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Comment by bluedino | Hacker News Reader

Isn't this just accelerating the inevitable for many of these companies?

Yes and no. Certainly the unit economics for some start ups always looked problematic. But for others, it's not hard to see how they would have solid businesses in normal times, but have no resources to weather this downturn.

I mean, it's not like people are never going to travel again or eat out at restaurants. But I certainly wouldn't want to be a travel startup or restaurant startup (at least of the dine-in variety) today.

It may be that travel never has big enough margins to support a 10k employee middleman.

Expedia and Booking have been around nearly 25 years and both have well over 20k employees. Seems like travel has more than enough margins to support multiple companies that size.

There’s never been an extended global shutdown of travel like now though.

Yes, everyone fully understands with travel at a complete standstill, none of these companies are viable if the current situation were the norm.

But the current situation is not the norm, people will eventually get back to travelling a lot, and when they do there will be plenty of economic activity to support large companies in the travel business.

An extended shutdown with shut borders may have long-term effects on consumer's willingness and desire to travel. If the travel industry remains shut down for the next 12 months it's not unreasonable to think that the travel industry wouldn't fully recover for 10 years.

Or maybe pent up demand will have the opposite effect. There's no way to know.

I've had the same thoughts about the restaurant industry. Will lockdowns create a generation of home cooks, or will be so tired of staying in that the restaurant industry booms after this is over?

9/11 had a similarly chilling impact that shook the airline industry to it's core. Covid is likely going to be worse for the industry than that, but it's not without precedent

Yes and no. Yes; lots of startups fail and now just fail sooner. No; many who would have otherwise found a foothold now have to re-examine their path forward.

The startup I worked for until last Thursday is going through this. Despite most other startups in the space folding and the sales team finally getting traction with lots of buyers giving a path to becoming a viable business, those companies that were eager to sign contracts a month ago are having to rethink their cashflow and deciding if changing anything in their existing business is worth the risk.

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