A few months ago no one would have bet on it. When half the planet was in lockdown last spring and any unnecessary travel was off limits, Airbnb was overwhelmed: like all the realities in the tourism sector, the platform created in 2008 in San Francisco by Brian Chesky saw the turnover of the 72%, the losses doubled and it was forced to lay off a quarter of its employees, i.e. almost 2.000 people. Despite this, Airbnb's debut on the Nasdaq on Thursday was nothing short of a triumph: at the start of trading, the price of the shares - offered to the public at $68 in the initial placement - it more than doubled to close at $145 and assigning the company a capitalization that has already reached 100 billion. The IPO kicked off the new wave of freshmen on Wall Street, all of which have the potential to push December towards new records .
What happened between the disastrous spring and the exciting IPO? Meanwhile, there was the summer, with the easing of measures in many countries and a recovery, albeit minimal, of tourism, at least in the western world. But most of all there was the will and the ability to react and reinvent oneself. The platform that rents rooms, apartments or entire houses for short-term stays, attracting the ire of hoteliers, mayors and residents of large cities for years, has changed its business, adapting it to the new paradigms dictated by the Covid pandemic. And so the 7 million accommodations still registered on its website (on four continents) are no longer holiday destinations abroad but perhaps suitable solutions for medium-long term smart working.
The emergency has in fact made it impossible to travel over long distances, but on the other hand a thriving neighborhood rental market has exploded among the inhabitants of the metropolises all over the world. Airbnb was able to quickly adapt the algorithm and configuration of the site, to offer customers rentals within a radius of a few hundred kilometers from their own home, rather than the usual dream destinations. For example, in the United States there has been an exodus from Manhattan to places along the Hudson Valley, where you can retire with your family and work from home, reducing both costs and the risk of contagion. Or in the historic center of Rome it will now be impossible to rent a house to the usual Asian or American tourists, but an apartment can come in handy for isolating yourself and working alone, depending on the circumstances.
The fact is that the new Airbnb "dress" was very popular with investors, who have already been able to see the first concrete results firsthand. In fact, already at the end of the summer quarter, on 30 September, Airbnb closed with 220 million profit and the fall in turnover was reduced. Today, according to a calculation by the Wall Street Journal, the prices marked at its debut on the Stock Exchange give Airbnb a value that exceeds the sum of the three major American hotel chains: Marriott plus Hilton plus Hyatt.
