Johannes Reck, the unicorn founder of the travel platform GetYourGuide, is in emergency mode with hundreds of employees. And at the recent Bits & Pretzels Live event he gives rare insights into how he and his team are managing the “most existential crisis in the entire tourism industry since the existence of modern tourism”, as he calls it.

The advice that Johannes got from his advisers on how to handle the effects of the current corona crisis was pretty clear: Cut deep and cut fast, make the organization as slim as you can as soon as possible, cut costs and lay off people. 

Zero business and zero layoffs

Surprisingly, the co-founder of GetYourGuide who secured $484 million in funding only last year, decided against that and instead started to see the pandemic as a time-extension for his company to work on its product to make it more attractive for users. 

And he also included the team into all of his decisions and let the people in his company decide themselves who would agree on short-term work and who would stay in the company full-time. 

“As soon as you motivate people and you give them a lot of transparency about what you do and what your goals are, they do miraculous things”, Johannes said. 

According to him, GetYourGuide was able to reduce its costs by more than 50 percent without having to let go of anybody – and is able to continue to do so until the end of 2020. 

Watch the whole interview with Johannes Reck here: 

https://youtu.be/c1QHsPPKQUA