As it turns out, one of the most popular requests was for crypto support. As some individuals pointed out, this would make it much easier for overseas customers, since some countries block international payments.
Airbnb’s accepting crypto would be a major boost to the overall crypto market, and provide customers with an excellent option to simplify international payments.
“We said every single opportunity is a moment where we have to pivot and move fast,” says Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky. “What actually happened was, first of all, you have to have the mindset, a mindset of hope, of optimism, and of resiliency, that we’re going to get through this. And not only are we going to get through this but every one of these crises is going to lead to a new point of innovation. Let’s look for moments and a moment happened.”
Brian Chesky, co-founder, and CEO, Airbnb, discussed with author and podcasterSimon Sinek how the pandemic crisis motivated the company to be more innovative:
Every Crisis Should Lead To A New Point Of Innovation
Andy Grove, one of the founders of Intel, said that bad companies are destroyed by a crisis, good companies survive a crisis, but great companies are defined by a crisis. I wanted us to be in that third bucket. So much of it is mindset. If you think you’re going to win, if you think that this is going to define you in a positive way and you’re going to learn something from it and it’s going to make you stronger, it kind of happens. So much of your mindset as the leader becomes the psychology of the organization and that psychology really becomes a collective consciousness. It becomes real.
So that was the thing. We said every single opportunity is a moment where we have to pivot and move fast. What actually happened was, first of all, you have to have the mindset, a mindset of hope, of optimism, and of resiliency, that we’re going to get through this. And not only are we going to get through this but every one of these crises is going to lead to a new point of innovation. Let’s look for moments and a moment happened.
In Just 14 Days We Pivoted The Entire Product Line
With social distancing, we had to shut down in-person Airbnb Experiences. Airbnb is known for homes but we also have three-hour activities that you can book with people all over the world. They got paused. Suddenly, we started doing listening sessions with our hosts. It’s important, by the way, to listen and be curious. I don’t think it’s so much in life that you have to have ideas as much as it is to be a receiver for ideas. It’s not my job to have an idea and it’s not our job for any of us to have ideas. We need to be receivers. We’re like radio antennas, we just got to get on the right signal and people will tell you things.
People told us they wanted to host but since they can’t do it in person, can they offer them online? At first, I thought to myself, no you can’t offer them online. We’re about connections in the real world. Then, I thought, well if that’s the case there’s not going to be a lot of connections anytime soon. So we quickly realized that we should get in on this. So within 14 days, we pivoted the entire product line to offer online experiences. Now we have 800 experiences and 200 Olympians including Jackie Joyner-Kersee. They do these activities where you can actually go online and meet them and remotely be on an Experience with them.
Preservation Mode Is A Very Dangerous Place To Be
I think so much of it was turning on a dime. I never wanted to just be focused on survival. If you focus on survival that’s probably all you’re going to get. All these other companies I saw were like just shuddering their businesses and just in defensive mode and preservation mode. I think preservation mode is a very dangerous place to be. The more resources the company accumulates the more they start worrying about losing things. It’s like a parent with an overactive amygdala putting the helmet on their child before they go outside because you’re worried something’s going to happen. They can never live their life.
It’s the same thing with a company. You have got to be concerned but not so concerned that you protect the company from itself and you’re afraid to do anything and you’re just preserving resources. Actually, that’s the worst possible thing ironically for shareholders. Shareholders need the company to grow. This weird obsession sometimes that some people have with serving shareholders is not actually in the shareholder’s best interest. They need companies to create value and therefore they need to be focused on doing new things people love. That’s what needs to happen to create value.
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky: Every Crisis Should Lead To A New Point Of Innovation
“One trend that is going to happen is that travel as we knew it is over,” says Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky. “It doesn’t mean travel is over, just the travel we knew is over… and it’s never coming back. It’s just not. Not surprising, we’ve spent twelve years building Airbnb’s business and lost almost all of it in a matter of four to six weeks.”
Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, discusses how COVID has wreaked havoc on the travel industry and Airbnb and how it has literally changed travel as we know it.
Airbnb’s Built Over 12 Years – Gone in 6 Weeks
One thing I’ve learned is not to try to get in the business of predicting the future. Anyone who has made predictions has not done very well in the last few months. What I can tell you is the following. Beginning with March travel was at a standstill, almost virtually stopped. There were 2.5 billion people locked down. Not surprising, we’ve spent twelve years building Airbnb’s business and lost almost all of it in a matter of four to six weeks.
What’s happened over the last three or four months though is something else entirely. People are saying they want to get out of the house but they want to be safe. They don’t want to get on airplanes. They don’t want to travel for business. They don’t want to go to cities and they don’t want to cross borders. What they are willing to do is to get in a car and drive a couple hundred miles to a small community where they are willing to stay in a house.
Now Something Remarkable Has Happened
Because of that, although our business has not recovered, something remarkable happened. At the end of May and early June, we have the same volume of bookings in the United States as the year before… without any marketing. Zero marketing whatsoever. This is just showing that people are yearning for something. They’re yearning for connection. They want to be connected to the communities and to each other. They want to get outside. I think that travel is going to come back. It’s just going to take a lot longer than we would have thought and it’s going to be different.
We have dramatically reduced our costs. We reduced our cost and it was an incredibly difficult and harrowing experience. We said that we don’t know how long this storm will take so I’m going to hope for the best but I’m planning for the worst. So if there is a new shutdown or multiple shutdowns and travel stops again we will be okay because of the changes we’ve made. We’ve cut nearly a billion dollars of marketing. We’ve had to reduce our staff, and we’ve become very lean and nimble.
We’ve also been resilient. We’ve launched online experiences that people can do from home. We have longer term stays. A large percentage of our bookings, almost a fifth, are for stays longer than 30 days. Another thing is that we have not lost any hosts on our platform. We actually have more hosts and homes today than before COVID started. The important thing here is that the market is resilient.
Travel As We Knew It Is Over
One trend that is going to happen is that travel as we knew it is over. It doesn’t mean travel is over, just the travel we knew is over… and it’s never coming back. It’s just not. No one quite knows what it will look like but I have a couple of thoughts. Instead of the world’s population traveling to only a few cities and staying in big tourist districts we are going to see a redistribution of where people travel. They’re going to start traveling because they are going nearby to thousands of local communities.
We have had fairly ambitious real estate expansion plans and we have paused those plans. We are not adding more real estate. I think more people are going to work remotely. Also, working from home can be working from any home, and that’s an opportunity for Airbnb. You are going to see major population redistribution on the table. Not everyone is going to want to live in the same city. That being said, we don’t know the full cost of entire workforces being remote.
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky: Travel As We Knew It Is Over
