The host with the most: Airbnb’s Catherine Powell on surviving the pandemic, disciplined decision making and playing by the rules
When Catherine Powell made the jump from the magic of Disney to Airbnb in January 2020, she couldn’t have predicted the nightmare of a global pandemic for the travel and tourism industry.
But just three months after she joined as head of experiences she was thrown in at the deep end.
“The pandemic hit and I had to suspend all experiences in March 2020,” the now global head of hosting, said.
As soon as she moved, she questioned whether she’d made the right call.
“It was terrible,” she said. “I mean, I had no job. It was like, ‘what am I going to do now?’.”
Airbnb’s earnings plummeted and it was forced to make around a quarter of its staff redundant, with Brian Chesky, its president and CEO, saying, according to Powell, that he “didn’t know whether Airbnb was going to survive” just six months after headlines about a possible IPO.
Three years on, Airbnb has not only survived, it is thriving, notching its first full-year profit in 2022.
The short-term rental company recorded revenues of £6.7bn ($8.4bn) last year, and had a net income of £1.52bn ($1.9bn).
While the global travel rebound helped lift the firm’s earnings, Powell says its new singular vision also helped drive the company forward.
As part of a “massive refocus,” Chesky and Powell decided it “needed to just jettison things that are not core to the business” such as its studio magazine, and go back to the roots of its business – hosts.
Powell said the firm is now in a “very strong position” and that she is “very optimistic” about the future.
Tech layoffs
Tech giants including Twitter, Facebook owner Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple, have all laid off thousands of staff in recent months.
But Powell said that Airbnb will not be following suit, thanks to past “disciplined” decision making.
“Since that terrible point, that low point in 2020, we have remained ruthlessly disciplined and focused on what we do,” she said.
“When we saw our business taking off and recovering, we did not expand and go back into the businesses that we were in before. We did not suddenly inflate the workforce by 25 per cent again. We remained very steady, very disciplined, very focused,” she said.
“We do not have plans for layoffs,” she said, adding that, on the contrary, it is hiring, but insisted it was targeted and “very focussed”.
Not all plain sailing
Despite bouncing back, Airbnb has not operated in the UK without controversy.
Over the years, it has faced accusations that some of its hosting undermines local communities because hosts can make more money putting their property on Airbnb rather than by living and working there.
Asked about the impact of Airbnb on local communities, which has been documented in tourist hot spots like North Wales and Cornwall, she said the firm takes the issue “very seriously”.
“We want to be good partners. We want hosts to be welcomed in the communities in which they live. We want communities to thrive and to want Airbnb,” she said.
She said Airbnb is “very supportive of having rules,” adding that it welcomed the UK government’s decision to introduce a short-term let register, which it has long called for.