"Sonder, the San Francisco-based rival to Airbnb that had established a lucrative partnership with Marriott last year, has now lost that partnership and is shutting down entirely. You may be familiar with Sonder only from a local controversy that arose in mid-2019, when it became known that the short-term rental company had taken control of a newly built residential building at Church and Market streets, which had been sold to the neighborhood as new rental housing."
"The company provided hotel-like stays in Airbnb-esque, design-forward properties that it managed, and at its peak it was operating in 37 cities worldwide. In 2021, Sonder went public at a valuation of $2.2 billion, just as larger rival Airbnb was seeing its newly available shares rising in value. And in 2024, Sonder inked a licensing deal with Marriott International that promised to put Sonder's 9,000 apartment-style units on Marriott's booking platform."
Sonder operated hotel-like, design-forward short-term rental properties across 37 cities and went public in 2021 at a $2.2 billion valuation. A mid-2019 controversy involved Sonder taking control of a newly built residential building at Church and Market streets that had been marketed as rental housing; Sonder later sued to exit that deal when the pandemic began. Sonder signed a 2024 licensing agreement with Marriott to list roughly 9,000 units, but prolonged technology integration failures and other issues led Marriott to terminate the deal for default and remove Sonder properties. Severe financial decline and a collapsing stock price culminated in a Chapter 7 filing and planned liquidation.
Read at sfist.com
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