Coronavirus plunges Airbnb into crisis
The de facto worldwide travel ban is hitting the bed broker Airbnb hard. In the USA, even the state is now being asked for help.
How the NZZ on Sunday reported in the current issue, apartment landlords in major cities are turning away from Airbnb in droves and looking for long-term tenants for their properties on the conventional housing market again. In Dublin, for example, the number of apartment listings rose by 64 percent in the first three weeks of March. Almost 400 smaller apartments and studios, furnished - the images copied directly from the Airbnb platform. A year ago at this time, there were only around 200 such listings.
This development can also be observed in other European cities such as London, Prague and Barcelona. It is not new: Airbnb is struggling with increasing legal requirements. More and more cities and countries are resisting the fact that the accommodation platform is bypassing the entire tourism industry and lining its own pockets, while the hotel industry, for example, is subject to strict and numerous regulations.
Cancellations every minute
However, the coronavirus has now massively accelerated developments and plunged the platform into a crisis. The reason is obvious: due to the de facto travel ban, bed procurement has come to a standstill, with cancellations occurring every minute. In the three most important European markets - France, Italy and Spain - sales have halved within a single Monday. In the meantime, sales from these coronavirus-hit countries are likely to have dried up almost completely.
A bubble is bursting
Airbnb has actually been working towards an IPO for some time. With around 14,000 employees, the company is one of the largest privately held companies in the USA. The current crisis is reducing the chances of an IPO in the near future. This not only makes the rather poorly paid employees, who have been put off for years with share options, nervous. But also the investors, who have to watch the value of the company, whose shares are traded over the counter, melt away. In the meantime, this is said to have amounted to over 50 billion dollars, but analysts now see 10 billion as the lower limit. The NZZ on Sunday quotes an insider as saying that a bubble is bursting.
Meanwhile, CEO Brian Chesky has asked Washington for tax breaks and other government aid for landlords. Whether providers and users will return after the crisis remains to be seen - and will determine the future of Airbnb.
