May 2020
May 2020 was the month the short-term rental trade counted the cost of the lockdowns and started to reopen. Airbnb cut nearly 1,900 jobs, around 25% of its staff, on 5 May and said it would narrow its business to its hosts. Florida, which had banned vacation rentals on 27 March, let them reopen county by county from 18 May. Stay Alfred said it was closing for good, and Booking Holdings and Expedia Group reported first-quarter bookings sharply down.
A look back, written in October 2026 from sources published in May 2020. Stay Gazette opened in July 2026.
Platforms · 5 May 2020Airbnb Lays Off Nearly 1,900 Employees and Narrows Its Focus to HostsBrian Chesky told staff on 5 May 2020 that around 25% of them would go and that Airbnb would spend less on anything that did not directly support its hosts. Hosts, already short of income from refunded bookings, also learned where the company expected travel to come back first.By Jesse Kohl · Filed 11 October 2026 · 7 min read
Crackdown · 15 May 2020Florida Lets Vacation Rentals Reopen One County at a TimeGovernor Ron DeSantis had banned vacation rentals on 27 March 2020 and left hotels open. On 15 May he said each county could ask the state to approve a safety plan, and owners could take guests again only once their county had that approval.By Marcus Dane · Filed 11 October 2026 · 7 min read
Pictures on this page. 1. Photo: Atrium of AirBnB Headquarters at 888 Brannan St, San Francisco by Dllu, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (resized). 2. Photo: Eastern Green, Rosemary Beach, Florida by Miamireader, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (resized).
What else was reported in May 2020
- 20 May 2020Jordan Allen, founder and chief executive of Stay Alfred, told the Spokane Journal of Business on 20 May that the short-term rental company, which had more than 2,500 units in 33 cities at the end of 2019 and topped $100 million in revenue that year, was closing permanently. Spokane Journal of Business
- 18 May 2020Lisbon's council opened its Renda Segura program on 18 May, offering to rent homes from their owners on five-year contracts, at maximum reference rents of 450 euros for a studio and 1,000 euros for four bedrooms, with a higher rent for short-term rental owners who left the furniture in place. Time Out Lisboa
- 7 May 2020Booking Holdings, the parent of Booking.com, reported on 7 May a first-quarter net loss of $699 million, with room nights booked down 43% and gross travel bookings down 51% to $12.4 billion from a year earlier. Booking Holdings
- 22 May 2020Expedia Group's first-quarter revenue fell 15 percent to $2.2 billion and its total gross bookings fell 39 percent, Breaking Travel News reported on 22 May, and a GlobalData analyst said Vrbo, the group's vacation rental business, had noted an uptick in bookings for May. Breaking Travel News
- 5 May 2020ShortTermRentalz reported on 5 May that the Vacation Rental Housekeeping Professionals, a subsidiary of the Vacation Rental Management Association, had written new cleaning guidelines for managers and owners of vacation rentals as part of the two groups' joint SafeHome campaign. ShortTermRentalz
- 14 May 2020Zeus Living, a furnished-apartment company backed by Airbnb, laid off 76 more staff, about 50 percent of those remaining by Business Insider's count, after a $15 million funding round in which its valuation dropped by half to $110 million, ShortTermRentalz reported on 14 May. ShortTermRentalz