Although business travel has been one of the victims of the coronavirus pandemic, Airbnb plans to take advantage of the new work-life balance that has emerged during the shift to distance work.
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky told CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Thursday that the rental company is showing signs that consumers are taking advantage of the work model from anywhere businesses are adopting to leave home and find a change of scenery.
“The lines between traveling and living are starting to blur,” he said in an interview with Mad Money.
Unlike renting Airbnb seats for vacations, there are more people using rental for life, said Chesky, who made public the company he founded last year. The IPO, initially scheduled for early 2020, was delayed until the end of the year due to uncertainty surrounding the global pandemic. The travel industry has been one of the hardest hit parts of the economy due to the blockades that were set up around the world to contain Covid-19.
Now, remote employees have even more flexibility and choose to take more three-day weekends or move into homes for longer periods than before, as long as there is internet available to connect to Zoom for work, said Chesky.
“We believe there will be a lot of travel to smaller cities because people will get in cars and travel nearby,” he said.
“We’re really adaptable and resilient to any kind of travel behavior. That’s what we learned last year,” he added.
The comments come after Airbnb released its first quarterly report as a public company. It lost analysts ’expectations at the bottom line, although it exceeded bottom line estimates.
Airbnb said it earned $ 859 million in fourth-quarter revenue, compared to FactSet’s estimates of $ 747 million and a net loss of $ 3.898 billion. Much of the losses were blamed on fees charged to be made public late last year.
On Thursday, Airbnb shares fell sharply, closing 9% at $ 182.06, alongside other high-growth technologies and stocks during a brutal day on Wall Street.
So far, shares have risen 24%.