While business travel was one victim of the coronavirus pandemic, Airbnb plans to capitalize on the newfound work-life balance that emerged during the shift to remote work.
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky told CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Thursday that the rental company is seeing signs that consumers are using the work-from-anywhere model that companies use to get out of the house and a change in nature to find.
“The boundaries between travel and living are starting to blur together,” he said in a Mad Money interview.
Unlike renting Airbnb sites for holidays, more people use rent for life purposes, Chesky said. The IPO, initially set for early 2020, was delayed until later in the year due to uncertainty surrounding the global pandemic. The travel industry was one of the hardest hit parts of the economy due to blockages that Covid-19 had in place around the world.
Remote employees now have even more flexibility and choose to take weekends of more than three days or stay home for longer periods than before, as long as internet is available to join Zoom for work purposes, Chesky said.
“We think a lot of travel is going to be to smaller cities because people are going to get in cars and travel nearby,” he said.
“We are really adaptable and resilient to any kind of travel behavior. That’s what we learned last year,” he added.
The remarks come after Airbnb published its first quarterly report as a public company. It missed analysts’ expectations at the shortest point, although it exceeded estimates at the top line.
Airbnb said it earned $ 859 million in fourth-quarter revenue, compared to FactSet estimates of $ 747 million, and a net loss of $ 3.89 billion. Many of the losses were owed to fees announced late last year.
On Thursday, Airbnb shares fell sharply, closing 9% lower at $ 182.06, along with other tech and growth stocks during a brutal day on Wall Street.
To date, the share has been 24% higher.