The travel and hospitality industries have taken a hit during the pandemic, as more people are staying home.
Home vacation rental broker Airbnb announced Tuesday that it would be cutting 1,900 jobs, or about 25% of its global workforce.
In a note from Airbnb Co-Founder and CEO Brian Chesky to Airbnb employees, Chesky said, “We don’t know exactly when travel will return” and “When travel does return, it will look different.”
“Since we cannot afford to do everything that we used to, these cuts had to be mapped to a more focused business,” Chesky said in the note.
“While we know Airbnb’s business will fully recover, the changes it will undergo are not temporary or short-lived,” Chesky continued. “Because of this, we need to make more fundamental changes to Airbnb by reducing the size of our workforce around a more focused business strategy.”
According to Chesky, employees in the U.S. will receive 14 weeks of base pay, plus one additional week for every year at Airbnb.
For those who were hired in the past year, the company is dropping a one-year cliff on equity, making sure everyone leaving the company is a shareholder.
The note also said that Airbnb will cover 12 months of health insurance for those in the U.S. and will cover health insurance costs through the end of 2020 for those in other countries. Additionally, Airbnb will provide four months of mental health support.
The final working day for departing employees based in the U.S. and Canada will be Monday, May 11.
Airbnb homeowners are also struggling to make ends meet, as fewer people are flying and more are staying home.
