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AIRBNB PLANS TO shed 35% of its Dublin workforce.
Employees have been told that the company is targeting 190 redundancies at its European headquarters in Grand Canal Docks, because of the decline in its online bookings business as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
On 8 May, company chief executive and founder Brian Chesky announced that out of 7,500 employees globally, “nearly 1,900 teammates will have to leave Airbnb, comprising around 25% of our company”.
At the time of the announcement, it wasn’t clear if the cuts would significantly impact the company’s Dublin office, where it employs just over 500 people.
TheJournal.ie now understands that over half of the Dublin workforce, some 320 employees, are involved in a consultation process with the company, which will result in around 190 redundancies.
Airbnb could not confirm its exact employee headcount in the capital or the exact number of redundancies that would be sought. However, this website has seen internal communications sent to employees detailing plans for approximately 190 staff members to depart the company.
A spokesperson for the company confirmed that over 500 people were employed in Dublin and that around 35% of staff based in the capital would be made redundant as part of the company’s plans.
The Dublin figure is substantially higher than the global company-wide planned reduction of 25%.
Workers have been told that the Dublin customer service team will suffer the worst of the cuts with around 100 out of the targeted 190 redundancies coming from that team alone.
Chesky, the chief executive, said in his statement last month that the company had been “hit hard” by the sudden downturn in business, with revenue this year forecasted to be less than half of what was made in 2019.
“We are collectively living through the most harrowing crisis of our lifetime, and as it began to unfold, global travel came to a standstill.”
He said the company has raised $2 billion (about €1.8 billion) in capital and “dramatically cut costs” in response to the crisis.
The statement also informed employees outside the US that they “will receive at least 14 weeks of pay, plus tenure increases consistent with their country-specific practices”.
Although the company had a presence in Ireland from 2012, Airbnb announced plans to significantly ramp up its Irish operations on its company blog in 2013. In September that year, it publicly signalled its intention to set up European headquarters in Dublin.
Chesky said at the time that Dublin was chosen because Ireland “has hospitality in its DNA” and is known for its warm welcome. He added that the city was an emerging technology epicentre in Europe, with nearly every language represented.
In 2014, Airbnb moved its Dublin HQ from Lansdowne Road, Dublin 4 to the Watermarque building in Ringsend. It then moved to the Reflector Building on Hanover Quay — built by developer Michael Cotter’s Park Developments — in 2016, where it is currently based.
Airbnb’s short-term letting business model has put the company in the firing line of Irish policymakers in recent years.
Concerns about landlords withdrawing properties from the long-term rental market to rent out on a short-term basis resulted in the government bringing in new laws last year to curb the practice in areas where demand for rentals are high.
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Hope Airbnb go bust they contribute to high rents and homelessness…
@Paul O’Sullivan: No they don’t, the landlords who choose to use them do. All AirBnB do is offer a platform.
Why do you give a pass to individual choice and blame the company?
@Dara O’Brien: Relax Dara, Paul said “contribute” to high rent and homelessness. He’s not giving “a pass”, he’s merely stating fact.
@Paul O’Sullivan: all property websites offer short term let’s so you may as well wish for them all to go bust and for all their staff to lose their jobs and potentially become homeless too. Are you really that thick?
@Dara O’Brien: What do you think would be the 2nd option for these landlords other than renting them out? Assuming they rent them out, that’s more supply to meet demand, affecting the price.
@John O’Connor: no rental services offer stays as short as a few nights and most landlords opt for long term rents to save time, money and have income certainly. You really are that thick
@Dara O’Brien: AirBandB doesn’t take any responsibility for the mayhem often caused when the continuously let out apartments to stag/hen parties and then refuse to identify the miscreant landlord making it difficult to take an enforcement case against them.
@Pat Coyne: The owners of the properties would be registered locally with the council etc. Why contact airbnb when complaints of mayhem would/should be reported to the guards who could then identify the owner. Involving Airbnb, even if they could give out the information on data protection grounds, just lengthens the process.
@Pat Coyne: man, the hosts names are plastered all over Airbnb – it’s not that hard to find them.
@Paul O’Sullivan: Job losses contribute to homelessness
@Dara O’Brien: so offering a platform is not contributing no ? Sound logic that
100 gone from fexco too, those employees will loose out on covid payments and have to go for job seekers from 3k a month to 200 a week
@databackup: there are remote customer service roles becoming available with other companies that have boomed during this (Amazon, delivery, eBay etc…), plus upskilling. It’s bad, but not all bad, and we have a very agile workforce; hold out our adapt.
@Brynþór Patrekursson: we Irish sure love accepting whatever neoliberalism and/or austerity is suggested. We even enjoy fighting to multinationals fight for them in the case of apple. Meanwhile SMEs & workers are hund out to dry. Shame on the lot of us
@databackup: Terrible Covid-19 is causing long term job losses. Remember before March 2020 through good economic management the country had full employment….those were the days!
@Kev: please remember that the SME’s exist because of the ‘export’ income generated by these companies. We are indentured, no matter how you look at it. Given the paradigm shift to move to another financial model, I would say that we are stuck with it.
@Tom McHugh: You are wasting your time trying to explain these things to people with little intelligence.
@Tom McHugh: the CSO recently confirmed that we greatly overstated the influence of export income generated by multinationals. The National Competitiveness council did recently warn us that we are too dependent on one of the big companies suddenly leaving or mass layoffs, as we saw with Dell and many more. You can read more here in the Irish Times piece on it – https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/large-multinationals-make-up-only-fraction-of-real-economy-1.3584634
@Peter Hughes: Excellent addition to the conversation Pete, you should host 4fm
@Kev: Mad eh?! Been that way forever too. Enough people making quick coin for the immediate future not caring if we will have the infrastructures we will need in 50 years.
@Kev: Irish?
And so it begins…
@Davy: The amount of people who will die from a terrible recession through suicide, poor medical care etc will dwarf what this virus has killed…..it will be year after year deaths for the next few years. But people won’t bat an eyelid at these deaths…..
@Peter Hughes: why should they, suicide is illegal.
@Anthony Ryan Dunne: it’s hasn’t been illegal since 1993. You are one cold heartless man with that comment.
Im sad people are losing their jobs while also being glad that a company like AirBnB which has done so much harm to working people is shrinking. No need to take sides here.
@SkepticalHippoEyes: what harm has it done to working people?
@SkepticalHippoEyes:
It’s the City Councils that had been slow in the past to regulate these platforms. Now addressed by AirBnB, to a degree – presumably in consultation with the authorities – by insisting Planning Permission-to-operate documents are presented by Landlords in order to qualify for hosting.
A welcome step.
@Dara O’Brien: AirBnB have raised rent prices worldwide by choking supply, taking it away from the rental market
@Kev: No they haven’t. The individuals who choose to let the properties through Airbnb are doing that. If Airbnb bought up housing supply themselves then your point would be valid – they dont so it’s not.
Why do people think that individuals are free to make any crappy choices they want and are free of any blame for their actions because it’s better to blame it on the corporate boogeyman. Behind every Airbnb property is an individual who has chosen that route for monetary gain.
@Kev: that is greedy landlords in city center’s, not Airbnb, what about all the other platforms. At least Airbnb is paying their staff.
Well we praise these companies comin in, this is it in reality
@herp: This is what in reality?
@Gavin Conran: this is the reality of bending over backwards for FDI as the expense of SMEs. They pack up and go on a whim, Air BnB have more than enough money to stay but profit speaks louder than sustainability when you’ve no ties to the country
@Kev: They’re not going anywhere though, they are cutting headcount – just like 1,000’s of Irish employers have done already.
Tell me the publicans in temple bar couldn’t afford to keep paying staff through this crisis?
@Kev: You take FDI out of this country and we would be like Greece without the weather except well worse…..you people have no idea what will happen if these companies go……you would be routing through bins for food because there would not be a cent of money in the country.
@Dara O’Brien: I don’t know the particulars of each business who have sacked workers. Quite sad that society always knows the exact amount given in welfare payments and low wages workers but never the exact profits of each business and its owner. The focus is always on the little guy
@Kev: my god what’s an awful attitude. By the way do you have a pension? Because if you do you’d want to hope that businesses keep making profits!
@Kev: you mean their legal obligation to shareholders to maximise long term shareholder wealth? It’s not a charity!
Oh i forgot you’re one of the nut jobs that thinks like some EU countries that businesses are they to provide employment at all costs.
Well deserved for them
Airbnb is a great company, as a homeowner with a Airbnb in my home their services to hosts and guests are excellent. It is a shame that they have to cut back but it’s the market. When c19 hit they automatically refunded all guests and hosts received 25% of the booking from Airbnb directly
How come ye are not all in bed..it’s 3 am for God’s sake.
@flamrock: Well we were watching you sleep, you’ve ruined it now..
In an ideal world people would work in productive industries that make things other people need like homes and medical equipment, rather than in property management and insurance where they just feed off the money made by people who do real productive work.
@SC: Agreed. However, given the world’s population the option for everyone to work in agriculture and/or manufacturing is totally unrealistic. As a result, we have socially engineered ourselves into a service economy fed on the cheap labour and resources from the poorer nations with no environmental or labour regulations. Reverting would result in a social upheaval, the start of which we are currently witnessing.
@SC: Definitely. transport infrastructures, health care (we already have a massive medical equipment industry, one of our biggest exporters) housing, but we’re not yet capable of it as a nation, we’re still very much like a car boot sale of brown envelopes and false promises. A nation of middle management.
The CEO of Airbnb is worth 3.1 billion dollars as of January 2019 so naturally he cannot afford to pay his staff
@Kev: alot has changed since then
@HonDeDeise: he could be in negative equity now
@Kev: You should set up your own multi billion business from scratch instead of begrudging those who do!
@Fionn Darland: if I did to the world what AirBnB has done to the world I’d have to kill myself. I’m actually working on a business, an ethical one that helps the world and pays staff what they should be paid
@Kev: I knew you were a nut job. Hopefully air BnB doesn’t get hit too badly and I can still go on my holidays all over the world staying with their great hosts!
@Kev: Entire history of capitalism called!… wants its ideologies back.
One company I’m glad to see go bust
That’s too bad..
Not great for employees but great news for people that were unable to rent apartments and houses due to excessively high rents due to Airbnb. I hope they go bust. Another greedy company
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