Difficult goodbyes as we adapt our business

The pain and tragedy of this hopefully once in a lifetime pandemic continue to add up and take a toll on the people we love and the businesses we trust. We at WhyHotel pride ourselves on being a smart, dynamic company that is built to “roll with the punches”, but we are, of course, not immune to what is happening in the U.S. and across the world. In this unprecedented and upside-down time, we must make changes to our business to adapt to the realities of this environment. As of this month, we are moving to minimum 14-day stays in our pop-up hotels to facilitate social distancing, while still remaining open for those who need temporary housing. We will do this while refocusing a core team on hospitality living - our forever flexible buildings.

As a result of this change, today we laid off a significant portion of our pop-up hotel team. This is not what we wanted or planned. For us, both professionally and personally, it is tragic to be losing such incredible and passionate people in this moment to something as unforeseeable as a global pandemic. We waited longer than others in the hospitality industry, including the hotel flags and other startups, to make this decision to ensure we really understood what was happening in the world and in our business before taking such serious action. We have tried to be fair in our team members’ exits, although we recognize there is nothing fair or just about losing your job when you are incredible at what you do. We are committed to doing our best to help our very talented team land on their feet in a tough business climate. Those who are staying with WhyHotel will be taking pay cuts to further soften the impact on the business, including the both of us.

Last year, we were a startup ready to double down on growth at an unbelievable speed. Now, we must prepare our business to weather this storm in order to come out well positioned as the clouds clear. For the time being, this is moving our pop-up business to lighter staffed hotels with longer-term stays. We plan to resume our full pop-up hotel operation when it is safe and practical to do so. In the interim, we are going to continue to focus full steam ahead on hospitality living, our second product that we debuted last year. We will put our energy into bringing new flexible-use assets that can switch between apartment and hotel use to the market. We are excited to share more about this in the weeks ahead, but for now, know that when the world opens back up for travel, we will be ready for each product to kick into high-gear. 

Most importantly - if you are looking to hire, we want to hear from you. Our people who bet on us over the last two and a half years are some of the best in the business, and it has been our privilege to build this company with them. We want to do everything we can to be a resource for each and every one of our former teammates as they search for their next opportunity. If you are looking to fill any open positions with a rockstar employee, we have a list of recommendations we’d love to share. Reach out to either one of us directly, and we will connect you.

Thank you to everyone who has helped us build WhyHotel and who has supported us along the way. Today was extremely sad and difficult - but we remain hopeful about what’s to come. 

Jason & Bao