and thus provide more inventory.
I trust that I will sanitize it properly vs. a minimum wage housekeeper who prob needs to clean 50 rooms a day. Thats my plan is all airbnb and when I get there will do all the cleaning myself.
Yeah no thanks on staying at hotels where you have hundreds of people going through it and underpaid maids who "clean" tons of rooms a day. Sure that is really safe in this environment.
Do you trust that the housekeeper who gets paid $15/hour and prob cleans 50 rooms a shift is really going to clean your place throughly? Also the amount of traffic in the hotel, the check-in counter, the people in the elevator, the room service food that has gone through multiple sets of hands....yeah sure this is safer.
I rather have an Airbnb that does remote check-in. Once there I will do my own cleaning and not worry about unknown traffic in my place for rest of the stay. In addition I can buy my own groceries therefore reducing another vector point of transmission.
Seems like a better proposition then the hotel IMHO if you really are scared of getting infected.
I actually think they will have a MORE inventory. The economic devastation of Covid will have people want to drive additional revenue stream and thus securitize their unused space.
So ironically it could bring AirBnb back to their roots which is grow with unused and extra rooms by individual homeowners/renters.
Yes they will. Simple option which is Airbnb contracts with a local professional cleaner and every rental in that area provide an extra cleaning service if you want to pay for it.
1. They already own the short-term rental market. Why not expand to the long-term rental market and undercut the broker fee that currently occur right now.
2. Pent up demand for travel: Reality is that once/if vaccine hit you can bet consumers are going to travel like crazy due to pent-up demand after being stuck at home for months.
3. Movement to WFH: The movement to WFH will only become more pronounce after Covid. If this is the case you will see a bunch of consumers ask why bother staying in the city I was working at if I can WFH anywhere in the world? Thus AirBnb rentals would be the key to doing this.
4. Fear of the crowds: If you had a choice of staying in a crowded hotel where perhaps the cleaning is slightly better vs. staying at a home where minimal crowd what would you chose in a world with Covid? In fact what they should do is offer an extra add-on for guest to pay for a more deep clean of the unit prior to rental.
5. Hotels with fixed cost are going to drop like flies: Means less hotel inventory globally as they go out of business.
6. Due to loss of jobs/income: More folks will need to securize their fix assets meaning house for additional income which means more inventory for Airbnb
Anyway this all assumes that a vaccine comes out and in the near-term it is going to be pretty brutal for them.
This is pretty absurd as your hypothesis makes no sense. The drive for revenue is going to override any government demand for oversight. Any government stupid enough to put up this would kill tourism which is the lifeblood of many cities. Money speaks and I don't see any government enacting this anywhere irrespective of AirBnb being there or not.
Now for Airbnb I am taking the reverse and contraion position that they will actually come out this ahead of most hospitality companies. Simple they don't own any assets and have the ability to ratchet down or up depending on the macro-environment. Also let's be honest here is that host will come back as its a another way for them to monetize their assets especially the economic situation right now.
Maybe the contrarian view but quite bullish on AirBnb (obviously not short term). This situation sucks but there is a glimmer of light which assuming the world finds a vaccine and anti-viral treatment:
1. Globally people are on lockdown and once done are going to realize that black swans can happen anytime and thus will travel more as never know when you can't. Travel will bounce back hard (business travel maybe not as much)
2. Due to loss of jobs/income: More folks will need to securitize their fix assets meaning house for additional income which means more inventory for Airbnb
3. Hotels will be devastated as due to fix cost had to pare down impairing service, locations, etc. thus net positive for Airbnb
4. Remote work will take off: Ppl will want to explore other locations as remote work becomes more prominent. They can launch an ancillary business that attacks WeWork.
Just putting my 2 cents here as a user. I love AirBnB and never have had an issue at all so far. Once this gets over and yes it will I will continue to use it.
1. Work from home becomes work from anywhere: The WFH trend is here to stay and will grow. If you have an option why not stay anywhere in world and work vs. close by home? I expect we will see a big % of WFH markets be global travelers. Proving this thesis would be Airbnb can show on S1 the % of guest who book outside their home location and for stays more then 2 weeks (to account that it is not simply vacation time).
2. Stays gravitating to Tier 2 or lower vs. Tier 1: People will not want to fly or be close to other folks so you will see travel go to Tier 2 or lower cities. This helps Airbnb in two ways.. less competition as these cities won't have as much hotels...second allows them to increase their breadth of revenue based across many more cities then being dependant on just Tier 1 which have risk (regulation, disaster, etc.). Show this on S1 by % of travel that is now on Tier 2 and lower markets and how this has grown as a proportion of your overall revenue base.
3. Safety: Simple it's getting close to accepted that the #1 way of covid transmission is via airborne. Based on this you as a traveler should want to minimize as much unnecessary humans interaction as possible thus hotels suck with all the traffic that is there. You may argue that hotels have policy that are more strict on cleaning but this doesn't mean much when the way to catch covid is via airseol.
4. Inventory: With the economy still in shambles they will get more host who will monetize their living assets more and thus provide more inventory.
I could go on and on but thats my thesis.