Travelers utilizing the platform Sonder to book accommodations in serviced apartments and boutique hotels faced sudden disruptions over the weekend due to the abrupt end of its partnership with hotel giant Marriott. On Sunday, Marriott announced the termination of its licensing agreement with Sonder for access to the Marriott Bonvoy reservation system, a relationship that had only been in effect for just over a year.
The immediate fallout was significant, with guests around the world receiving notifications instructing them to vacate their rooms. Damien Jay, a clinical transplant coordinator on assignment, expressed his frustration on social media, stating he was informed via email to check out by 9 AM the following morning despite being in the midst of critical duties related to life-and-death organ recovery cases. He described the situation as not merely inconvenient but potentially dangerous.
Retired tech executive Steve McGraw, who had been staying at a Sonder property in New York City with his family, reported incurring unexpected costs as he scrambled to find alternate accommodations. “We ended up spending several thousand dollars more to find a new place,” McGraw said, emphasizing the poor treatment from Sonder during this crisis.
Further complications arose for other guests who returned to their rooms to find their belongings already packed up, or encountered staff who were unaware of the sudden change in status regarding their reservations. Patrick M. D’Aoust from Ottawa shared his experience, revealing he was given less than a day’s notice to vacate his accommodations booked for an anniversary trip.
Social media quickly filled with customer complaints regarding the hasty evictions. Travel vlogger @reece.traveling described his situation as “basically homeless,” highlighting the chaotic impact of the cancellation on affected guests. In response to the backlash, Marriott stated it would assist customers seeking refunds for any pre-paid reservations made through Sonder.
As news broke, Sonder announced it was “winding down operations immediately” and anticipated filing for Chapter 7 liquidation in the U.S. while entering insolvency proceedings in its international markets. The company’s challenges, compounded by difficulties in integrating with Marriott and subsequent financial losses, were candidly noted in a statement from Interim CEO Janice Sears.
Once valued at over $1 billion and seen as a formidable competitor to Airbnb, Sonder had struggled to achieve profitability since going public in 2022, a venture complicated by the ongoing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Experts highlighted that financial sustainability was undercut by the company’s reliance on pre-leased short-term rentals rather than leveraging existing property owners, a model that ultimately proved to be unsustainable.
Nicolas Graf, a professor at New York University’s Jonathan M. Tisch Center of Hospitality, underscored the severity of the situation, indicating that without profitability, companies in the industry inevitably face cash shortages, leading to dire outcomes like those currently unfolding at Sonder.
