The Chief Executive Officer of Airbnb Inc. (ABNB) Brian Chesky is claiming that transport will never go back to the way it was exactly before the pandemic kicked in. Chesky believes people will now be spending more time touring smaller cities and visiting friends and family.
The CEO is predicting that individuals will now prefer driving to smaller cities and flying less for business meetings. Traditional tourism and physical business meetings will be reduced significantly post the pandemic.
Chesky says the pandemic taught the world that many of business meetings can be held via video conferencing therefore reducing the need for physical meeting.
“Travelers are yearning for what was taken away from them. They’re not yearning to see Times Square. What they are yearning to do is to see their friends and their families they have not seen in a long time,” said Chesky.
When the pandemic set foot early last year, business operations for Airbnb significantly dropped by 80% in slightly over eight weeks due to travel restrictions imposed across the world to curtail rapid spread of the deadly virus.
Nonetheless, as time went by traveling restriction started getting eased and travelers started booking with Airbnb again but this time round booking homes rather than hotels. These bookings made the company register unexpected profit in the third quarter of 2020.
