A little over a year ago it was difficult to imagine a world before Uber disrupted the taxi industry or Airbnb turned everyone's home into a potential holiday rental.

But now that's all changed. Almost as quickly as both companies spread across towns and cities around the world, the demand for their services has been hit by the impact of the pandemic.

COVID-19 measures have shrunk the number of Uber taxi bookings worldwide by 80 percent, resulting in 7,000 redundancies, a third of the company's global workforce.

Airbnb axed 1,900 employees in May, around 25 percent of its staff, following a 90 percent drop in bookings at the start of the pandemic.

The drop in demand for Uber and Airbnb has resulted in big financial losses and left many people wondering how both businesses will adapt to a post-pandemic world.

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Uber and Airbnb grew rapidly because they used a different type of business model compared with traditional businesses. Rather than creating products to sell to consumers they created platforms to match suppliers with buyers, (e.g. taxi drivers and customers or homes and holidaymakers).

Uber makes money from its taxi service by taking a cut of each fare, while Airbnb does the same on the money paid by holidaymakers to homeowners for each booking. But without substantial bookings the model doesn't work and the two companies can't make enough money.

Even before the pandemic, Uber still hadn't posted a profit since its launch in 2010 and neither had Airbnb, 13 years since its platform first went live. The pathway to profitability is likely to become even more difficult as new legislation eats into their revenues.

On Friday, a court ruling in the UK ordered Uber to recognize drivers as staff and not contractors. This means they have to pay drivers the minimum wage, holiday pay and for idle time while they wait for bookings.

In Paris, France's highest court has also approved legislation by the city's authorities forcing homeowners renting out their properties to holidaymakers to register their properties for tax and limit rental duration to 120 days per year. 

So what does the future hold for Uber and Airbnb? Even if vaccinations are successfully rolled out worldwide in the coming months, global travel is likely to remain stunted for the foreseeable future – meaning both companies will have to innovate to maintain their pre-pandemic growth.

Uber's food delivery business, Uber Eats, has grown by 50 percent during the pandemic and surpassed rides revenue in the second quarter of 2020. But it still made a loss because it charges less for delivery than it pays its drivers for transporting food and drink to customers.

That hasn't stopped Uber investing in the soaring demand for delivery services during national lockdowns. The company has sought to tap into this trend by buying alcohol delivery service Drizly for $1.2 billion after its bookings soared by 300 percent year-on-year in 2020, and food delivery service Postmates for $2.65bn. 

Airbnb, meanwhile, was given a $2.5bn cash injection from private equity last summer to help it weather the early pandemic storm. The company has also remodeled its business to appeal to people looking to holiday closer to home. Bookings more than 500 miles away from home have dropped by 48 percent, but those less than 50 miles away are up by 17 percent.