Booking.com to lay off 25% of workforce over coronavirus

Booking.com plans to lay off 25% of its global workforce amid the pandemic. Yahoo Finance's On The Move panel share the details.

Video Transcript

ADAM SHAPIRO: Turning our attention to what is going on in the travelsphere, Booking.com preparing to lay off 25% of its workforce. That's roughly 4,000 people. Julie, I don't think it's a surprise that travel is taking it the worst among, if you want to call it a sector, because of the pandemic. But travel will eventually come back. The question is when.

JULIE HYMAN: Right. And what do these companies need to do to weather that period in between? What's interesting about the Booking.com news is Booking.com also owns Kayak and Priceline. These layoffs appear to just be affecting the namesake business, the Booking.com business, and not the others. So it's unclear.

We have seen a rebound in some types of bookings, particularly as we've discussed places that people don't have to fly to, right? So perhaps some of their businesses are more oriented towards drivable destinations rather than flyable destinations. But we are, to your point, definitely seeing widespread damage in the travel industry.

JARED BLIKRE: Yeah, but I'll tell you what. Stocks are bouncing back today. If you take a look at the Wi-Fi interactive heat map for travel, only a few losers there. Wynn Resorts stands out. That's down about 1%.

But then you take a look at year-to-date and you can really see the damage done to the industry. We'll sort it by performance here. You've still got Hertz down over 90%, obviously in bankruptcy. But then Norwegian Cruise line down 76%.

We had an interesting development overnight that I think we're going to talk about, but they're in a little bit of trouble there. Carnival down 73%. Royal Caribbean down 62%. And the airlines not faring that much better. And then the talk on the earnings calls, it's just going to take years for demand to finally come back to where it was pre-COVID.