As much as any company could net a win during the pandemic, Airbnb won.
In early March 2020, COVID-related lockdowns and travel restrictions swung down, cleaving away roughly 80% of Airbnb’s business, as nights booked on the platform plummeted. CEO Brian Chesky didn’t know when travel would come back—or what it would look like when it did. But he and his team moved quickly, laying off a quarter of Airbnb's employees not even two months into the crisis.
