Sonder CEO Discusses Future Innovation: Full Video

25.08.2023 - 13:24 / skift.com / Rashaad Jorden / Francis Davidson / Seth Borko

Sonder CEO Francis Davidson acknowledges that his company has undergone a lot of changes throughout the years, and it’s poised for more, with the short-term rental operator considering expansions to popular leisure markets.

The company has also faced numerous challenges, such as a disappointing public debut and two major layoffs in the past 12 moths. During his recent appearance at the Skift Short-Term Rental Summit in New York, Davidson touched on these concerns, as well as why Sonder doesn’t need a lot of brands and its reasoning for building its own tech.

Watch the full video of his discussion with Skift Senior Research Analyst Seth Borko as well as read the transcript below.

Seth Borko: Hi, everyone. Hello, everybody. Hey, Francis. Thanks for joining us.

Francis Davidson: Pleasure to be here.

Borko: Great to have you here.

Davidson: Of course.

Borko: I was tempted to start this and say that Sonder needs no introduction, but I’m not sure if that’s really true anymore because some people might think of you as this company that just picks an apartment or two, puts them on Airbnb. That’s definitely not what you are, right?

Davidson: Yeah.

Borko: How have you changed in the last year or two?

Davidson: Oh my God. The business has evolved so much, I’d say, in the last handful of years in particular. So I started this business as a college student renting student apartments for the summer in Montreal, and we’ve come a very long way since then. Now, we operate a global portfolio of apartments, but also hotels, boutique hotels, and the form factor has changed tremendously. No more student apartments. What we have today is full buildings branded Sonder, you’ll see Sonder signs on the outside. You’ll see beautifully designed lobbies in addition to the apartments that are put together in a way that is consistent, high quality, elevated, with really a focus on design.

And we’ve got this technology platform in the backend that offers a really modern guest experience and optimizes a lot of the operations of the background so that we can offer that really high quality, consistent experience at an affordable price point. So this is really what Sonder is about, a hospitality company that goes beyond short-term rentals. Of course, this is where we started. It’s our bread and butter. We’re very strong there, but we’re also a hotel operator, we’re also a resort operator and we have our eyes on other accommodation categories as well.

Borko: All right. There’s so much to unpack there, Francis. That’s a great starting point. I want to start with the whole home thing. So you now have control over pretty much … Any new building you bring onto your platform, you’re going to have control over it. Tell us more about that. Why