Bonus: Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky

said to be planning a stock market listing. All those city folks vacationing close to home have clearly rescued the fortunes of the home sharing giant. I hope you enjoyed this and other interviews on how the coronavirus is transforming the business world. You can find them all on Bloomberg dot com. And thanks to Stephanie Flanders for letting me hijack her feed. Bryan, thanks for joining us, well, thank

you for having me today. So you said in an interview last week that travel as we knew it is over. It's never coming back. Really, What what do you mean by that? Exactly. Yeah, well, um, I think that there's been no moment in the history of travel, or at least not for the last probably fifty years, that has impacted the industry quite like today. And what I mean by that is, and I think maybe that's uh, is the following. Right now, what we're seeing is a mass

adoption of a different way to travel. Right now, people are not comfortable, um large, getting on airplanes, crossing borders, being in crowds and lines. And what's going to happen is what people are saying is they're comfortable getting in a car, traveling like as much as two miles, staying in small communities. And so what I think this is going to be is a new chapter for travel that's going to be a little more intimate, a little more local.

And I think you're gonna see travel getting more distributed to more communities because when you travel locally, by definition, you travel to more small communities. Now doesn't mean that the travel as we knew it like all that won't exist, of course it will. It's just that once people experience some other types of experience of small communities, you can never undo that. It's always gonna now move towards a

more intimate way. And this is something that frankly everyone industry can participate, and I think it's actually gonna be there's a silver lining here, although it's gonna be painful. I do think out of this is going to be a new, a new growth opportunity for travel. So destinations will change, as you say, people want to go to communities or experience will be more of a democratization. So the the destinations that we're winning before, I think they'll

all recover. What's going to happen is people are gonna realize that you don't just have to go to like twenty cities, go to the tourist district those cities and get in lines and double decker buses, stand in front of landmarks and selfies. That that's not going away as much as that will be supplemented with an entire new way of traveling to small communities. That is pretty clear. Well, will people view home sharing differently? Yeah, I I do think that. Um you think you know, it's like this

is all what's gonna happen in the future. People are spending months in their home, They're saying they want to get out of their home. They want to go somewhere, they want on a plane. And so what's happening is because there's not as many hotels and small communities, and because the hotels really don't want to operate without a reasonable occupancy. I think a lot of people, a new generation travelers, are going to discover staying at a home, and I think they'll find that as an appealing option

for them. So I do think this is going to lead to a lot of people trying it, and I think that people are gonna want for a while travel it's a little more intimate, and again I think you will still see recovery of the old way of traveling. But I think even all the traditional travel companies are going to continue to evolve to a more intimate way of traveling, and you're gonna see them participate in more

communities all over the world. So what this really means is that thousands of communities can now I think, participate in travel. We call this kind of travel redistribution, and ultimately even very large cities may welcome some of this.

You know, I spent time in France, and I remember one time I met with the Minister of the Economy and Tourism and they told me one of the things that were interested in wasn't necessarily just getting more people to travel to Paris, but they wanted more people to go to Provence where the countryside or other parts of France UM and parts of the United States people are saying a lot of governors saying they want um people

to visit more rural communities. We worked with the state of North Carolina to promote travel throughout North Carolina outside of cities national parks. I think you're gonna see a lot of outdoor travel, a lot of small community these and once you discover it and you realize how fun it is, it's really never the same after that. So you've talked about about France UM, some city governments are complaining that A B and B forces uprants, changing is

the character of downtown areas. Ian Brossat, who's the Paris deputy marriage charge of housing, said we intend to take the opportunity to regain control. He was talking about the coronavirus. Do you worry about this kind of backlash? Oh, what does the kind of travel that you've been talking about them, what discussed democratic kind of travel less than that type

of criticism. Do you think well, yeah, I mean I think number one, we want to be really good partners to cities, including Paris, and there's many stakeholders, but we want to be a company of strengthen the community in Paris. And I also think that like travel is going to probably be a little more distributed for a period of time.

And one of the things we're trying to do is work with DMS destination market organizations governments that want travel, and so we want to basically partner with them and and if people say they want more travel, we would

love to be able to help market those destinations. So and the vision would be, and I think this is a vision for all travel companies is communities that want more travel, we can help um promote their destinations and that really that would be ultimately a place to get to do you think the trends in work from home here to stay? And if they're permanent, how will you adapt your business to meet the demands of this new nomadic workforce that can operate from anywhere in the world.

And that's a big part of your business now, right, Yeah, it's permanent, absolutely, But again it's like a pendulum. If the pendulum was here and it's now all the way here. It's not staying here. It's gonna come back, but it's not going back to where it was. Maybe that's another way saying travel. Once people realize and we have collectively realized you can work from zoom remotely new work from a home, not every person is going to go back to the office all of the time. There's gonna be

much more flexibility. Companies are gonna realize they can open the talent pole to communities all over the world. And what's also gonna happen is, I think work from home is going to become really like work from any home, and people can start living different places month to month, because if you don't actually need to go into the office, then you don't necessarily need to live in that place.

And the place you were living may have been more expensive, and maybe you live there for your job, and now you'll have to make a choice to live there, And some people will choose maybe to live elsewhere, maybe they're from another part of the world, maybe they want to be closer family, maybe they want more space. So this is also going to lead to I think a little bit of at least a temporary population redistribution from mega

metropolisis towards perimeters. I think we're already seeing it. This is not the end of cities, but it is like a pendulum. It's not going to go all the way back right away to where we were because once people try something they like it, they don't go completely back to where they were. They we kind of move forward. We don't. We don't go backwards like we go forwards. And you know that's how things are gonna be. So

how does this change the AMB and B business? Maude? Well, I mean, you know, it does change in the business model. But it's not just the travel trends. It's also the constraints we have. You know, we are like every other company, and Travel were hit hard by COVID nineteen, really hard. We were hit so hard that, um, we had to go through a very painful layoff. And when we had to do that layoff, we had to m confront a very hard truth. And the hard truth is we can't

do all the things we used to do. And you know, a crisis has a way of um it has a way of giving you clarity and you ask yourself, you know, you know, I remember in the depth of the crisis, UM, I got a lot of We've got a lot of support from people, and people said, like, we want everybody to pull through, we want everyone to to kind of thrive, and I remember asking people, look, why do you want us to survive? And like why do you want us

to throw like to exist in the future. And the answers that came up over and over again where that the part that was most special about Airbnb was really

the reason we started Airbnb. Because we started Airbnb, it really wasn't about travel per se and intend to chart to quote travel company in real estate, was really about connecting people and belonging and that was really offered consistently, most consistently by everyday people that we all hosts to offer their homes or share experiences, and that's the roots of Airbnb. And so we're gonna go back to basics. We want to get back to the roots, back to belonging,

back to connection, and that is where we're focused. And it just so happens that communities around the world have host everywhere and so it kind of does work with the travel trends. But that's what we're focused on right now. Let's talk about practicalities. Um, it was a subt conducted by p WC in May. Travels were aust about the proceed of the paced risk of certain types of travel fifty full percent. So they thought saying the short term

random like an am by be was risky. How do you make the case now that it is safe for tropics, Well, you know, we've seen a quite different travel pattern. Um, if you search Airbnb and Google trends, and you search other brands of Google trends, I think the data is pretty public. You can just do the research yourself. I think we're gonna find is that right now travelers, what they're saying is that they don't want to be in crowds, they don't want to be in public spaces, they don't

want to be in lines. And whatever being B provides is privacy. Whatever and B provides is intimacy. That you're not sharing space with other people. You get a space all to yourself, and you can get it not just in a big urban area. You can get it in a small community. And you don't have to get on an airplane to go that small community. You can drive to that small community. So I'd make the argument to get in your car and go to a small community,

into a private space without a lot of people. I think that's actually pretty consistent with people are looking for right now international travel. So many of the new economies around Asia, Africa, South America has brown to a halt. Do worry that abnb may lose market shed the local competing platforms like two job in China that are used more frequently for domestic travel, Well, I mean, I I have concerns, but my concerns are more for our host. I'm the Airbnb. No matter how hard like we're hit,

we're gonna be okay. I mean, we're a pretty big sized company, I think, so our hosts, they're not all gonna be okay. And what I'm specifically concerned about, so countries that have robust domestic travel, I think those hopes will be fine. So if if host in France a lot of people in France who would have come to the United States, they're instead They're gonna travel within France, They'll be okay. The communities that I'd be concerned about

our communities that are communities built on tourism. They have to fly to and they don't have a huge domestic market. So these would be more like smaller can entities island communities. You know, so these are ones where you know, we're certainly concerned on behalf of our host and you know, I think it's gonna be a very difficult period and we want to be able to try to help them

get through this. Last question, what warriores you most? Second wave, third wave of the virus, economic collapse, recession, depression, rising protectionist sentiment that might impact local businesses? What what are you What are you focused on now? Is as the single biggest threat to the business. Well, I mean, well, what I'm most worried about isn't a specific threat to Airbnb. But I'll just I'll just offer it, which is um.

I saw a study I think it was conducted by the University of Chicago that said that the number of Americans that self identify as lonely or lacking companionship, I think it was like now close to But I think the combination of you know, people being locked down, people being lonely, people not having companionship, people not having I'm pretty concerned about how like isolating lonely painful, scary, and harrowing this can be for an individual living at home

or even somebody is trying to support their family, and I think that is very, very concerning to me. And I think ultimately we as a society, you're gonna have to find ways to help reconnect people, to help help them gain employment. I think you know the way to do that is wenn have to create new jobs and new kinds of jobs and new ways to connect people, because it's gonna take some time for the world to go back. And you know what, the world doesn't go

back whence, it only goes forward. And so we're gonna have to find, like, together collectively as business leaders, as an industry, how do we want people to live in the future. And I hope the way they start living is a way that gives more people opportunity and more communities and reconnects people, because the problem is the more digitally connected we seem to get, sometimes the more physically disconnected we get, the more we live closer to one

of our own cities, the more further apart we often feel. Together. If there was an opportunity out of this crisis, I hope that opportunity is one of reconnection to one another, an opportunity and commnees all over the world. On that note, Ryan Schafsky, thanks for your time. Thank you very much,

thanks for listening. I hope you'll tune in later this year for a digital edition of the annual Bloomberg New Economy Forum, where business and government leaders from around the world we'll talk about the challenge of building a more sustainable and equitable post COVID economy.