AirBnb is Struggling Through the Coronavirus Pandemic

The coronavirus has been impacting many businesses across the world and one of them is Airbnb.

The company’s CEO Brian Chesky recently said the company could cut its spending on Amazon Web Services due to coronavirus in an effort to find ways to streamline its budget.

In the last few months, Airbnb has had a round of layoffs and even implemented a hiring freeze. The company also suspended marketing.

In May, the company laid off nearly 1,900 employees, or about 25% of the company. Chesky warned at the time that Airbnb’s revenue is forecast to be less than half of what it earned in 2019.

In an interview this week with CNBC’s Deirdre Bosa, Chesky said there may be room for further cuts to its expenditures on Amazon’s cloud computing service.

“There are still opportunities on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and customer service to get more efficient in how we use data, how we handle contacts,” Chesky said. “So we’ll continue to make the business more efficient, but the business is definitely pretty lean at this moment.”

There have been no disclosures on how much Airbnb spends with AWS but these numbers may be available when it goes public.

Chesky had told CNBC that the coronavirus pandemic put the company’s plans to go public on hold, and the company will wait for market conditions to improve before moving forward.

“We’re not ruling out going public this year, but we’re not committing,” Chesky said. “We want the world to be ready for Airbnb and that means that travel needs to see a little more to stay in recovery.”