EDITOR'S COMMENT
• Amidst the wave of investment continuing to pour into the short-term rental sector, property manager funding is starting to dry up and lodging companies are having to make unwanted cuts. Sonder, Vacasa and AvantStay have all announced layoffs despite securing capital, and Mexican proptech Casai is the latest to reduce its workforce.
Casai took the LatAm market by storm when it closed the largest Series A round by a Mexican company in late 2020, and it has continued to be active by acquiring Roomin, LoopKey and the Brazilian operations of Danish serviced apartment firm Q Apartments.
However, after talks to secure Series B funding fell through at the end of 2021 and a Series A funding extension failed to materialise in April, the startup is seeking to cut costs and around 80 employees in Mexico and Brazil have reportedly been made redundant.
The failure to gain a funding extension is partly down to investors' concerns about the share prices of other lodging firms plummeting after going public. While Sonder's share price has dropped from a high of $10.80 a share in February to around the $1 mark, Vacasa's stock has nosedived from $8.32 at the start of the year to $2.93 in August - a 64 per cent decrease.
A potential lifeline for Casai may come in the form of a merger with Brazilian residential apartment company Nomah but the investment / valuation landscape remains uncertain looking ahead.
• Talk of a cost of living crisis and global economic slowdowns, fuelled by the war in Ukraine and the fallout from the pandemic, paints a similarly uncertain picture for the future of travel and hospitality in general.
Despite this, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky believes that his company can still benefit from the pent-up demand for travel and recruit more hosts as people look for new means of earning revenue. Even though it failed to meet some Wall Street expectations in its latest quarterly earnings call, Airbnb reported record bookings in nights and experiences in Q2 and expects to record the highest revenue in its history in this quarter.
• Please click here if you have a story you want us to tell the industry, or would like to be considered for a feature, podcast or webinar.
For more information and sponsorship / creative solutions advice, contact us at info@internationalhospitality.media.
