Online Travel Storytelling Spin Cycle Is Running at Full Speed
Skift Take
Dennis' Online Travel Briefing
Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, Executive Editor and online travel rockstar Dennis Schaal will bring readers exclusive reporting and insight into the business of online travel and digital booking, and how this sector has an impact across the travel industry.It's another earnings season so online travel companies such as Airbnb, Expedia and Tripadvisor occasionally present facts in a misleading — or at least in an exceedingly positive-sounding — way.
Airbnb Productivity
Airbnb officials mentioned twice in their discussion last week with financial analysts about 2022 earnings that their roster of 6,800 employees at the end of 2022 was 5 percent lower than during pre-pandemic 2019 yet Airbnb's revenue has increased 75 percent to $8.4 billion.
That means significantly more revenue per employee these days.
What Airbnb execs didn't mention, however, is that Airbnb at the end of 2022 "relied on a global network of approximately 11,000 third-party contingent workers to handle the vast majority of our community support contacts," as noted in its annual financial filing.
As with the size of its full-time workforce, which Airbnb reduced by 25 percent in May 2020, the company likewise terminated many contract workers, and a bunch of t
