Airbnb CEO: What changes are coming to travel after the end of the pandemic

Airbnb Chief Executive Officer Brian Chesky outlined what changes are coming to travel after the end of the pandemic, in a recent interview with Bloomberg:

• In the first month of the pandemic, the firm faced a loss of $1 billion due to canceled bookings, leading him to declare: “Travel as we knew it is over.” 
• Among the things that'll be missing, he forecasts are overtourism, business travel, and, to a lesser extent, loyalty programs. 
• Chesky also expects the rise of new and more varied destinations to visit, including resilient cities.
• Company-provided data show that while travelers are booking almost twice as many remote stays as last year, home rentals in urban markets are still struggling. For Labor Day, high-density destinations are making up just 20% of the site’s bookings, down from 40% last year.
• Even though inter-regional travel has been greenlighted throughout the Schengen Area, cross-border trips still represent just 15% of Airbnb’s bookings.
• Travel destinations will be defined less by border restrictions than by the potential for domestic tourism.
• Tourism-reliant, fly-to destinations will need to diversify their economies in the short term to weather a protracted drought in visits, while overlooked spots near big cities will continue to experience success.
• People will migrate away from cities for the coming 3-5 years, and prices will go down. Then, a new generation will discover cities as more livable and more affordable, and it will probably lead to a renaissance.
• In the long term, Chesky expects trouble for one sector in particular: business travel. 

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