The leading travel booking platform made its initial stock offering (IPO) this Thursday, December 10 on #Nasdaq and more than doubled its IPO value from a starting price of US$68 to trade at US$144. The company raised more than US$3.5 billion with its IPO and is part of an exceptional month - and year - of #IPO on the #bag.

#Airbnb is a case study. Not only is it reporting losses-US$697 million on sales of US$2.5 billion in the first nine months of 2020-but it is in one of the businesses hardest hit by the #pandemic. However, the company has been recognized for the way it handled the emergency. It refunded some $1 billion to customers who had reserves they couldn't use because of the pandemic, made partial payments to property tenants, slashed costs- laying off 25% of its workforce-and saved cash.

As the hotel market partially recovered in the third quarter in the U.S., Airbnb sales were 18% lower than in the same quarter of 2018, compared with a 60% drop reported by #Marriott International Inc, according to Bloomberg.

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