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Tuesday 26 May, 2020
TOP STORY
My take on Chesky: Handling of layoffs proves empathy belongs anywhere
In this in-depth feature piece, we look at how Airbnb CEO and co-founder, Brian Chesky, deserves praise for his handling of the layoffs of 25 per cent of the company's global team.
If you missed our last newsletter....check out the stories below:
1. Brands may lose 20 per cent of cumulative value
2. DeSantis eases vacation rental restrictions in Florida
3. LuggageHero fundraising campaign closes at €409,000
4. Airbnb trials virtual date experiences with Bumble
5. NextPax announces "world's first" partnership with Trip.com
Editor's comment
26•05•20 Welcome to the latest ShortTermRentalz newsletter!
• Three months on from being on the cusp of taking Airbnb public, I explored how CEO and co-founder, Brian Chesky, deserves praise for his handling of the layoffs of 25 per cent of the company's global team in my latest thought leadership piece for ShortTermRentalz this week.
While the company has been besieged on all fronts in recent weeks, driven by anger from hosts, guests and board members over its extenuating circumstances policy, refunds and spiralling operational costs, I outlined how Chesky had shown empathetic yet forthright leadership despite the unenviable task of trimming his workforce by 1900 employees.
Writing a 3,374-word blog in which he delivered a clear message to his team, showed his human side, told it "like it is" and provided hope for laid-off staff with the launch of a talent directory, appeared genuinely well-intentioned and for that Chesky deserves praise, whatever one believes about his decisions and possible mistakes to date. This contrasts favourably with some other multinational corporate giants who would perhaps be more inclined to dispense with team members at the clinical click of a finger.
You can read my take on the Airbnb CEO here and I would also recommend reading Cervus Leadership Consulting's Chris Mumford recent article here, in which many of the leadership qualities he outlined in the piece resonated distinctly in Chesky's blog post.
• Stay Alfred is another market name to have been heavily hit by the impact of Covid-19 on the travel industry, and the sad news arrived that the Spokane-based startup will permanently close down.
Those companies who had adopted the master lease model always looked vulnerable to a significant economic downturn, a point I made in my article back in September called The master lease model: is the bubble about to burst?. The startup had already raised around $60 million in funding, with its most recent round coming in at $47 million just over 18 months ago, and it is unlikely to be the last operator to close by the time the pandemic recedes.
One only hopes that CEO Jordan Allen will be able to dust himself off and go again in the future. I am sure he will come back stronger than ever from this as the dust settles.
• After last week's first webinar in our Urban Living series ahead of URBAN LIVING FESTIVAL 2020: stay-live-work on 25-26 November at Tobacco Dock London, you can register here for the second session on Wednesday 3 June at 14:00 BST. The session on "The future of work: offices, coworking and business travel" will again be hosted by IHM editor-in-chief George Sell, who will be joined by Giles Fuchs of Office Space in Town, Fidelity International's Carol Fergus, Nuveen's Jack Sibley and Sean Worker of T5 Strategies.
If you have a story you want us to tell the industry, please click here and get involved with the community by joining our ShortTermRentalz LinkedIn group here.
Paul Stevens, news editor
paul@internationalhospitality.media
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