Airbnb global vice president and head of China region Ge Hong has reportedly departed the company just four months after ascending to new role.
Airbnb said that Xiao Jinhong will become China head while they find a suitable replacement. Prior to this departure, Airbnb announced that its co-founder and chief strategy officer Nathan Blecharczyk would be chairman of Airbnb China.
Commenting on his resignation, Ge said he wanted to take a break for some time, but did not mention the reason for his departure or his future plans.
Ge joined Airbnb in 2016 and he was appointed Airbnb global vice president and head of China region in June 2017. Prior to this, Ge was the leader of Airbnb China product and technology research and development team. Before joining Airbnb, Ge worked for Facebook as technology director and he worked for Google before joining Facebook.
In September 2017, Ge revealed during an interview that Airbnb achieved rapid growth in the Chinese domestic travel market over the past year and the number of places booked for domestic traveling was close to that booked for overseas traveling. Airbnb had 120,000 active hosts in China and about 2.5 million people used those hosts, representing an increase of 287%.
However, Ge left the company only four months after he took the new China head role.
