Hosts on Airbnb could have a special guest this year: the company’s CEO, Brian Chesky. In January, the 40-year-old announced his plan to spend much of this year away from his home in San Francisco. He is living in Airbnb accommodation and moving to new towns or cities every few weeks. This is a lifestyle that Chesky believes will be a big trend in the post-pandemic world. He calls it the “decentralization ofliving.”
Chesky expects that, with no need to be in an office every day, people will travel more and for longer periods. Some may even give up their expensive rents to become digital nomads. Airbnb is marketing itself as the ideal way for remote workers to try living in a new place. And the company is already seeing longer bookings and more bookings in rural areas (in the U.S.).
Through good times and bad
Many people thought Covid might mean the end of Airbnb — and Chesky knows that many would have welcomed that. For years, the platform’s peer-to-peer rental service has been accused of bringing high rents and rowdy guests to cities around the world. Under lockdowns and travel restrictions, the company lost about 80 percent of its revenue. “There was a lot of panic around me,” Chesky told the news website The Verge. To stay in business, he was forced to make some hard decisions, such as laying off about a quarter of his employees.
The pandemic was a crisis for Airbnb, and Chesky has been praised for his effective leadership, which included managing a successful IPO in 2020. He has also reacted quickly to another crisis, using Airbnb’s network to organize free temporary housing for up to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees in Poland, Romania, Germany and Hungary. Last year, he did the same for 21,000 people fleeing the Taliban in Afghanistan. Chesky said the situation in Ukraine is heartbreaking. “This, to me, is a global problem, not just a Ukrainian problem,” he told CNN. “The moment this huge refugee crisis occurred, we asked: ‘How can we help?’ And the answer is to provide housing for as many people as possible.”
Originally from Niskayuna, in New York state, Chesky says he didn’t know much about tech before starting Airbnb. He liked ice hockey, bodybuilding and drawing, and he studied at the Rhode Island School of Design. For a short time, he worked as an industrial designer in Los Angeles before moving to San Francisco, where he shared an apartment with his friend Joe Gebbia. In 2007, unemployed and struggling to pay their rent, the two roommates bought three air mattresses and rented out space on the floor of their apartment for a weekend. This gave them the idea for the company that would later revolutionize travel — and may soon do so again.