According to the Wall Street Journal, Airbnb’s valuation has fallen from $31B (two years ago) to $18B. The company had to secure $1B investment from Silver Lake and Sixth Street Partners, in order to survive the crisis.
According to PhocusWire, Booking Holdings bookings have decreased by more than 85% YoY.
Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, donated $1 billion to coronavirus research (charitable fund Start Small).
Hilton and American Express announced they will donate up to 1 million hotel room nights across the United States to frontline medical professionals fighting against COVID-19.
Chinese Goliath, Shiji Distribution Solutions, has analyzed booking volumes and changes in lead time between booking date and arrival date.
In times of crisis, advertising agencies are usually the most hit. Sojern is laying off about 50% of its staff (600 employees), while WordStream published a very interesting study on the COVID-19 impact on Google Ads performance.
Google Maps is publishing aggregated, anonymized insights on movement trends, divided by geography and categories of places (such as retail and recreation, groceries and pharmacies, parks, transit stations, workplaces, and residential). Data can be downloaded here.
“When we came out of the financial crisis of 2008, cloud computing kicked into high gear and started to become a pervasive, transformational technology. The current COVID-19 crisis could provide a similar inflection point for AI applications. While the implications of AI continue to be debated on the world stage, the rapid onset of a global health crisis and concomitant recession will accelerate its impact.” Here’s an interesting read by VentureBeat on the role of artificial intelligence in a post-COVID-19 world.
Microsoft Edge became the second most popular desktop web browser, with 7.6% of market share, vs. 7.2% of Mozilla Firefox. Both browsers, however, are still far away from Chrome’s 68.5%.
HotelNewsNow published “Timeline: The growing number of hotel data breaches,” a deep-dive into the last 10 years of breaches in hospitality. Here are some of from the last three years:
2020: Marriott International, MGM Resorts International.
2019: Choice Hotels International, Drury Hotels.
2018: Marriott International, Radisson Hotel Group, Huazhu Hotels Group.