Airbnb swings to a loss as costs climb

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It looks like the IPO may be delayed, in part due to the Coronavirus epidemic:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-airbnb-results/airbnb-swings-to-a-loss-as-costs-climb-wsj-idUSKBN2052ED

The reasons: Safety issues, updates to the platform, higher marketing costs, acquisitions of Hotel Tonight and UrbanDoor.

But toward the end the story says:

The company is also growing its Experiences business and has plans to institute a loyalty program.

I’m sorry, but if Air thinks that I’m going to give discounts or a free night or nights just because a guest booked a certain number of nights with Air, they’ve got another think coming, as my Dad used to say.

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Here’s an article that talks about a potential loyalty scheme.

One way would be to emulate the BDC Genius scheme. It gives hosts the option to join and guest receive a 5-10% reduction on the overall booking.

We tried it, BDC say that Genius guests book more and cancel less. In reality, the Genius guests cancelled more than non Genius guests so, after looking at the numbers, we binned it after six months.

JF

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When you’re worth $30B, safety is a cost of Airbnb doing business. So are technology upgrades. So are loyalty programs.