Articles tagged “labor”

Government relief or not, if a substantial coronavirus recovery doesn't take shape by June, it's hard to believe that Booking Holdings won't execute substantial layoffs like everyone else. Perhaps the crisis, too, will spur new discussions about enormous pay gaps between CEOs and their workers.

Oyo put in place a substantial number of furloughs — likely in the thousands — and there are probably many more to come after the India lockdown ends. The Oyo that emerges will look different than the rocket ship of a year ago. Withdrawing from certain markets will certainly have to be under consideration.

Will hotel direct-booking campaigns be in play after the coronavirus crisis? That's a side issue that online travel agencies and hotels would love to have to deal with at some point. In the interim, they are facing more existential questions.

It's fairly certain that many Marriott International-affiliated properties will never reopen. CEO Arne Sorenson is showing leadership in being candid about the tough measures the hotel chain has to take to emerge with a business worth running when coronavirus hopefully fades.

Major hotel chains are undertaking financial moves to get past the coronavirus crisis. But without governmental relief, it likely won't be enough.

Will the U.S.government be able to bail out everyone? The line of businesses and people hoping for relief is getting very long.

U.S. airlines hoped they had stopped the boom-and-bust cycle. And they may have been OK in facing a traditional recession. But coronavirus is something else altogether. With few people traveling, airlines may need to reduce their staffs.

Whether building tours and activities or vacation rentals, acquiring companies soon find out that this stuff isn't as easy as it looked. From confidential internal documents obtained by Skift, it's clear Booking.com found out that scaling experiences on its own wouldn't be a cakewalk, and it's turning to Musement to kick off a preferred partnership strategy instead.

Restructuring in itself isn't necessarily the worst thing in the world for a company, although fired employees might not see it that way. This is at least the second recent and high-profile Airbnb investment. The other, with Oyo, doesn't appear to be proceeding according to plan, either.

Diller and Kern are taking an ax, as promised, to Expedia Group's payroll. This could be just the first round, and the thinking might be: Why sell to private equity, have those folks squeeze out the cost savings, and reshape the business when we can do it ourselves?