Articles tagged “sonder”

The blank check frenzy may be sweeping up companies such as Sonder that would otherwise have had to wait their turn to go public. It would certainly be an interesting comeback for the quasi-hotel company whose prospects were not looking particularly bright a year ago.

One plus one can equal three sometimes when it comes to spinoffs, especially during the current era where there appears to be an IPO and valuation bubble. Expedia Group seems to be resisting an impulse to spin off Vrbo, let alone Egencia, for now, but the pressure could be substantial.

Enthusiasm for IPOs is booming in the wake of Airbnb's sensational debut as a public company. But only a handful of startups, possibly including Turo, Traveloka, Yanolja, Gett, Tujia, SiteMinder, Sonder, and Vacasa, may have enough positive growth in 2021 to woo investors.

Yes, there's the call of the wild, but don't discount the call of concrete in 2021.

The entire hospitality industry would agree that short-term rentals led the tentative recovery in the spring and into the summer in many parts of the world. But a key question will be how will they respond when hotels and cities come back in earnest — and with vaccines a real possibility, they certainly will.

Regulators in China, Europe, and the U.S. can certainly screw up on execution of their goals with over-regulation, under-regulation, or initiatives that are off-target. But there's something happening around the globe that points to a new and potentially hopeful era for competition and innovation.

Despite Brian Chesky’s rhetoric about Airbnb needing to return to its local connections mission and roots, the economics point to Airbnb needing Domio- and Sonder-like listings. Even if it means negative publicity pre-IPO.

Airbnb has bigger concerns than the scenario of one more big city, Chicago, that is potentially tightening its short-term rental restrictions. But such an action certainly wouldn't help.

Sometimes CEO views of where online travel is headed seem more about the capabilities of their companies than anything else. Will pandemic-induced travel preferences make for dominant trends five or 10 years from now? Highly doubtful.

Sonder is now the second unicorn in the short-term rental and hotel sector after Airbnb. At this rate, Sonder will IPO before Airbnb.