Airbnb Inc. may go ahead with its initial public offering this year after the company reported a remarkable turnaround in its business starting in mid-May as coronavirus pandemic restrictions started to lift.

Airbnb, one of the most heavily hit companies during the pandemic, saw higher bookings between May 17 and June 3 in the U.S. than it did for the same period in 2019. The good news was not just in U.S. bookings but also in other countries, including Germany, Portugal, South Korea and New Zealand.

Chief Executive Officer Brian Chesky told Bloomberg today that people who have been stuck at home for months want to get out of their houses, driving the surging number of bookings. According to Chesky, international trips that are often planned well in advance are being replaced with impulsive road trips booked a day before, and weekend getaways are turning into weeks-long respites.

Reflecting the rapid shift to remote working brought on by restrictions during the pandemic, many of those making bookings are doing so while continuing to work.  “Work from home is becoming working from any home,” Chesky added.

That Airbnb has seemingly returned to form in such as short time is remarkable, but a decent three weeks does not necessarily mean that over the rest of the year that bookings will be as strong. Much of the world remains closed to travelers even though some countries are starting to open their borders.

Airbnb announced in early March that it was intending to go public in September thanks to strong fundamentals, including quarterly revenue of more than $1 billion. How strong those fundamentals were, though, was brought into question when a marketing surge saw Airbnb reportedly booking a $306 million operating loss in the first quarter, according to a report published in October. A later report in February claimed that the company had booked a loss of $322 million for the first nine months of 2019.

The first suggestion that Airbnb may delay its IPO came March 2 when the travel industry collapsed as the coronavirus spread globally. The company raised $2 billion in April in two tranches on April 6 and April 15 through debt, equity and a line of credit to allow it to weather the COVID-19 storm. Airbnb announced May 5 that it was laying off 1,900 employees, or 25% of its staff in an attempt to cut costs during the pandemic.

Should Airbnb decide to go ahead with its IPO this year, the public offering would be a sign of a remarkable recovery post-COVID-19. Arguably like the virus itself, predictions of the impact on markets and key economic indicators have been all over the place. The U.S. unemployment rate fell to 13.3% in May with 2.5 million new jobs added after economists had predicted a rate of more than 20%.

Image: Pixabay