Getting on a plane, he postulated, was not something consumers were willing to do for long, letting travel plans be dictated more by safety precautions than whims. Fast forward a few months and your outlook hasn’t fundamentally changed. But what once sounded like a catastrophic doomsday prediction has given way to a more nuanced view of how travel evolves, not how it dies.
“Some things will come back and some will not,” Chesky says, predicting what the journey to the other side of Covid-19 will be like. “One day it will be stronger than ever. But when he returns, in full force, he will look different. Among the things that will be missing, he predicts: overtourism, business trips and, to a lesser extent, loyalty programs.
Chesky also sees the emergence of new and more varied destinations to visit, including, yes, resilient cities.
in July and presentation. for its long-awaited initial public offering. “On July 8, guests booked more than 1 million nights on future stays on Airbnb listings,” Chesky tells Bloomberg Pursuits. “It was the first time in four months, since March 3, that we reached that threshold.”
A tale of two travel industries
Americans hoping their passports will be relevant again may be comforted to learn that Chesky doesn’t see different photos for European and American tourists. While interregional travel has been approved throughout the Schengen area, cross-border travel still accounts for only 15% of Airbnb bookings.
That being said, there is still a tale of two travel industries. They are defined less by border restrictions than by the potential for domestic tourism. Take the United States, France and the United Kingdom for example.
The future of cities
“It used to be that the vast majority of people traveled to just a handful of cities, you know, the big, iconic international capitals,” Chesky begins, referring to selfie-saturated resorts like Amsterdam, New York. and Venice, Italy.
“The genie is out of the bottle,” says Chesky. “People are now looking for small cities, small communities. They are exploring national parks, loving nature, and discovering that they can visit all kinds of places. This is an irreversible trend. “
Looking in a crystal ball
In the long term, Chesky sees problems for one sector in particular: business travel. This comes at a considerable cost to Airbnb, which for years has been marketed to corporate travelers and businesses as a convenient money-saving solution.
“Even when the world controls the pandemic, business travel will not come back in the same way,” It is also one of Airbnb, although to a lesser extent. If companies don’t pay for travel, consumers won’t rack up points like they used to, Chesky says, “so the whole game [of loyalty] is changing as well.”
And what about Airbnb’s motto, that its purpose is to “foster human connections”? Chesky believes it will remain relevant in a post-pandemic world, even one in which social distancing reigns. “When the crisis hit and we lost 80% of our business in eight weeks, you know, it was really very important that we were clear about where we are going to focus our energy. And what we decided to do was go back to our roots, go back to basics, go back to the human connection. “
