Airbnb hosting platform CEO Brian Chesky noted that the tourism crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic destroyed the company’s 12-year work in six months.
“Since the beginning of March, travel has stopped, even virtually millions of people were in confinement. It took us 12 years to build Airbnb and we lost almost everything in a four- to six-week period,” he said in an interview with US network CNBC.
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According to Chesky, the future of the company is uncertain, given that “tourism as we knew it is over. I don’t mean that the trip is over, but that the model we knew is dead and is not coming back.”
The executive explained that people want to go out, “but be sure. He doesn’t want to get on a plane, or travel for business, or cross borders,” so it’s likely to become more local.
He also noted that Airbnb “is recovering faster than we thought,” however, he said he doesn’t want to have false hope, as the company is not “absolutely out of harm’s way.”
“We spent 12 years building Airbnb’s business and lost almost all of it in the matter of 4-6 weeks,” says Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky. “Travel as we knew it is over. It doesn’t mean travel is over, just the travel we knew is over, and it’s never coming back.” @cnbc @dee_bosa pic.twitter.com/BLjb9HH2Pe
— Squawk Alley (@SquawkAlley) June 22, 2020
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