There are going to be a lot of tough decisions for people who have to decide whether to buy their Airbnb options or lose them. I bet a lot of people at Airbnb are wishing they went public before all this.
- Airbnb has sufficient cash in the bank to survive the crisis.
- A significant % of hotels and budget chains will not survive the crisis --> decreased competitor supply
- People will be looking for budget options when traveling --> increased demand for Airbnb
- People will seek to make extra income to make ends meet --> increased supply for Airbnb
There are a few important things to keep in mind.
The Irish government has not been very good at enforcing the law around this kind of thing, and I see no reason why that should change, especially as the biggest party on the government side of the Dáil was the main party in the last government, and their records on housing (they're basically Tories) is notoriously bad. The other party in the proposed government is an ideologically similar party, and the one the caused our economy to implode due to property speculation in the 2000s.
The outlook is not positive.
Still, at least the outlook will hopefully be decent for me if I do move there this year (depends on how I think economy is going...and if uni's actually do open in September).
As far as AirBnb trying to get the customer base back, once the economy starts to open, even their new policies for having hosts have 24 hours between guests and rules for how to clean. How is AirBnb going to enforce that? Not to mention, their refund policy basically sucks right now, so I don't see me or my friends jumping back into using AirBnbs once travel does pick up, no way I'm committing to a vacation when we my have more surges coming, etc... I'll choose a hotel who I can cancel and not have to pay.
my experience is the exact opposite, but maybe because I travel with family and rent bigger houses- do you ?
Any long term employees who have been around long enough to even have the decision to make regarding exercising options (from other comments it appears that Airbnb switched to RSUs at some point), would be facing a massive tax liability this year.
It is clear that there will be some debate and uncertainty around a fair-market-value for Airbnb shares in light of COVID, but AFAIK any capital gains, and therefore tax liability, will be based on their most recent funding rounds (which were obviously based in the pre-COVID world)
Edit: typo-d a word
Anyway, my hunch is that the percent % of AirBnbs that are actually people utilizing their excess space (initial AirBnb model) is small vs more hosts entered via owning and operating their own hotels through buying leveraged rental properties and the AirBnb platform....
The actual hotel properties are not going to be abandoned, demolished, or converted into something else. Hotels will continue to run as hotels, tho possibly with a change of ownership/management.