8 October 20251 min read
Rebuilding After Black Swan Events
How Southeast Asian Travel Founders Navigated the Pandemic and Rebuilt Their Businesses
Survival dictated rapid, painful choices. RedDoorz quickly leveraged force majeure clauses to pause minimum revenue guarantees to hotel partners and restructured its workforce. Both companies underwent multiple rounds of salary reductions and head-count cuts, with one founder leading by example by taking an incremental salary reduction up to 90%. Unexpectedly, the crisis also fostered collaborations among direct industry competitors to formulate unified responses.