Skift Travel News Blog

Despite a couple of rounds of layoffs since the middle of last year, Sonder hired 97 new, non-executive employees, and gave them all stocks options, as is the company’s practice.

A Sonder apartment in Rome, Italy. Source: Sonder

These were mostly city positions and customer service jobs, and were a combination of back-filling roles and new ones because of property and building openings, a spokesperson said.

Sonder’s careers page lists around 75 open positions from housekeeping leads to front desk hospitality agents and a vice president of design, development and openings in a variety of global destinations.

In its Tuesday announcement, the hospitality company said it granted a total of 327,600 shares of stock options to the 97 new employees as a whole.

Sonder’s share price at the Tuesday close was 58 cents, down 3.69 percent for the day.

Sonder, the property management company that went public through a blank check merger, or SPAC, found someone to replace its outgoing chief financial officer with the help of 2.7 million stock options as an incentive.

It is challenging to recruit a chief financial officer when your stock was trading at $0.90 per share, the exercise price on the date of the grant, March 16. SOND closed Monday at $0.81 with a paltry $179 million valuation.

Bourgault most recently served as chief financial officer at online diamond retailer and privately held Blue Nile for a year-and-a-half until October 2022. Before Blue Nile, he served in various financial positions at Expedia Group for 17 years, including departing as chief financial officer of Expedia Portfolio and Retail in March 2020.

Some 25 percent of the new chief financial officer’s stock option grant will vest on the first anniversary of his hiring. His annual salary is $495,000.

Bourgault can earn a fortune if he can help steer Sonder into share price territory that is well above flirting with a delisting edict.

He replaced Sanjay Banker, who served as Sonder’s chief financial officer and president until December 2022. Bourgault does not have the title of president.

In 2021, Banker earned a $465,000 salary and had nearly 46,000 option awards — compared with Bourgault’s roughly 2.7 million.