TECHNOLOGY
21BWTalks SteveHafner
Asco-founderandCEOoftravelsearch
engineKayakSoftwareCorp.,Steve
Hafnerwasona planeeveryotherday.
Covid-19hasgroundedhim.Buthesees
somepositives.—ByJasonKellyand
CarolMassar○Hafnerandhisco-founderssoldKayaktoBookingHoldingsInc.for
$1.8billionin 2013 ○HeisalsoCEOofOpenTable,Booking’srestaurant
business○Kayakgenerallyprocessesmorethan 6 billiontravel
queriesayear;thepandemichasmorethanhalvedthat○ Interviewsareeditedforclarityandlength.ListentoBloombergBusinessweekWith
CarolMassarandJasonKelly, weekdaysfrom2 p.m.to6 p.m.ETonBloombergRadio.Has the pandemic changed any of your
long-term strategic planning?We’ve doubled down on a lot
of product initiatives. Kayak
soon is going to launch a road
trip component so people can
see cool places to go nearby.
And our rental car business—
I never thought I’d say this—
is actually bigger than our
flight business today. One
of the silver linings is a lot of
innovation on both the dining
and travel side.Food is another thing that we both
love. What are you seeing in terms of
restaurants?We’ve got about 60,000
on the OpenTable platform;
about half of them have
reopened. In terms of seated
diners, we’re down around
70%. That sounds like a
big reduction, but you have
to remember most aren’t
operating at full capacity
because of the restrictions.
They’re selling every seat
and every table they can—it’s
not enough to keep them in
business, mind you—but it
does show consumers want
to get out of their houses.similar criticism for building a “shadow workforce”
of people who are typically cheaper to hire and
can be fired more easily when business sours.
“This pattern is very common in the tech indus-
try, and it’s been common for decades,” says Chris
Benner, a professor at the University of California at
Santa Cruz who’s studied racial inequality in Silicon
Valley for more than 20 years. In a 2016 study he
found that in Santa Clara County—the home of
Alphabet, Facebook, and Tesla—African Americans
and Hispanics made up only 7% of high-skill direct
hires at tech companies. But they accounted for
26% of so-called white-collar contractors, such as
secretaries and sales representatives, and more
than half of blue-collar contractors, such as secu-
rity guards and janitors.
In Airbnb’s case, the contractors who were let
go were employed by PRO Unlimited Inc. The con-
tingent workforce management provider didn’t
respond to requests for comment. Airbnb’s global
head of diversity, Melissa Thomas-Hunt, acknowl-
edges that there are concerns around the higher
percentage of contract workers who are people of
color. She says Airbnb is actively working toward
ensuring underrepresented ethnic minorities have
agency and decision-making powers internally.
Chief Executive Office Brian Chesky is “very ada-
mant that we’re not going to do lip service,” she
says. “Our mission is belonging, and we have to
actually act and be a model for that.” She adds that
the percentage of Black full-time workers at Airbnb
remained at about 4% even after the layoffs.
After Bloomberg Businessweek approached
Airbnb about this story, the company said in a blog
post that 20% of its board and executive team will
be people of color by the end of 2021. Internally,
teams are being given recruitment and retention
goals for minority staff that must be met by 2025.
Different security badge colors for contractors are
also being eliminated.
That’s little comfort to those who’ve already
been laid off. Amy Silverman had worked as a
senior photo editor at Airbnb for about a year
before her contract role was eliminated. Afterward,
she wrote a post on LinkedIn criticizing Airbnb for
not including laid-off contract workers in its talent
directory. (The company subsequently did include
them, but it still highlighted their employment sta-
tus as contractors.) More than 1,300 people hit
“like” on her missive. “The hardest thing,” she says,
was “seeing all that positive press and knowing we
weretotallyinvisible.”—OliviaCarville
THE BOTTOM LINE Airbnb has been making all the right noises
about Black Lives Matter and racial inclusiveness. To its contract
workers, often people of color, that rankles.
We both are used to being out there,
doing reporting. We’ve been grounded
since February. How and when does
travel come back?There’s a long way to go,
but consumers at least are
thinking about flying again.
They’re looking for trips.
Query volumes have been
gradually recovering. From a
business perspective, one of
the few bright spots of this
pandemic is it’s taught people
how to conduct their affairs,
somewhat efficiently, online.So what’s your read on corporate
travel? Maybe we don’t need to take
quite as many trips.Business travel is one of
the last things to return,
because companies are
suffering, right? It may never
fully recover. That has big
implications for airlines,
because the business
traveler usually is paying
half the revenue on one of
those flights. So I think you’ll
see the frequency of trips
go down and average fares
go up as business travelers
no longer subsidize
consumers’ leisure travel.