Yahoo Finance Presents: Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky

Yahoo Finance reporter Akiko Fujita speaks with Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky about free housing for up to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees and Airbnb’s mission.

Video Transcript

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AKIKO FUJITA: This is Yahoo 'Finance Presents,' I'm Akiko Fujita. And today we are joined by the founder and CEO of Airbnb, Brian Chesky. So Brian, let's start with the announcement that you put out a few days ago, Airbnb offering free temporary housing on the platform for 100,000 Ukrainian refugees. Talk to me about how this idea came about.

BRIAN CHESKY: Well, the idea is really rooted in something that started 10 years ago. 10 years ago Hurricane Sandy, as you know being in New York, occurred in 2012 in New York. There were displaced people. One of our guest-- somebody-- one of our hosts reached out to us, I'd like to host people for free. From that moment we started providing housing for people for free that were displaced by disasters.

Five years ago in partnership with what is now Airbnb.org, we started providing housing for refugees. Over the last handful of years, we've housed 54,000 refugees. When the humanitarian crisis broke out in Afghanistan, as you know, tens of thousands of refugees fled the country. We have to date housed 21,300 refugees in Afghanistan and we increased our goal to house now 40,000 Afghan refugees.

So all this came about because we have a 10-year history of providing housing for people in need. So what happened was Thursday, Friday, when this crisis became-- when it became evident that there would be hundreds of thousands displaced people, the first question we asked is, well, how can we help with this crisis? And obviously, the best way we can help this crisis is to provide housing for refugees.

So we had a team work 24/7 around the clock to be able to get to yesterday's commitment that we will work in a partnership with Airbnb.org and our hosts to house up to 100,000 refugees and it's going to be totally free to them. And we can only do this with the partnership of our hosts, so we're trying to get as many people in Poland and Germany and Hungary and Romania and countries even west of those countries, to be able to open up their homes for free or a discount. And Airbnb and Airbnb.org are donors, we're also going to be obviously contributing a significant amount of money to be able to pay for these operations.

AKIKO FUJITA: I understand in order to make this all happen you've been in touch with several governments over in Europe. You already highlighted some of those there. What are you hearing about the scale of the need?

BRIAN CHESKY: Well, I mean, the scale of the need is profound. I mean, I just saw the cover of the 'New York Times' that the number now is 660,000 people have left, refugees have fled Ukraine. We reached out to 14 governments. I've heard back from the vast majority of those governments, all very thankful of our support and help. And I think that we are hopefully viewed as a very helpful partner to them, as we have been with other crises.

And we've told them we are here. We are prepared. We have the infrastructure to be able to house 100,000 people. We just need you to help us get the word out. And then we're working with resettlement agencies on the ground. So we made sure they know we're here to help and we're working closely with them.

AKIKO FUJITA: And how is this funded? Is it largely the hosts that are sort of saying yes, you can stay here for free? What does this cost?

BRIAN CHESKY: Hard to know. The way it works is a host has a couple options. They can host for free, if they host for free then that comes at no cost to Airbnb or Airbnb.org donors. Hosts can offer at a discount. If they offer at a discount, then whatever price they would otherwise charge, we pay for it, we as in Airbnb, the company, or Airbnb.org donors. And that includes myself, Joe, and Nate, the three founders. We put in a significant amount of money into this.

And if they charge something more than that it will cost more. So we don't know what it's going to cost because we don't know how many stays will be free. But they're going to be free for refugees. The more hosts offer for free, the wider the scale and obviously, the more people we can house.

AKIKO FUJITA: We've seen over the last few days, a number of Western companies who have announced they are, in fact, withdrawing from Russia, some companies who are divesting investments that they have in place there. Airbnb has still a lot of listings, I just went on the platform before I talked to you, several hundred listings in places like Moscow, as well Saint Petersburg. Does the company plan to continue operating there?

BRIAN CHESKY: We are looking at this actively. Let me just say a couple of things. Number one, we've had our hands very full the last few days. This has been all hands on deck to figure out how to be able to house 100,000 refugees. So I've told our team this is priority number one, how can we help? Number one way we can help is to be a part of this humanitarian crisis.

Number two, we are absolutely supportive of whatever sanction the United States imposes on Russia. Number three, as a practical matter, a lot of the sanctions that have already been imposed have been imposed on Russian banks, which have prevented many people from paying or getting paid. So as a practical matter, our business is like-- is much more limited right now because of the sanctions. But all things are on the table and we are actively looking into this.

AKIKO FUJITA: Yeah. What's going to go into that thinking? I mean, to your point, with the sanctions already in place, especially these banks being blocked from the SWIFT banking system, that automatically kind of forces your hand, that you're not able to do a lot of these transactions. But in terms of the company saying, we just need to take a stand here and no longer operate. What's going to go into that thinking?

BRIAN CHESKY: Well, I mean, I want to make sure that any decision we make, we consider all of our stakeholders, the impact we have on our guests, our hosts, on communities all over the world. And so we have a-- we try to have a very thorough process for these decisions. And it's just a matter of this is like a triage situation, trying to be able to provide housing for 100,000 refugees. But we are absolutely discussing these matters.

AKIKO FUJITA: Brian, I know the last time we spoke, you were talking about the real pickup that you were seeing in travel, especially for the summer season.

BRIAN CHESKY: Right.

AKIKO FUJITA: I know you've got a big presence in Europe and the hope here really was for these cross-border travel to pick up. What kind of impact do you think this is going to have on that? I realize we're talking about Eastern Europe, specifically Ukraine and Russia, but we've seen a number of governments move in blocking airspace to Russian planes and whatnot. Do you get the sense that this could have a bit of a chilling effect on some travelers who say maybe this is not the right time to do it?

BRIAN CHESKY: I mean, there's no question that in parts of Central Eastern Europe for the immediate near term, there's going to be some limits on the types of travel people have. But I think it's really important for people to understand our business, we have nearly every type of space, in nearly every type of community, at nearly every price point in 100,000 cities all over the world.

What the last two years have shown, I think our results have shown, is however the world changes our business can adapt. We're a highly adaptable model. So where there's less cross-border travel we typically see a growth in domestic travel. That's what we saw in the United States. So I think that-- I'm sure there will be some disruption in some countries. We'll have to see how wide this crisis gets but our model is very adaptable and we'll be prepared for however travel changes.

AKIKO FUJITA: And finally, Brian, I wonder just on a personal note how you're viewing what's playing out there. And I ask that because I think we've seen a number of tech companies come out and announce changes to their business but there's also a realization with what's playing out right now just how interconnected things are but also just the presence that companies like yours, companies like Apple have globally. On a personal level how are you watching this and how are you thinking about the role a company like Airbnb can play in this crisis?

BRIAN CHESKY: Well, why don't I answer that question by telling you a conversation I had with my executive team? It was Saturday night and I convened the entire executive team, probably like seven, eight o'clock at night. And we were discussing mobilizing the entire company to provide housing for up to 100,000 refugees, which is a immense scale, even for a company the size of Airbnb. We've housed 54,000 refugees to date over many years. To provide 100,000 in a short amount of time. It's a very audacious goal. We knew that it was going to be a huge amount of effort.

But one of the things that we talked about and I said is imagine Airbnb-- it's just a hypothetical-- imagine we were around during World War II, imagine we were around during some other major humanitarian crisis, how would we want to have been remembered? And the answer is we want to have been remembered for doing everything we could to be able to help those in need. I think that's really at the heart of Airbnb, that we're really about a community that's trying to help people.

And the best way at this very moment that we've been informed by governments that we can help is by helping this massive humanitarian crisis, this refugee crisis. This could be more people displaced than any event since World War II. It's unclear how many people will be displaced and so that's how we can help.

There's an immense amount of suffering in the world but what people also need to know is Airbnb hosts, we're amongst the most generous, kindest communities. Our hosts are some of the kindest people in the world. And I think there are going to be a lot of them just waiting to welcome people with open arms into their homes. That's the way we can help. And that's how we want to be remembered.

AKIKO FUJITA: Brian Chesky, co-founder, and CEO of Airbnb. Thanks so much for joining us today.

BRIAN CHESKY: Thank you for having me.

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