Airbnb, Outperforming Most Travel Companies During COVID, Reaches Milestone

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So many arms of the travel industry are floundering right now. Cruise companies can’t do anything in the U.S. until the CDC says it’s OK. It’s said that 8,000 hotels could be permanently closed by September. And airlines are trying to think of every way possible to get people to fly, but it doesn’t seem to be helping much.

With peoples’ inability to cruise, and hesitance of flying or staying at hotels, RVs have had a big boost in popularity. In fact, Ed from Pizza In Motion just rented an RV – here’s his beginner’s guide, if you’re considering renting one. But another sector of the travel industry has actually been doing pretty well recently.

Airbnb.

How well are they doing? Welp, a couple of weeks ago, they made over one million nights’ worth of bookings on July 8th. It was the first time their bookings had been that high since March 3rd.

Here are some fun facts, though. The reservations were made at properties in about 175 different countries and regions. Most were for domestic travel. About half of them were for destinations that were within 300 miles of the guests and two-thirds were for places within 500 miles – both of which are distances very manageable by car rather than plane.

What does this tell you?

• People all around the world really want to travel
• They’d rather travel to places closer to home
• They may not be so trusting of hotels (and after this, who can blame them?)

I can tell you that Joe and I are 100% in line with all of this. We’ve already had to cancel 4 trips this year and will be canceling two more before 2020 is over. Despite that, we’d still like to go away somewhere – but to a location we can drive to, and someplace safe. So we’ve made plans with some trusted friends for later on this summer and yep, we’re going to use Airbnb (and don’t worry, we’re not totally trusting or naive – we checked the place out as much as we possibly could, and, among other things, we will wipe the HELL out of that place with generic Clorox wipes [cuz that’s all we can find so far and even that took months] when we arrive LOL!).

“At Airbnb, we believe that people’s desire to safely connect and be with one another has only grown stronger while we’ve been apart. Our business has not recovered, but we are seeing encouraging signs,” the company said in a statement announcing the data.

Airbnb cut their workforce by about 25% in May, and they were talking about 20% salary slashes, as well. Even with all that, they only expect their 2020 full-year revenue to be about half of what they made in 2019. But honestly, I think airlines would kind of kill for that right about now. So right now, yeah, Airbnb is winning.

#stayhealthy #staysafe #washyourhands #wearamask

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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary