Airbnb Valuation Soars Exponentially Come Year End

A business based on the concept of sharing, Airbnb has been around for over a decade now, providing suitable and comfortable accommodation to millions of travelers across the world. The platform has served as a suitable source of income for many people at the same time. Nonetheless, given its nature, the company was doomed to suffer in light of the coronavirus pandemic.

As travel restrictions and, more importantly, fear set into people’s hearts, Airbnb’s reservations began dropping dramatically. As the company’s public records reveal, the lowest point hit back in April 2020, when bookings had decreased by 72 percent. Following this almost fatal decline, like most other companies, Airbnb resorted to firing thousands of employees to keep the company standing.

Shutterstock | Airbnb hype is at an all-time high

And stand it most definitely did, as it stocks now reveal.

Latest News on Airbnb

Lucky for the company, thanks to its flexible nature, come the end of 2020, Airbnb managed to fare much better than other companies this year. In all truth, just about anything in the world can be sold, given that it is marketed properly, which became the company’s mantra amidst the pandemic.

First, the company carried a huge marketing campaign called “go near”- basically playing on the need of millions of people to leave the four walls of their own house, even if their destination is only a couple miles away. The next thing was to ask owners to increase the duration of stay for guests, and deep clean the home before and after every stay, so that visitors would feel safe within the space.

Airbnb |The ‘Go Near’ campaign by Airbnb

Evidently, this tactic worked. Since Airbnb is generally more flexible than hotels are, this revised strategy helped regenerate the traffic on the website and help sales increase over the past couple of months. The company now offers one of the most attractive and lucrative services in the world since resuming travel is one of the main things that people are eager to do, and the possibility of which has increased greatly after coronavirus vaccines were released.

Airbnb Valuation Soars Like Never Before

All in all, the year 2020 was extremely disastrous as well as highly triumphant for the rental company. When the travel industry took a staggering hit earlier this year, Airbnb had put its IPO on hold indefinitely, waiting for a time it would be beneficial to resume opening. Undoubtedly, the time has come now, as we approach the end of the year, with the holidays around the corner and vaccines that promise immunity from a deadly virus.

On Wednesday, 9^th December, Airbnb’s IPO opened at $68 per share, something even the company didn’t see coming. The following day, the IPO had more than doubled, opening at $146 per share.

Shutterstock | Sales will skyrocket as travel restrictions are lifted

According to Global Market Intelligence, Airbnb boasted the largest IPO of the year within the tech industry, amounting to a staggering $163 billion on the US exchange, followed by the food delivery service DoorDash and cloud company Snowflake.