How this pandemic changed the travel industry

All around the world, the pandemic has stopped people from seeing family and friends, traveling abroad, and even going to the grocery store. It’s been exhausting and unusual, and people want a break. Surprisingly, this much needed break can be found at the nearest Airbnb. 

In a recent NY Times article, Elaine Glusac writes about how fast rental homes have been booked during the pandemic. There were multiple rental home platforms such as STR and AirDNA that facilitated booking rentals, but the biggest company that had the most occupancy was Airbnb. Even though the economic value of the company fell from $31 billion to $18 billion, Brian Chesky, the co-founder and chief executive, was optimistic about the business’s future. Airbnb has taken necessary pandemic precautions because of the increased rate in bookings. A few listings mandate that 72 hours have to pass after cleaning a location before the next party checks in. People are working from home and students are online for school, but that doesn’t mean they want to stay in one place. Traveling domestically is a much more feasible option than vacationing abroad or traveling on an airplane. Therefore, various Airbnbs have appealed to people’s travel needs because of the safety precautions they are taking. However, cleaning fees aren’t cheap. Some customers didn’t even know there was a fee until they were at the checkout page for their desired Airbnb listing. This pricing structure deters customers because the fee can vary and can be either optional or mandatory. 

However, more people staying at Airbnbs causes over tourism, listing shortages, higher rent numbers and even racial biases that conquer within the community. Overtourism has been around before Chesky even founded Airbnb. However, its listings have added to the societal and economic issues that already surround the communities that the rentals are in. Since more people are renting Airbnbs, the cost of local rentals have increased. Renting out apartments or houses on Airbnb is more profitable for an individual than it would be to rent houses to locals. Fewer people are renting locally because the pandemic is still prominent and Airbnbs offer better prices for both parties. Additionally, this over tourism leads to neighbors filing noise complaints and having health concerns because large gatherings are occurring at certain Airbnbs. 

With all of these factors playing a role in whether people would book Airbnb’s listings, Glusac focused her writing on how the company responded to these dilemmas. She was neither pro or anti-business, but she did have an agenda for the story. Glusac began the story with letting her audience know that rental home platforms had much more to worry about than just hygiene and social distancing. With that information, she then used it to move into why Airbnb was doing better than other rental platforms. She presented the predicaments that  the rentals would cause, but then answered them with solutions that the company had come up with. Each problem, whether it was the cleaning fee or racial bias, was written as if the company had done something wrong, but Glusac followed the problems with explanations that the company had provided her. She was impartial to whether people traveled with Airbnb, because she was giving the company a podium to talk about its solutions, such as Project Lighthouse, which helped in creating a nondiscrimination policy and redesigning price displays on AirBnB’s website. Her reporting spoke for itself as she presented a set of problems the company faced and how the company was solving them.

Overall, Glusac provided a well-rounded article that allowed her to succeed in telling the reader why Airbnb was the superior home rental business. She had quoted Chesky multiple times throughout the story and added additional quotes from professors when talking about the economic and societal changes within certain communities with Airbnb rentals. This information not only backed up the company’s claims, but also supported Glusac’s writing. 

Glusac wants the readers to understand why the future of Airbnb is so important when they talk about travel. People are uncomfortable with flying and traveling abroad at the moment, so Airbnb provides them with rental houses that are within driving distance. The pandemic has changed the way people travel and has negatively impacted the business of tourism. Still, Glusac’s reporting is a reminder that the travel industry isn’t always going to look the same, and Airbnb has already become a pioneer for that change.