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Lianna Frausto, who worked as a sales coordinator for Sonder in San Antonio, said she woke up Sunday morning to a whirlwind of confusion.
After the news broke that Marriott had terminated its licensing agreement with Sonder, a short-term apartment rental company, she spent the day reaching out to other employees and trying to figure out what it would mean for their jobs.
“I can’t believe how many people I had to hear it from before I got it from the horse’s mouth,” she told Business Insider.
Frausto received an email from the company on Sunday evening that said Sonder was ceasing operations, but she said she still wasn’t sure if that meant she was immediately out of a job. “Nobody told us that we were fired until the next day,” she said.
Business Insider spoke to four Sonder employees who described how they coped as they dealt with spotty communication and upset guests, all while confronting an uncertain future.
“My employees looked to me for answers, and I didn’t know what was going on because I hadn’t been told anything,” a manager at a Sonder hotel in New York, who learned of the situation from a crying guest, said.
As Business Insider has reported, the breakup between the company and Marriott also caused mayhem for guests who were told they needed to leave by 9 a.m. on Monday and that existing reservations would not be honored.
Sonder managed 140 Marriott-licensed properties and about 7,700 apartments as of September, according to Marriott’s latest earnings report. On Monday, Sonder announced it was filing for bankruptcy protection and ceasing operations. The company had 1,421 employees as of the end of 2024.
Francis Davidson, the cofounder and former CEO of Sonder, told Business Insider on Thursday he was stunned by the company’s downfall. Davidson stepped down earlier this year after Sonder completed its integration with Marriott. “We all felt good about the positive momentum we were seeing in June when I left,” he said, “and so to then see that the business has now run into a brick wall, it’s just shocking to me.”
Neither Sonder nor Marriott responded to a request for comment.
Employees say they found out they could be losing their jobs on the news
The New York manager said everything at work was normal on Sunday morning until the guest appeared at 11:30 a.m. and said she’d received a phone notification from Marriott that the company was no longer affiliated with Sonder and that her reservation had been canceled.
More started to show up at the desk looking for answers, but the employees didn’t have any. As of Sunday night, staff had not been officially told they were being let go, the manager said.
Employees showed up for work on Monday to help guests depart by the 9 a.m. deadline, even though, at that point, “we all knew we didn’t have jobs the next day,” the manager said.
Logan Ford, a manager of a group sales team at Sonder, said the confusion continued Monday with mixed messages about whether that would be his last day or if he might be asked to stay until Thursday to help close things out with clients.
“Monday, I sat there and waited to hear anything from the senior leadership team, but it was just dead air. Silence,” Ford said.
A Sonder employee who worked in customer support said employees who believed they were all going to be laid off started saying their goodbyes on Slack.
Confirmation came in the form of a termination notice email on Monday shortly before 5 p.m.
It said they would be paid through November 10 and that their healthcare would remain in place until the end of the month. Employees were told to return their laptops, phones, and other company property.
“The Company’s severance policy has been discretionary and, given the Company’s financial circumstances at this time, the Company is not in a position to offer terminating employees severance pay,” the memo, which was signed by interim CEO Janice Sears, said.
Soon after, the employees said, their accounts were shut down and their laptop access was cut.
Ethan Werchniak, a guest at a Sonder hotel in Montreal, told Business Insider that he learned he had to vacate the property on Monday morning because an employee knocked on his door to say his reservation had been canceled.
Werchniak said the employee told him, “I’m very sorry to be very blunt with you, I’m losing my job right now. My last task is to tell people that they need to leave.”
“I’m like, OK, this guy’s probably having a worse day than I am,” Werchniak said. “So I don’t tear him a new one.”
Were you laid off due to the termination of Marriott-Sonder’s licensing agreement? Contact Kelsey Vlamis via email at [email protected] or Aditi Bharade at [email protected].
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