Remote work is the most efficient in the digital age, says Airbnb CEO

by

The current office, if it didn’t exist, wouldn’t be invented the way it is, says Brian Chesky. Airbnb CEO. He assesses that the model is something from the pre-digital era, and that it needs to be remodeled for the new times, as well as the idea of ​​going to the office itself.

Chesky says that the company had the two most productive years in its history while working remotely, which makes him bet heavily on the model. A few weeks ago, he announced that his American employees will be able to continue working remotely, from anywhere, and he plans to hire more people who live far from the company’s headquarters.

“Once companies become more spread out, they will need to meet in San Francisco, Chicago or Florida. They can rent spaces when they need to,” Chesky told Folha. “We still don’t understand everything, and in the next two years I’ll have a lot more opinions about it, because everything is an experiment. We’ve only just begun,” he commented.

Airbnb launched this Wednesday (11) a new version of its website and app. The new version divides accommodation into more than 50 categories, such as amazing pools, castles, country houses, barns, boats, etc. The new layout also privileges the photos of the accommodations, in a model that resembles posts from social networks such as Instagram.

The platform will also offer, free of charge, a protection package called AirCover, which includes guarantees of refund or relocation in cases of cancellation by the owner of the place, difficulty in checking-in and discrepancies between the advantages offered and the facilities. real. There will also be a 24-hour call center to help with security issues.

The company, which had a 30% drop in revenue in 2020, because of the pandemic, managed to recover the volume of customers. In the first quarter of 2022, booked nights grew 32% compared to the first quarter of 2019, and are at a record high, according to company data.

In 2021, around 20% of nights booked on Airbnb were for stays of a month or longer, and nearly 50% for stays of a week or longer.

Chesky spoke to Sheet in New York, after an event to launch the new functions.

How do you see the future of remote work? Well, it’s just a prediction, and all predictions can be wrong. Everyone recognizes that five days a week is not sustainable for most office workers. And I think the reason for that is that flexibility, after compensation, is probably the benefit that people are looking for the most.

When we announced our flexibility policy, it was very well received within the company and indeed very well received outside of it. We had over 1 million people visiting our job openings page. And we only have 6,000 people in the company. Think how crazy this is.

That’s why I think the five-day week at the office, for most, is over. And so the question is if you’re not going to go back to the five-day model, how are you going to? Many people think of a middle ground, three days a week.

The problem is that three days don’t offer much more flexibility than five days a week.

You can have extended weekends, but you can’t stay away for too long. You still have to be living near the office. And a lot of people have decided they don’t want to live in San Francisco or New York. They want to live elsewhere.

In my view, the three days a week will become two days a week. I have friends who work in large companies and this happened. And I bet in the summer it will turn into one day a week. And when you go one random day a week to the office, what day do people hang out together?

And what’s the way out? Instead, why don’t we try to set aside periods of time to work together [presencialmente], like a week at a time? Or two weeks per quarter? I think very quickly most CEOs who have chosen the hybrid model will switch to our model, but they will have a longer and more painful journey to get there.

If you want to predict what the future of work will look like, look at new companies, not old ones. 20 years ago, new companies adopted full-floor offices with freebies. 20 years ago, Google was a small company.

what mr. take into account to evaluate whether or not to continue with remote work in the company? Mainly three points. I would look at the company’s productivity, as if we are delivering new things, if we are being effective. We had the two most productive years in our history.

The second is retention. Are people happy? And the third is hiring. Are we bringing more people?

How do you think the office design of the future will be? It’s a fun topic that’s been running around in my head. I think the office is like a Blackberry. It’s a kind of general space for everything. But it’s not very good for meetings, for concentrating. The great thing about the iPhone is that the interface changes according to the function you use.

If I want to do something outside of the office, why not go to a retreat area with a waterfall? If you want to do a big show, get an entire theater. If you want creative collaboration, you won’t want an entire floor open, but a room with smaller space where you can stick things. If I want people focused on work, I’m going to want them to have private offices.

So we need to go from these multi-purpose spaces to more single-purpose spaces, which are exactly what we need.

Once companies become more dispersed, will they need to meet in San Francisco, Chicago or Florida or can we change cities? They can rent spaces when they need to. We still don’t understand everything, and in the next couple of years I’m going to have a lot more opinions on that, because everything is an experiment. We’ve just started.

The office is a pre-digital format. And if he didn’t exist, we wouldn’t invent him as he is today. We would invent something new.

Has the pandemic affected tourism in a profound way? Or should things go back to the way they were before? The pandemic has been overwhelmingly good for macro travel trends. I say this with the knowledge that there has been a lot of suffering and pain and a lot of cornered areas with small businesses failing.

But the good thing about it is that there has been a shift from business tourism to leisure tourism. I’m not against business tourism, but I like leisure tourism.

The most meaningful way to travel is with family, friends and the things you do. Probably not the meetings you had while traveling.

When the borders closed, people stopped looking for destinations like tourist spots and double-decker buses. They will come back, but people have discovered other ways to travel, like going to national parks, small towns, rural communities. Homes have become destinations.

The pandemic kind of leveled the playing field for travel, which was becoming a commodity, mass tourism. My optimistic view is that the pandemic has started to change that.

We are experiencing an increase in rents in several parts of the world, and Airbnb has already been pointed out as part of the issue, as when owners prefer to offer houses to tourists and not to residents, the offer for long-term rentals is reduced. How does the company currently deal with this issue? Housing is a super complicated thing. There are generally more things to deal with urban housing policies than there are any external factors.

We try to do our part. We comply with local laws and regulations. Some cities say you can only rent [para turismo] for 120 days a year and register, and we do. Cities say you have to pay tax like a hotel. And we pay. In fact, we pay $4 billion in fees like this.

But the Holy Grail here is spreading tourism.

You can say there’s a carbon footprint generated by people moving, but there are economic and social benefits to that. Humans are nomads, in a way. The best antidote is to spread people across the calendar and across the globe. Trying to make people not all go to the same place on the same days. Don’t just go to Paris, Rome, Athens.

Communities are better when there is a mix of locals and outsiders. If there are many outsiders, there is no community. But if there are no outsiders, you become xenophobic, closed-minded.

Where there are more visitors than residents, you are probably concentrating a lot of people. And current tools are creating this problem.

When you create a search box, you force people to type in what they’ve heard, and everyone is going to type in the same places, and they’re going to the same places, and there’s going to be queues, and the rents are going to go up.

Does Airbnb plan to invest more in long-term rentals and stays? We did a little this time, with the combined stays [sugestão de dividir o tempo de hospedagem entre dois locais na mesma área] which are a great way to use the product for more than a week.

But yes, in November we will have updates, next May too, and you should expect a lot of news about long stays. Airbnb is definitely going from traveling to living.

How do you see the prospects for tourism in Brazil and Latin America? Could the appreciation of the dollar against local currencies attract more tourists to the region? It is possible, but I see it as a secondary factor. The great thing about travel patterns is the freedom of movement.

For example, we’re seeing a lot of tourists crossing borders where they’re freely accessible, something you don’t have in Asia right now, for example.

How have you been taking advantage of the possibility of working from anywhere? How do you choose your next destinations? I just open the app, look at the houses and grab something I like. I don’t have a systematic approach. I stayed, for example, in a house in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with [a cachorra] Sophie.

I wasn’t looking to go to Michigan, but I did and I saw that Ann Arbor is a nice college town. I had never thought in life that this would be my home. So I have no idea where I’m going next.

I’ll be in New York for another week or two, and then I’ll probably go somewhere else I have no idea. I love the spontaneity of travelling.


X-ray

Brian Chesky, 40,

Born in Niskayuna, NY, he majored in design at the Rhode Island School of Design. He is co-founder of Airbnb, created in 2007, and current CEO of the company. He has a fortune estimated by Forbes at $9.2 billion, and has committed to giving away most of his wealth in his lifetime.

You May Also Like

Recommended for you