This is fair. A lot of hotel groups have seen their revenue drop 75 to 90 percent. Airbnb was never profitable (I think) and this round of trip cancellations put them deeply in the red.
As far as I can tell, the functionality offered by Airbnb and Uber hasn't changed at all since they launched over a decade ago. The only things I've noticed them add are "Airbnb Plus" and "Uber Black", which are just "pay some more for a nicer/better-looking place/car".
Of course building these apps to work as smoothly and engagement-y as possible isn't easy, and I'm sure I sound incredibly naive to many people who've worked at those companies, but my assumption would be that there'd be a lot of upfront investment and work building your one product with its one feature - connecting seekers and providers and offloading all the meatspace work to the providers (and phone manufacturers, for ridesharing) while you take a cut - and then your revenue and profit should just go up and up over time on its own.
Why isn't that what happens? I'm sure one obvious answer would be "wasteful spending and unnecessary hiring", but I have no idea if that's actually the explanation here for either company.
Do you have any sources for this?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-15/airbnb-sa...
That said, I'm not sure how many asterisks are attached to the definition of profitable. Likewise, the fact that a company that holds no substantial assets while operating in the face of most regulations only became profitable in 2018, while clearly being the market leader, makes me wonder what is going on with their financials. It should not take 10 years for a company like AirBnB to become profitable, it should take closer to 5.
I know they had a disagreement with their CFO in 2018, and it took them the better part of a year to find a replacement. Admittedly, the replacement seems incredibly qualified.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/26/airbnb-hires-cfo-dave-stephe...
They made an EBITDA (operating) profit. They were not a profitable company.