Online booking giant Agoda announced that they are downsizing by laying off 1,500 employees in 30 countries due to the COVID-19 crisis. According to the company, most of the employees laid off are from CEG (Customer Experience Group), product development, IT, finance, partner services and marketing.
Agoda offers over 2,6 million properties in 200 countries around the globe. Agoda’s parent company Booking Holdings owns the world’s leading online travel & related services brands such as Booking.com, KAYAK, Priceline, Rentalcars.com and OpenTable. The company previously announced that they have reduced over 400 employees from Kayak and Open Table.
Agoda has taken several measures to safeguard the business, which includes all senior leadership team members to have a temporary salary reduction of 20 percent from June 1. CEO John Brown will also be foregoing his salary for the rest of the year 2020.
In order to retain customers during the pandemic, Agoda introduced “EasyCancel” policy in March 2020, which allows participating partner hotels and properties worldwide to offer guests greater booking flexibility and the option to cancel up to 24 hours before arrival. This policy applies to all bookings made until June 30.
Agoda is not only the online travel agent who downsized the workforce. Earlier in February 2020, expedia.com has laid off over 3000 employees globally due to COVID-19 crisis. Moreover, TripAdvisor also cut more than 25% of its global workforce to mitigate the damages to the company due to COVID-19 pandemic.
