The travel and tourism industries will be changed forever by the coronavirus pandemic with less focus on major tourist destinations, says Airbnb co-founder Brian Chesky.
"Travel as we knew it is over," Chesky told American news channel CNBC during an interview with Deirdre Bosa. "It doesn't mean travel is over, just the travel we knew is over, and it's never coming back."
Chesky, who founded online holiday rental service Airbnb with Joe Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk in 2008, was explaining how the coronavirus pandemic has impacted the business when he made several predictions about the future of travel.
There will be "a redistribution of where people travel"
He believes that after the pandemic subsides, people will travel less to major tourist cities and will instead choose to visit less well-known destinations. "No one quite knows what it will look like," he said. "But I have a couple of thoughts."
"I do think that instead of the world population travelling to only a few cities and staying in big tourist districts, I think you're going to see a redistribution of where people travel," he continued.

Although the company was impacted heavily by the pandemic and the subsequent travel bans and lockdowns imposed by many countries, Chesky believes that travel for tourism will return ? albeit in a different form from before the pandemic.
"We spent 12 years building Airbnb business and lost almost all of it in a ma...