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Citing revenue declines, Airbnb cuts 25% of workforce

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Re: Citing revenue declines, Airbnb cuts 25% of workforce

#311

Post by user5994461 »

dangwu wrote: post #225
user5994461 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hotels.com managed just fine with only 500 employees in their headquarters.

Apples and oranges. Hotels.com is a middle-man. When you have a problem with your stay, you talk to the actual hotel, which has its own front desk, customer service, legal, engineering, business, marketing, blah blah blah, teams.

The hotel contact number you got on the website and the receipt goes to a central support run by hotels.com, it doesn't go to the actual hotel.

The support can often sort our issues better than what you could do yourself. They're in a better position to pressure the hotel or rebook you somewhere else nearby.

Re: Citing revenue declines, Airbnb cuts 25% of workforce

#312

Post by ksj2114 »

ryneandal wrote: post #173
user5994461 wrote: post #152

Predicted that weeks ago. AirBnb is super bloated, they have a similar amount of employees as the other major travel groups but only serve a fraction of the products and customers https://thehftguy.com/2020/03/23/will-airbnb-go-bankrupt-and... Good to hear that they are giving a decent severance package.

> the company said that 1,900 employees will be laid off, or 25.3% of its 7,500 workers Thought I misread that the first time through. What did those 7,500 do?

I published an article on this actually: https://blog.acrossapp.com/what-do-all-those-tech-employees-...

Re: Citing revenue declines, Airbnb cuts 25% of workforce

#313

Post by kirubakaran »

three_seagrass wrote: post #182
keiferski wrote: post #10

Separated employees will receive 14 weeks of pay, and one more week for each year served at the company (rounding partial years up). The firm is also dropping its one-year equity cliff so that employees who are laid off with under 12 months of tenure can buy their vested options; Airbnb will also provide 12 months of health insurance through COBRA in the United States, and health care coverage through 2020 in the res…

Do employees have to waive filing unemployment to accept the severance package? In California those can last up to six months.

No, California considers severance to be compensation for past work.

Re: Citing revenue declines, Airbnb cuts 25% of workforce

#314

Post by taude »

hyperbovine wrote: post #235
capocannoniere wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While Airbnb is clearly going through a rough patch right now, there is a clear bull-case argument for why Airbnb will emerge stronger than it's ever been after this: - Airbnb has sufficient cash in the bank to survive the crisis. - A significant % of hotels and budget chains will not survive the crisis --> decreased competitor supply - People will be looking for budget options when traveling --> increased demand for…

I honestly don't know what fraction of AirBnb's business still consists of indies renting out rooms to vacationers for short-term stays. But that market is simply hosed for the foreseeable future, if not forever. Complete lack of enthusiasm from guests and hosts alike. Driving strangers around in your car or having them stay in your home is never again going to seem like the great idea that it once did.

I think this is spot on. Every time I've been to Europe to stay in an Airbnb in the last 4 or 5 years, it's been a professional operation. Same with most of the properties in the states. These weren't people leaving their house for a weekend and trying to get some extra income. These were people who invested in real estate to get into the side-channel of psuedo-hotel business. They obviously have mortgages, likely not under the same rules of own-occupied that might potentially give them protections....

As far as AirBnb trying to get the customer base back, once the economy starts to open, even their new policies for having hosts have 24 hours between guests and rules for how to clean. How is AirBnb going to enforce that? Not to mention, their refund policy basically sucks right now, so I don't see me or my friends jumping back into using AirBnbs once travel does pick up, no way I'm committing to a vacation when we my have more surges coming, etc... I'll choose a hotel who I can cancel and not have to pay.

Re: Citing revenue declines, Airbnb cuts 25% of workforce

#316

Post by danenania »

texasbigdata wrote: post #216
spacefearing wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a fan of Airbnb's business but this is highly commendable. The severance package is the core metric to judge a company that is doing layoffs. In this case, it sounds like Airbnb did the right thing. Airbnb fired people well in advance of when they were actually forced to. This enabled them to provide an ethical severance. Some companies wait until the last minute and then provide two weeks or similar. These c…

Agree with you but.... 4x12 = 48 weeks of compensation disbursed by the entity. Restated compared to some nightmare no severance scenario meant they effectively terminated 4 FTEs to achieve slightly less than 3 FTEs of cost savings (adjusted for healthcare costs). I'm not arguing against AirBNBs approach btw. Their CEO had a wonderful podcast on the Masters of Scale pod roughly two weeks ago. However the Rawlsian phi…

It doesn't seem all that tricky to me. While losing any job is rough, losing a job with enough severance and benefits to cover the ensuing period of uncertainty and a job search likely isn't going to be that bad for people who were able to get hired by Airbnb to begin with. But losing a job without a safety net could be a disaster. Imo it's far better to put more people in the 'bad, but not that bad' situation than to put anyone in the 'disaster' situation.

Re: Citing revenue declines, Airbnb cuts 25% of workforce

#317

Post by baxtr »

toshk wrote: post #304
ashtonkem wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally suspect that travel related industries will be one of the last to recover, both due to consumer reticence and due to lower levels of disposable income during the recovery.

Maybe but Im guessing there will be 1 to 3 months flights are open in summer and there will be lots of crazy partying and spending. (in Europe)

Oh yeah. I feel like there are going to be totally crazy parties popping up everywhere like there is no tomorrow. And then we will have a spike in births around Feb/Mar 2021

Re: Citing revenue declines, Airbnb cuts 25% of workforce

#318

Post by darkwizard42 »

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #310
ping_pong wrote: post #53

I'm shocked that 2020 revenues will come in only 50% below 2019. I don't think anyone will be travelling for the bulk of this year, especially with the looming threat of potentially getting sick in a foreign country or away from your home. It will take 5+ years for them to get back the same level of inventory/hosts/customers as they had in 2019. Many hosts will foreclose on their rented properties during 2020 or conv…

I think they're going to poach a ton of business away from hotels once things start opening back up. It's way easier to maintain social distance in an AirBnb (hotels have check-in processes, hallways where you have to pass other guests, etc), and I think more people will be travelling to rural areas where Airbnbs have an advantage.

Yeah but do you trust someone to sanitize their home properly after the previous guest or would you trust a hotel to do that correctly? Thats the question my friend circle has been thinking about...

Re: Citing revenue declines, Airbnb cuts 25% of workforce

#319

Post by [deleted] »

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #310
ping_pong wrote: post #53

I'm shocked that 2020 revenues will come in only 50% below 2019. I don't think anyone will be travelling for the bulk of this year, especially with the looming threat of potentially getting sick in a foreign country or away from your home. It will take 5+ years for them to get back the same level of inventory/hosts/customers as they had in 2019. Many hosts will foreclose on their rented properties during 2020 or conv…

I think they're going to poach a ton of business away from hotels once things start opening back up. It's way easier to maintain social distance in an AirBnb (hotels have check-in processes, hallways where you have to pass other guests, etc), and I think more people will be travelling to rural areas where Airbnbs have an advantage.

[deleted]

Re: Citing revenue declines, Airbnb cuts 25% of workforce

#320

Post by arcticbull »

keiferski wrote: post #10

Separated employees will receive 14 weeks of pay, and one more week for each year served at the company (rounding partial years up). The firm is also dropping its one-year equity cliff so that employees who are laid off with under 12 months of tenure can buy their vested options; Airbnb will also provide 12 months of health insurance through COBRA in the United States, and health care coverage through 2020 in the res…

Sounds amazing, I wish someone would lay me off like that, damn. Four months PTO with healthcare?!
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