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KUALA LUMPUR (June 27): It took CEO Brian Chesky a dozen years to “build” Airbnb but he has revealed that “we lost almost everything in four to six weeks” owing to the Covid-19 outbreak.
"It took us 12 years to build Airbnb, and we lost almost everything in four to six weeks," Chesky told CNBC.
He said Airbnb was set to go public this year but “now that is up in the air”.
Chesky also told CNBC that “travel as we knew it is over - and it's never coming back” owing to the global pandemic.
He explained that there would be a “redistribution of where people travel… instead of to only a few cities, to thousands of local communities”.
“Tourism as we knew it is over. I don't want to say that the journey is over, but rather that the model we knew has died and will not return. We are going to get in our cars, drive a few kilometers to a small community and stay in a house,” he added.
“People don't want to get on airplanes… they don't want to go to cities, they don't want to cross borders,” Chesky told the business channel.
But he is still optimistic, saying the travel market is “resilient”.
Chesky co-founded the Airbnb in 2008.
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