• Tony Hawk is undoubtedly the most famous skateboarder on the planet. His claim to fame is being the first skateboarder to land a 900, or a 900-degree aerial spin, in 1999.
• He got his start in the 1980s as a 12-year-old. His immediate success with sponsors allowed him to buy a house at age 17.
• As skateboarding's popularity waned in the 1990s, Hawk struggled, at one point only spending $5 a day on Taco Bell.
• But he positioned himself well for the resurgence of the sport, ultimately building one of the most influential skateboarding brands, Birdhouse, and striking a lucrative deal with video game company Activision.
• Hawk has poured his millions into his own philanthropic efforts and invested in a number of companies, like Blue Bottle Coffee and Nest.
• Estimates put Hawk's net worth above $100 million.
• Representatives for Hawk and his production company, 900 Films, didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

SEE ALSO: Tony Hawk thinks it's funny when fans don't recognize him or mistake him for other celebrities — and he says it happens 'all the time'

Tony Hawk is a legendary skateboarder — and now businessman and philanthropist — known for being the first ever to land a highly technical 900-degree aerial spin.

Hawk accomplished the feat in 1999 at the X Games. It took him 11 tries. "This is the best day of my life," he told the crowd.

At the time, he was 31 years old. It was his last year of professional competition — but his wealth only grew from there. He is estimated to have a net worth above $100 million.

Hawk started skateboarding professionally at age 14 and was immediately successful. By age 17, he bought his first home.

Hawk was winning amateur skateboarding competitions at age 12, and started skateboarding professionally at age 14. By the time he was 16, he was touted by many as the best competitive skateboarder in the world.

As a 17-year-old high school senior, his "annual income surpassed that of his teachers," according to his website. This was mostly due to his primary sponsorship with Powell-Peralta skateboards and his participation in the Bones Brigade skateboard team. He was even doing commercials for brands like Mountain Dew.

"We were making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year as teenagers and traveling the world," Hawk told CNBC in 2019. 

"When I started making money ... I thought I'd continue to do so forever," Hawk said earlier this year. "My dad knew better and encouraged me to save and invest in a house. So I owned my own home when I was only 17 years old."

In the 1990s, when interest in skateboarding waned, so did Hawk's income.

As skateboarding developed a negative reputation in the early 1990s, Hawk started to see the impact on his own wallet.

"My income was literally dropping in half every month," Hawk told CNBC in 2019. "And people just weren't buying skate stuff, nor Tony Hawk stuff."

He took on skate demo jobs that provided about $100 a day. At one point, he was surviving on a $5-a-day Taco Bell allowance.

He stayed focused. He refinanced the house and founded Birdhouse, a skateboard team and company, with fellow skater Per Welinder in 1992, preparing for skateboarding to make a comeback.

As skateboarding regained popularity with the creation of the X Games, Hawk's Birdhouse became a mainstay brand.

The X Games were founded in 1995. The event poured new life into the skateboarding industry.

Birdhouse then became more than a skate team — it started producing boards and accessories around 1993 or 1994. Hawk told Rolling Stone that, at the time, he was "just calling shops and saying ... 'You wanna buy a board or two?'"

Birdhouse saw a sales spike after exposure from the X Games. The company, according to Sports Illustrated, was doing nearly $25 million a year in sales around 2002.

Hawk also created his own clothing line in 1998, which he then sold within two years to Quiksilver for an undisclosed amount. Hawk's clothing sales in 1999, before he sold the line, hovered around $1 million.

Hawk reaped a number of endorsements as skateboarding hit mainstream popularity.

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In the early 2000s, those endorsements included ESPN, Sony, McDonalds,Mountain Dew, Jeep, and Bagel Bites, as evidenced by the above commercial. 

Hawk's 2002 Bagel Bites endorsement earned him a bit of backlash at the time and accusations of "selling out," he told AdAge in 2019. He teamed up with Bagel Bites again for an ad campaign last year.

While the values of Hawk's individual endorsements are largely unknown, a 2008 USA Today profile asserted Hawk made "millions of dollars" from his corporate sponsors and marketing deals.

Hawk made a deal with Activision to create the Tony Hawk Pro Skater video game series in 1999, the same year he landed the 900.

Hawk told CNBC was offered a flat fee of $500,000 to put his name on the Activision game. He turned the deal down, and instead asked for royalties, which was a gamble.

It paid off. The franchise has surpassed an estimated $1.4 billion in worldwide sales as of 2019, according to Hawk's website.

The first editions of the game earned Hawk royalties of more than $6 million per year in the early 2000s.

Now, the beloved first edition of the game is getting a long-awaited remaster.

It was just announced that the classic skateboarding games "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater" and "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2" are getting completely remastered and bundled into a new game that's coming this September for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC.

Hawk's royalties deal almost assuredly means he'll see major kickbacks following the re-release.

Hawk has made multiple appearances as himself in television shows like "The Simpsons" and "Who Wants to be a Millionaire." The latter ultimately led to him creating the Tony Hawk Foundation.

In 2017, Hawk told Business Insider's Shana Lebowitz that one of the proudest moments of his career was a cameo on "The Simpsons" in 2003. He played himself in an episode where Homer challenges him to a skateboard match. "It was a tipping point of skateboarding being accepted into the mainstream in a lot of ways," he said.

Although he has a long list of TV and film appearances, it was a separate early 2000s TV appearance that got Hawk to start a charity.

Hawk won $125,000 on a celebrity edition of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" in 2002. He used the winnings to create the Tony Hawk Foundation, which funds the creation of safe skate parks across the country. The foundation has gone on to award over $10 million to more than 600 public skate park projects in low-income areas in all 50 states.

Hawk has made a number of interesting investments across industries, including in a coffee chain and in tech companies like DocuSign.

Hawk founded a video production company called 900 Films in 1999, named for his famous move, originally geared toward filming skateboarding.

Now, the San Diego-based company produces action sports content, like the popular YouTube account RIDE Channel, as well as advertisements for companies like Kraft, Sony, and Adobe.

Hawk was an early investor in California's Blue Bottle Coffee chain, which was sold to Nestle in 2017 for $500 million. He, and other early investors including Bono and Jared Leto, likely received a nice payout.

Hawk was also an early investor in Nest, which was acquired by Google for $3.2 billion in 2014. He has also invested in a San Diego brewery called the Black Plague. He told Reuters in 2017 that he has also invested in "DocuSign and a few other tech companies," because he like startups and "being on the ground floor of stuff."

These days, Hawk's family is based in San Diego.

His home base is in Encinitas, California. The private home is equipped with an infinity pool that overlooks San Diego and its own skate park, according to a 2015 GQ profile. It's filled with art Hawk has collected over the years — including a framed image of his "Simpsons" cameo that is signed by the cast.

Hawk also reportedly purchased a three-unit apartment building in Detroit in 2016 for an undisclosed price, according to the Detroit Free Press. (Hawk's wife, Cathy Goodman, is from the Detroit area.) They reportedly planned to rent two of the units and keep another available for Hawk family visits to the area, the Free Press wrote at the time.

Hawk, who has been married four times, has four children and two stepchildren from his marriages.

His oldest son, Riley, followed in Hawk's footsteps and became a professional skateboarder. At one point, he even skated for Hawk's Birdhouse team. Riley is also a musician.

Hawk reportedly drives a Tesla Model S.

According to a 2018 Sports Illustrated profile, Hawk shuttles his family around in a Tesla Model S with an all-white interior. The car has a base price of $74,490.

Hawk told MotorTrend in 2010 that his daily driving car at the time was Jeep Cherokee. He also mentioned that he had a manual 1964 Chevy Corvette Sting Ray, which auction for about $50,000.

Although Hawk isn't as prominent a public figure as he was at the peak of skateboarding's popularity, he's good natured about it.

Hawk frequently takes to Twitter to joke about being mistaken for other celebrities, particularly in airports.

He previously told Business Insider's Meredith Cash that he is often confused for legendary NFL quarterback Tom Brady. He assumes this particular confusion happens because "they know there's some sports star whose name starts with a T."

"I get recognized all the time, to the point where it's kind of strange. I never imagined I'd ever be famous from skateboarding," he told Cash. "But it's cool!"

• According to a report from Douglas Elliman, Manhattan's rental market saw the number of new leases drop to a record low in April compared to the same time last year.
• However, both Manhattan's non-luxury and luxury market market also saw an increase in median rent.
• In addition, Brooklyn and Queens also saw increases in median rent and huge drops in the number of new listings.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

In the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, many Manhattan renters have opted to renew their leases for the year as they continue to follow stay-at-home orders. 

In fact, according to an April market report from Douglas Elliman, the number of new leases in Manhattan saw a 70.9% year-over-year decrease to 1,407. According to the report, that is the lowest number of new leases recorded in a decade and the largest percent decline ever recorded.

The Elliman report credits that decline to the coronavirus pandemic, stating that "new leasing activity declined at record rates due to the COVID-19 shutdown, while the market share of lease renewals surged as tenants sought relief," 

In addition, the report found that the April vacancy rate, which was 2.42%, was the highest recorded in at least 14 years. 

But Manhattan's median rent price actually rose in the midst of these declines, and was up 4.9% compared to April 2019, to $3,650. The rental price per square foot was up 9% to $74.20.

Like the non-luxury market, Manhattan's luxury market saw a drastic year-over-year drop in the number of new leases, down 71.1% compared to April 2019.

And, like the non-luxury market, the median rent for the higher end also saw a year-over-year increase, up 5.5% to $8,650.

Queens and Brooklyn saw a similar April fate

Both Brooklyn and Queens saw the number of new leases in April drop by more than 60% compared to the same time last year.

In Queens, the number of new leases fell by 64.9% to 100, and in Brooklyn, the number of new leases fell 66.8% to 439.

"The record decline in new leasing activity due to the Coronavirus crisis indicated that renewal activity was where the weakness in rental price trends could be found," the report reads.

"Renewal leasing activity surged in response to the sharp drop in new leasing activity caused by COVID-19 shelter in place rules, skewing aggregate new leasing price trends higher," 

But, like Manhattan, both markets saw a year-over year increase in the median rent price. 

In Queens,  the median rental price rose by 4.2% to $2970. And in Brooklyn, the median rental price shot up 14.4% to $3,259, a new record, according to the report. 

The rental market still faces obstacles, such as rent strikes, as the pandemic drags on

As of May 6, 80.2% of apartment households were able to make full or partial rent payments.

To arrive at that percentage, the National Multifamily Housing Council's Rent Payment Tracker surveyed 11.4 million units of professionally managed apartment units across the US.

The tracker found that May's 80.2% was an improvement on April, which saw 78% of rents paid, and a slight decrease from 81.7% in May 2019.

According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, the unexpectedly high amount of renters able to make payments in May points to the effectiveness of stimulus checks and expanded unemployment benefits, but some fear that won't continue to be enough.

 If policy makers don't address the stress renters are under because of the pandemic, mass evictions, deteriorating housing stock, and a real estate or housing market crash are all at stake, a report by the Urban Institute predicts.

"We argue that there is a need for a national rental assistance program. None of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act programs provide that," the report reads.

The hashtags #CancelRent and #CantPayMay have been trending on Twitter in response to the growing unemployment rate. And a group called Westriketogether.org claims that around 200,000 people across the US have signed petitions committing to not pay rent until the government takes action on rent, as noted by the WSJ.

SEE ALSO: Here's how to navigate the generational divide that is shaping the 2020 housing market: Millennials are set to drive home sales but boomers are sitting it out

DON'T MISS: Mortgage rates are predicted to hit record lows by the end of 2020, but is it a buyer's or seller's market? Here's what you need to know if you're planning to buy or sell a home this year.

Join the conversation about this story »

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• Elon Musk vowed to sell "almost all physical possessions" including his homes in a tweet May 1.
• Five of Musk's mansions appeared on Zillow as "for sale by owner" Wednesday. The Tesla CEO had already listed two Bel Air mansions on May 3.
• Musk owns at least seven houses worth a combined $100 million, including six mansions within steps of each other in Bel Air.
• The billionaire tech mogul has a net worth of $39.3 billion, per Bloomberg's latest estimate.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Elon Musk is apparently following through on his pledge to sell off his entire $100 million real-estate portfolio.

The cofounder of electric automaker Tesla said that he plans to sell "almost all physical possessions" and "own no house" in a tweet May 1. A total of seven of Musk's homes have since appeared on Zillow as "for sale by owner."

The listings are a stunning reversal of Musk's real-estate strategy to date; the billionaire spent years buying up adjacent mansions in Los Angeles' swanky Bel Air neighborhood. During a recent interview on "The Joe Rogan Experience" podcast, Musk explained that he'd purchased neighboring properties because of privacy concerns, including people trying to reach his primary home by climbing over walls.

All told, Musk and companies associated with him own at least seven homes worth over $100 million, Business Insider previously reported. 

Keep reading to take a look inside Musk's real-estate portfolio.

SEE ALSO: Elon Musk and Grimes just had a baby boy. Here's how the eccentric CEO makes and spends his $38.2 billion fortune.

DON'T MISS: Kim Kardashian and Kanye West are collectively worth over half a billion dollars. Here's a look inside the couple's real-estate portfolio, from their sprawling Wyoming ranch to their $60 million Hidden Hills mansion.

Elon Musk built a $39.3 billion fortune as the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX.

Source: Business Insider

Musk and the companies affiliated with him own at least seven residences collectively worth over $100 million, mostly in the Los Angeles area.

Source: Business Insider

Musk bought his first piece of Bel Air real estate in late 2012.

Source: Los Angeles Times

The Tesla CEO started off by renting the colonial-style house in 2010 and lived with his five sons.

Source: Business Insider

He later purchased the mansion for $17 million, although it's now estimated to be worth $22.3 million. Musk listed it for sale by owner for $30 million on May 3, days after tweeting he'd "own no house."

Source: Wall Street Journal, Business Insider

The house has 20,248 square feet of space divided into different wings, with a total of seven bedrooms. It also has a two-story library.

Source: Variety, Wall Street Journal 

The kitchen features a brick ceiling.

Source: Business Insider

The backyard has a pool ...

Source: Business Insider

... a tennis court ...

Source: Business Insider

... and a view of the exclusive Bel-Air Country Club. The house also has a gym and a wine cellar.

Source: Business Insider

Musk bought two other houses on the same street, including one for $6.75 million in October 2013.

Source: Business Insider

Musk put the home on the market for $9.5 million on May 3.

Source: Business Insider

Beloved actor Gene Wilder lived in the 2,756 square foot, three-bedroom, three-bathroom ranch-style home for over 30 years until 2007.

Source: Business Insider, Wall Street Journal 

Musk used the house as a private school for his children. And in a 2015 interview with Vogue, the billionaire CEO described it as "like a little schoolhouse on the prairie, except in Bel Air on a golf course."

Source: Variety, Vogue

Musk later purchased two more on Bel Air mansions on an adjacent street — another ranch house for $20 million in July 2015 and an unfinished mansion for $24.25 million in 2016.

Neighbors told the Wall Street Journal in December that the 9,309-square-foot mansion has been under construction since 2011.

Source: Variety, Wall Street Journal

Two years later, Musk reportedly bought another mansion next door to those. The property — a colonial-style, two-story home built with a white brick facade — is estimated to be worth $4.2 million. These are part of a group of four homes listed for a collective $62.5 million on Zillow on May 13.

Source: Wall Street Journal, Zillow

Musk had bought yet another Los Angeles mansion for $4.3 million in July 2015, but apparently didn't maintain it well. In December, the Wall Street Journal described this property as "unkempt, with a scruffy, bush-filled front yard, a stained glass window, a clay rabbit and dead plants in pots by the front door."

Neighbors also told the Journal in December that it didn't appear anyone was living in this house full-time.

Source: Wall Street Journal

Though Musk has previously said that he sleeps on a couch or on the floor of a conference room in Tesla's Fremont, California, headquarters during busy production periods, he also owns another estate nearby.

Musk said he is considering moving Tesla's production to Texas or Nevada after California officials attempted to block the carmaker from restarting production after being shut down amid the coronavirus pandemic, Bloomberg reported.

Source: Business Insider, Bloomberg

Located in the ritzy Bay Area suburb of Hillsborough, the 100-year-old, 16,000-square-foot Mediterranean-style mansion boasts 10 bedrooms, bay views, hiking trails, and a ballroom. Musk bought it for $23.4 million in June 2017, but just listed it on Zillow for $35 million.

Source: Wall Street Journal

The tech mogul also previously owned this "boomerang-shaped house" in Brentwood, California, about 15 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles with his ex-wife Talulah Riley. The former couple paid just under $3.7 million for it in 2014, per the Variety-owned real-estate site Dirt.

Source: Business Insider, Dirt

Read more: Elon Musk has sold his mansion overlooking Los Angeles for nearly $4 million. Here's a look inside.

That house is surrounded by privacy hedges for security ...

Source: Business Insider

... but has floor-to-ceiling windows throughout to let the light in.

Source: Business Insider

He sold the house for $4 million in late August 2019, Business Insider previously reported.

Source: Business Insider

• Most of India's billionaires have been losing money during the coronavirus pandemic.
• But a supermarket tycoon who controls the "Indian version of Wal-Mart" has jumped up the list to become India's second-richest person.
• Mumbai-based businessman Mukesh Ambani remains the richest person in India in 2020 for the 13th year in a row, with a net worth of $53 billion, according to Forbes' Real Time Billionaires ranking.
• India's richest people also include software billionaire Shiv Nadar, infrastructure tycoon Gautam Adani, and steel baron Lakshmi Mittal.
• The 15 richest people in India are worth a combined $175.7 billion.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Most of India's richest people lost money in 2019, according to Forbes.

Even so, one person has remained firmly at the top of the list of the country's billionaires.

For the 13th year in a row, Mukesh Ambani, the head of oil-gas-telecom conglomerate Reliance Industries, remains the richest person in India in 2020 with an estimated net worth of $53 billion. He's almost $37 billion richer than the country's second-richest person, Radhakishan Damani, who controls the "Indian version of Wal-Mart," per Forbes.

India's richest 15 people, which include Ambani, pharmaceuticals billionaires, and infrastructure tycoons, are worth a combined $175.7 billion.

Here are the 15 richest people in India right now, ranked. All net worths are sourced from Forbes.

SEE ALSO: Meet the Ambanis, Asia's wealthiest family, who live in a $1 billion skyscraper and mingle with royals and Bollywood stars

DON'T MISS: Tadashi Yanai — the richest person in Japan — is stepping down from the board of SoftBank. Here's how the founder of Uniqlo built and spends his $31 billion fortune.

15. Savitri Jindal

Net worth: $4.8 billion

Age: 70

Source of wealth: steel

14. Kuldip Singh and Gurbachan Singh Dhingra

Net worth: $5.3 billion

Age: unknown

Source of wealth: real estate

13. Benu Gopal Bangur

Net worth: $5.9 billion

Age: 89

Source of wealth: cement

12. Nusli Wadia

Net worth: $6.0 billion

Age: 76

Source of wealth: consumer goods

11. Azim Premji

Net worth: $6.1 billion

Age: 76

Source of wealth: software services

10. Kumar Birla

Net worth: $7.3 billion

Age: 53

Source of wealth: commodities

9. Dilip Shanghvi

Net worth: $7.5 billion

Age: 65

Source of wealth: pharmaceuticals

8. Lakshmi Mittal

Net worth: $7.9 billion

Age: 70

Source of wealth: steel

7. Uday Kotak

Net worth: $10.3 billion

Age: 61

Source of wealth: banking

6. Gautam Adani

Net worth: $10.5 billion

Age: 58

Source of wealth:  commodities, infrastructure

5. Cyrus Poonawalla

Net worth: $10.7 billion

Age: 79

Source of wealth: vaccines

4. Sunil Mittal

Net worth: $10.8 billion

Age: 63

Source of wealth: telecom

3. Shiv Nadar

Net worth: $13.5 billion

Age: 75

Source of wealth: software services

2. Radhakishan Damani

Net worth: $16.1 billion

Age: 66

Source of wealth: investments, retail

1. Mukesh Ambani

Net worth: $53 billion

Age: 63

Source of wealth: petrochemicals, oil and gas, telecom

• Mark Zuckerberg celebrates his 36th birthday on May 14, 2020
• As Facebook CEO, Zuckerberg has been the face of the social network through its 15-year-history as it's seen massive growth and has faced many controversies.
• We've created a timeline outlining Zuckerberg's trajectory, from growing up in a New York City suburb to defending Facebook as it's hit with scandal after scandal.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Through success and controversy, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been regarded as one of the most brilliant minds of his generation. 

With a net worth of over $75 billion, the young CEO is credited with creating a social network that has more monthly active users than any single country in the world has people, and his majority voting rights give him complete control of the company — which also means he's often the focal point of any backlash or scandal.

Over the last few years, Facebook has faced scandal after scandal. It's been called out on multiple occasions for the way it handles user data, to the point where many have debated the pros and cons of free networks like Facebook that rely on advertisers for revenue. In 2018, Zuckerberg was summoned to give 10 hours of testimony to Congress as lawmakers sought answers about Facebook's role in various events like the 2016 election and the Cambridge Analytica data-harvesting scandal.

In the midst of the scandals, Zuckerberg has defended Facebook and reiterated the company's stated mission to connect the world with projects like bringing internet access to areas without less connectivity. Through his charity work, he's poured millions into education efforts and billions into initiatives for curing the world's diseases. 

Zuckerberg launched Facebook when he was just 19 years old. Now 15 years later, he's celebrating his 36th birthday, on May 14, 2020. Here's a look at the timeline of Zuckerberg's career, from his humble beginnings in a New York suburb to his role as one of the wealthiest CEOs in the world.

SEE ALSO: As dating apps try to pivot to virtual events, some users are trying to get people to violate social distancing rules

While he's now a titan of Silicon Valley, Mark Zuckerberg was raised in the quaint town of Dobbs Ferry, New York. He was born to Edward and Karen Zuckerberg, a dentist and psychiatrist, respectively. He has three siblings: Randi, Donna, and Arielle.

A precocious child, Mark at age 12 created a messaging program called "Zucknet" using Atari BASIC. He also coded computer games for his friends at a young age.

Source: Bio

While attending high school at the renowned Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, he built an early music streaming platform, which both AOL and Microsoft showed interest in. Still a teen, he rejected offers for an acquisition or a job.

Source: Bio

He wasn't just a computer nerd, though. Zuck loved the classics — "The Odyssey" and the like — and he became captain of his high school fencing team.

Source: The New Yorker

Soon after Zuckerberg started at Harvard University in 2002, he earned a reputation as a skilled developer. His first hit was "Face mash," a hot-or-not-style app that used the pictures of his classmates that he hacked from the school administration's dormitory ID files.

"Face mash" got 22,000 page views from 450 people in the first four hours it was up. Harvard quickly ordered it to be taken down, citing copyright and security concerns.

Zuckerberg met his now-wife, Priscilla Chan, at Harvard in 2003. Chan told Savannah Guthrie on "Today" that they met at a frat party thrown by Zuckerberg's fraternity, Alpha Epsilon Pi.

"On our first date, he told me that he'd rather go on a date with me than finish his take-home midterm," Chan told Guthrie during the sit-down interview in 2014.

Zuckerberg started "The Facebook" with several friends out of his dorm room, and dropped out of school in 2005, after his sophomore year, to focus on the social network full-time.

Zuckerberg wasn't always the polished statesman he is now. In Facebook's early days, he carried business cards that read, "I'm CEO, B---h."

Source: TechCrunch

Zuckerberg's company raised its $12.7 million Series A round of funding while he was barely of legal drinking age. The rest is history.

In 2010, Time magazine named Zuckerberg "Person of the Year."

Not many tech CEOs get to see themselves immortalized on the big screen, but the 2010 movie "The Social Network" put a dramatized version of Facebook's founding story in theaters.

"The Social Network," earned eight Academy Award nominations, but Zuckerberg strongly maintains that many of its details are incorrect.

Throughout Facebook's rise to greatness, Zuckerberg also spent his free time studying Chinese. By the fall of 2014, his Mandarin was so good that he managed to hold a 30-minute Q&A in the language.

Source: Business Insider 

Zuckerberg took Facebook public on May 18, 2012. The IPO raised $16 billion, making it the biggest tech IPO in history at the time. Zuckerberg became the 29th richest person on earth overnight.

Source: Business Insider

The day after Facebook went public, Zuckerberg and Chan got married. The relatively low-key event was actually a surprise wedding: Guests thought they were celebrating a med school graduation party for Chan.

Source: Business Insider, San Jose Mercury News

Zuckerberg designed Chan's ruby ring himself. Chan walked down the aisle with Beast, the couple's Hungarian Sheepdog, who they adopted in 2011.

Source: People, Business Insider

The two honeymooned in Italy, flying in on a private jet and staying at a five-star hotel, Portrait Suites, where rooms start at €800 per night. But they still kept it casual at times when looking for something to eat — paparazzi spotted the couple eating at McDonald's while overseas.

Source: Business Insider

In 2015, he and Chan announced they had given birth to a happy girl named Max. "There is so much joy in our little family," Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook.

They also announced their plan to sell 99% of Zuckerberg's Facebook stock over time— worth about $45 billion at the time — to fund a new LCC called The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The initiative funnels money toward issues like personalized learning, curing diseases, and connecting people.

Source: Business Insider

Even before announcing this massive new effort, he and Chan had committed $1.6 billion to philanthropic causes, including donations to the Center for Disease Control and the San Francisco General Hospital, which was eventually renamed after Zuckerberg.

Sources: The Verge, Business Insider

In September 2016, Chan and Zuckerberg pledged $3 billion to curing the world's diseases by the end of this century. "Can we help scientists to cure, prevent or manage all diseases within our children's lifetime?" Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook. "I'm optimistic we can."

Sources: Business Insider, Facebook

In May 2017, Chan and Zuckerberg announced that they had another baby on the way. Their second daughter, August, was born the month she was named after.

Source: Business Insider

In his mid-30s, Zuckerberg is one of a very small group of people who is worth more billions of dollars than years he has lived. Still, he's far from flashy about it — the CEO notoriously wears only a hoodie or a gray t-shirt with jeans.

In 2014, when he was the third-richest man in the world, he bought a black Volkswagen GTI with a manual transmission — which costs around $30,000.

Sources: Business Insider, Forbes

However, he did reportedly pay for an Italian Pagani Huayra supercar around the same time. The car starts at a cool $1.3 million.

Source: Yahoo

Zuckerberg also likes to spend his money on privacy: In October 2014, he shelled out around $100 million for 700 acres of secluded land on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.

He angered locals by trying to force out people who owned small parcels of land sprinkled throughout his estate. He later dropped the lawsuits.

Source: Business Insider

In Palo Alto, Zuckerberg reportedly bought his 5,617-square-foot home for $7 million in 2011, and then spent an additional $45 million on the four houses and land around it for the sake of privacy.

Sources: Business Insider, San Jose Mercury News 

He also bought a $10 million mansion in San Francisco, and then proceeded to spend more than $1 million on remodeling and additions — like a $60,000 greenhouse — that took a year to build and reportedly disturbed neighbors in the process.

During the renovation, he allegedly hired people to sit in cars parked near the house at night to save parking spaces for the construction workers. 

Source: SF Gate

Zuckerberg hasn't been afraid to spend Facebook's money either: The company has some major acquisitions under its belt, including $1 billion for Instagram, $19 billion for WhatsApp, and $2 billion for Oculus.

However, even Zuckerberg can't always get what he wants. He tried to buy Snapchat for $3 billion in 2013, but CEO Evan Spiegel turned him down. He also reportedly attempted to purchase Musical.ly, the predecessor to TikTok.

Zuckerberg emcees Facebook's annual developer conference every year, where he gives updates on the company's roadmap. Before the conference started to attract thousands of attendees, Zuckerberg would present in flip flops.

Throughout his career, Zuckerberg has appeared to be dedicated to Facebook's mission and office culture. His office is enclosed by glass walls, and he holds regular "Townhall" style Q&A sessions with his thousands of employees.

Today, Facebook's family of apps are used by more than 3 billion people each month. The company makes billions of dollars every quarter by showing users ads.

Source Venture Beat

In May 2017, Zuckerberg returned to Harvard as its youngest commencement speaker ever. There, he also received an honorary doctorate as well.

During his speech, Zuckerberg touched on a range of politically-charged topics, including climate change, universal basic income, criminal justice reform, and "modernizing democracy" by allowing people to vote online. 

Besides interacting with other tech executives, Zuckerberg frequently meets with high-profile figures and celebrities, including Snoop Dogg, and former President Barack Obama.

Source: Facebook

Shortly after the 2016 presidential election, Zuckerberg's troubles began, when people blamed Facebook for spreading fake news that led to Donald Trump's win. The CEO brushed off the claims: "Personally, I think the idea that fake news on Facebook ... influenced the election in any way is a pretty crazy idea."

Source: Business Insider

About a year later, the first evidence of Facebook's role emerged. The company revealed that Russian parties spent around $100,000 on roughly 3,000 ads, and that 126 million Americans likely saw Russia-funded posts intended to sway them.

Zuckerberg later admitted that, "calling that crazy was dismissive and I regret it." Facebook executives were also called to testify in front of Congress about the company's role in the spread of election misinformation.

Sources: Business Insider, Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook, Reuters

Zuckerberg has always been passionate about political issues, but he kicked up his rhetoric significantly around the time that Donald Trump was elected President of the United States. However, he's still made time to attend private dinners with Trump at the White House.

Zuckerberg was one of the first tech CEOs to denounce Trump's initial executive order on barring people from predominately Muslim countries from entering the US.

Source: Business Insider

In 2017, Zuckerberg announced that his personal challenge for the year — an annual tradition of his since 2009 — was to visit every US state. The stops he made sparked speculation that he had plans to run for president one day, but he denied the rumors.

In 2018, Zuckerberg said his personal goal for the year was to focus on fixing important issues that Facebook had a hand in and affected the world.

"We won't prevent all mistakes or abuse, but we currently make too many errors enforcing our policies and preventing misuse of our tools," Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook. "If we're successful this year then we'll end 2018 on a much better trajectory."

Source: Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook

However, that goal was quickly dashed. In March 2018, it was revealed data analytics company Cambridge Analytica harvested data from over 50 million Facebook users' profiles — a number Facebook later said was closer to 87 million — and used it to target voters during the 2016 election after being hired by the Trump campaign.

Zuckerberg wasn't heard from for days after the news broke, which wasn't lost on users, employees, or the media. Soon after, a movement to #DeleteFacebook gained momentum. 

Source: Business Insider

This time, Zuckerberg himself was called on to appear in front of lawmakers in two testimonies that lasted five hours each. Zuckerberg left with a laundry list of requests for answers and action items.

Source: Business Insider

Ahead of the testimonies, Facebook reportedly hired a team of experts to coach Zuckerberg on how to answer Congress' questions and how to be charming. The team was led by a special adviser to President George W. Bush, Reginald J. Brown.

Source: New York Times

Facebook's stock tumbled in the months following the congressional hearings and the Cambridge Analytica scandal. At its lowest, its stock was down 18% from what it had been before the story broke.

However, Zuckerberg's testimony seemed to give hope to investors. As Silicon Valley executive Phil Libin put it: "Mark Zuckerberg presented himself well, or at least as well as possible given the situation. He seemed reasonably well informed, prepared, and authentic."

Also during its contentious 2018, Facebook faced accusations that its moderation efforts weren't adequate in stopping the proliferation of hate speech and disinformation on its network.

Facebook and its family of apps, like Instagram and WhatsApp, were cited as contributing to political violence and deliberate misinformation in Myanmar, India, Germany, the Philippines, Brazil, and more.

Sources: Reuters, Business Insider, Buzzfeed News

In September 2018, Instagram cofounders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger abruptly announced they were leaving Facebook. It was later reported they had left amid "growing tensions" with Zuckerberg, and that the pair was fighting with Facebook leadership over Instagram's "autonomy."

Sources: Bloomberg, Business Insider

The departure of Instagram's cofounders was quickly followed with scathing remarks from WhatsApp cofounder Brian Acton, who detailed disagreements with Facebook executives over user privacy. Both WhatsApp cofounders had left the company earlier that year.

"I sold my users' privacy to a larger benefit," Acton told Forbes in 2018. "I made a choice and a compromise. And I live with that every day." A

cton's comments echoed those made by the other WhatsApp founder, Jan Koum, when he left the company in April 2018. Outlets reported Koum and leadership fought over plans for Facebook to weaken WhatsApp's encryption and access user data.

To add to an already scandal-riddled year, Facebook announced in September 2018 it had been hacked. Around 30 million users had their personal information compromised, making it the worst hack in Facebook's 15-year history.

Source: Business Insider

A bombshell New York Times report later revealed how Facebook executives — specifically Zuckerberg and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg — fought back against criticism it had received in 2018.

Soon after, internal Facebook documents made public by British Parliament showed how Zuckerberg restricted certain "strategic competitors" from accessing user data in an effort to stay ahead of the competition.

Source: New York Times

In 2019, Facebook spent $23.4 million in 2019 on personal security for Zuckerberg and his family, including $2.9 million for his use of private jets. The year prior, his security costs nearly doubled in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Source: Business Insider

Zuckerberg has faced criticism throughout his tenure as coming across as stilted and rehearsed when he speaks. In a 2019 interview with NBC News, Zuckerberg admitted he's had "a very hard time expressing myself."

Source: Business Insider

In October 2019, Zuckerberg was once again called on to testify in front of Congress — this time, about Facebook's plans for its Libra digital currency. Congressional members also grilled him on the company's content moderation practices and its lack of diversity.

Source: Business Insider

Despite backlash, Zuckerberg has staunchly defended Facebook's positions on freedom of speech, describing the platform's role as a place where users can share a diversity of perspectives and viewpoints.

Source: Business Insider

For 2020, Zuckerberg set a goal for the decade. "My goal for the next decade isn't to be liked but to be understood," Zuckerberg said." After the criticism it faced in dealing with political misinformation in 2016, the company is gearing for a "tough year" with the 2020 presidential election.

Source: Business Insider

(Prachi Bhardwaj, Jillian D'Onfro, Rebecca Borison, and Alex Heath contributed to earlier versions of this story.)

• The Chase Sapphire Reserve® is an incredibly popular rewards credit card, one of the few cards to approach "household name" status.
• The card has a high annual fee — it recently increased to $550 to compensate for new benefits like statement credits with DoorDash and 10x bonus points on Lyft rides.
• You can earn rewards quickly on your normal everyday spending, and there's a big sign-up bonus of 50,000 Chase points after you spend $4,000 in the first three months of account opening.
• Chase has also added some non-travel rewards options in light of the current quarantine. Between May 1 and June 30, 2020, you can earn up to 5x points on groceries with the Sapphire Reserve card up to a $1,500 limit, then 1x.
• See Business Insider's list of the best rewards credit cards.

When Chase launched its Chase Sapphire Reserve® credit card in 2016, it got the kind of hype normally reserved for the newest iPhone. 

Part of the buzz was the incredible 100,000 points that Chase offered as a sign-up bonus when approved applicants spent $4,000 within the first three months of card membership. Those points were worth anywhere from $1,000 - $1,500, or even more if you were savvy about transferring them to frequent flyer partners.

Even with the since-lowered bonus of 50,000 points (with the same spending requirement), the Chase Sapphire Reserve® is an extremely valuable card. The annual fee recently increased to $550 (up from $450), which puts it on par with the Platinum Card® from American Express, the other highest-profile luxury travel card. But even with the higher annual fee, the Sapphire Reserve can be a great choice for frequent travelers who value luxury perks and bonus rewards.

Chase Sapphire Reserve card details

Annual fee: $550 

Sign-up bonus: 50,000 points after you spend $4,000 in the first three months

Points earning: 1ox points on Lyft rides, 3x points on travel and dining, 1x on everything else 

Foreign transaction fee: None

Chase Sapphire Reserve sign-up bonus

The Chase Sapphire Reserve® offers a sign-up bonus of 50,000 Ultimate Rewards points after you spend $4,000 in the first three months. That's a solid bonus — based on travel website The Points Guy's subjective valuations, Chase points are worth 2 cents apiece, so 50,000 gets you $1,000 in value — but the Sapphire Reserve's sibling, the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card, actually offers a higher bonus. With that card, you can earn 60,000 points after you spend $4,000 in the first three months. 

Of course, sign-up bonus is only one factor to consider about a credit card, and the Sapphire Reserve is more rewarding for travel and dining purchases, and offers more benefits overall.

See also: Preferred vs. Reserve: How the Chase Sapphire credit cards stack up

Points earning on the Sapphire Reserve

The Chase Sapphire Reserve® is a popular choice for dining and travel thanks to its strong earning rates on this spending. It has the following bonus categories and earning rates:

• 3 points per dollar on dining — which includes everything from delivery services like Seamless to restaurants around the world to some bars
• 3 points per dollar on travel — which includes airfare, parking fees, tolls, hotels, subway fare, cruises, and many other purchases
• 10 points per dollar on Lyft rides — this is one of the new benefits that coincides with the Reserve's increased annual fee, and it provides an outstanding return on your spending with Lyft. This offer is available through March of 2022.
• 5 points per dollar on grocery spending — Chase added this bonus category as a limited-time promotion, since most cardholders are staying close to home during the coronavirus pandemic. Between May 1 and June 30, 2020, you can earn 5 points per dollar on groceries with the Chase Sapphire Reserve, on up to $1,500 in grocery spending each month, then 1 point per dollar.

You'll earn 1 point per dollar on everything else with the Sapphire Reserve.

Using Chase Ultimate Rewards points

The Chase Sapphire Reserve® earns Ultimate Rewards (UR) points — this is the points currency of Chase's in-house rewards program.

Ultimate Rewards points can be exchanged for cash back, gift cards, or statement credits, with each point worth 1 cent. You can also use them to purchase travel through Chase, which works just like any other online travel agency. When you use points that way, you get a 50% bonus — in other words, each point will be worth 1.5 cents instead. Finally, you can transfer points to Chase's airline and hotel partners' loyalty programs — transferring points is generally the most valuable way to use them.

The Sapphire Reserve's 50,000-point sign-up bonus is worth $500 as cash back, $750 for travel purchased through Chase, or more if you transfer the points to an airline or hotel program.

Chase Sapphire Reserve benefits

$300 travel credit

Each cardmember year (meaning every 12 months starting the month you open the card), the Chase Sapphire Reserve® offers a $300 credit toward travel purchases. The credit will be applied to the first $300 worth of purchases you make that year in the travel category, including things like subways, taxis/ridesharing, and parking, as well as hotels, airfare, and cruises.

When you subtract the travel credit, the Chase Sapphire Reserve's annual fee is effectively $250.

Up to $120 in statement credits for DoorDash food delivery

Chase was clearly feeling the pressure from updates to American Express cards like the Platinum Card, American Express® Gold Card, and American Express® Green Card — which have all added benefits including statement credits over the last few years.

To kick off 2020, Chase announced the addition of DoorDash benefits for Chase Sapphire Reserve® cardholders. In addition to a complimentary year of DashPass membership (for waived delivery fees on qualifying orders), the card comes with up to $120 in statement credits with food delivery service DoorDash. This breaks down into up to $60 in credits in 2020, and up to $60 in credits in 2021.

If you already use food delivery services and DoorDash is available in your town, this credit can be taken at face value: up to $120 in value. This would bring the card's effective annual fee down to $190 per year ($550 minus the $300 travel credit minus $60 in DoorDash credit). However, if you're not interested in this perk, it could be harder to justify the newly increased annual fee.

A year of complimentary Lyft Pink membership

This is another new benefit that took effect on January 12, 2020. Lyft Pink membership gets you perks such as:

• 15% off Lyft rides
• Priority airport pickups
• Relaxed cancellation policies
• Up to three 30-minute bike or scooter rides per month

The last benefit is only available in select metropolitan areas, so not everyone will be able to use it. If you're a frequent Lyft user, this perk could be great, but if not, it could be harder to justify the increased annual fee.

Airport lounge access

Having access to airport lounges is one of my favorite perks of the Chase Sapphire Reserve®. Lounges are comfortable, relaxing, and exclusive areas where you can enjoy comfortable seats, an internet connection, food and drinks — often complimentary — and sometimes other amenities.

The Chase Sapphire Reserve® comes with a Priority Pass Select membership. Priority Pass is a network of more than 1,200 airport lounges around the world, any of which you and your travel companions can access for free when you have your membership card.

With the Priority Pass membership provided by the Sapphire Reserve, you can bring in two guests. So whether you're traveling alone or with your family, you can enjoy free snacks, drinks, newspapers and magazines, showers, and more, all separate from the hustle and bustle of the main terminal.

Global Entry or TSA PreCheck 

TSA PreCheck and Global Entry (which comes with PreCheck) are absolute musts for just about any traveler. Once you enroll, you can use special lanes to breeze through airport security — you won't have to remove shoes and light coats, and you can leave your laptop in your bag.

With Global Entry, you can use a fast lane when you return to the US from abroad, which makes clearing immigration and customs easy and quick. The programs cost $85 to $100, and Chase will provide a credit for that fee every four years (memberships are valid for five years).

Primary rental car insurance and rental elite status

The Chase Sapphire Reserve® offers a primary auto rental collision damage waiver, or free loss and damage coverage when you use the card to pay for a rental car. Just decline the collision/damage/loss coverage offered by the rental agency. Keep in mind you may still want to opt for the rental company's liability insurance.

When you have the Chase Sapphire Reserve®, you can also get complimentary elite status with Avis, National, and Silvercar rental agencies. The benefits vary a bit between the companies, but generally include a car class upgrade, easy pick-up/drop-off, and more.

Other benefits

The Chase Sapphire Reserve® comes with a handful of other benefits, including various travel and purchase protections.

In my opinion, one of the most useful is trip and baggage delay insurance. When you're traveling and you're delayed for at least six hours, or overnight, you're covered for up to $500 of incidentals per person traveling with you whose ticket was purchased with the card. That covers things like hotel accommodations, meals, toiletries, and a change of clothing — really, anything that can be considered a "reasonable" expense.

Similarly, if your baggage is delayed, things like clothing and toiletries are covered up to a certain amount until your bag is delivered.

Other protections include travel accident insurance, trip cancellation/interruption insurance, extended warranty, and return protection.

Other cards to consider

When it comes to alternatives to the Chase Sapphire Reserve®, one of the first things to consider is what level of annual fee you're comfortable paying. If you're happy to pay a high fee in exchange for luxury travel benefits that matter to you, there's another premium card to consider — while those who'd prefer to spend less on the annual fee have a few strong alternatives as well.

If the Sapphire Reserve's $550 fee feels too steep, the most obvious alternative is the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card. Like the Sapphire Reserve, it earns Chase Ultimate Rewards points (2x points on travel and dining, 5x points on Lyft rides through March 2022, and 1 point per dollar on everything else) and offers travel protections like primary car rental coverage and trip delay insurance — but its annual fee is just $95 per year.

The Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card even offers a higher sign-up bonus than the Sapphire Reserve: 60,000 points after you spend $4,000 in the first three months. See our comparison of the Chase Sapphire Reserve and the Chase Sapphire Preferred for more details and for help deciding which is best for you.

Another travel rewards card to consider if you want to avoid a premium-level annual fee is the Amex Green Card. This card has a $150 annual fee and earns 3x points in similar categories to the Sapphire Reserve: travel and restaurants worldwide. With the Amex Green Card, you'll earn Amex Membership Rewards points rather than Chase points — the two programs have different selections of airline and hotel transfer partners, though they do share some partners such as Marriott and Virgin Atlantic. See our comparison of the Chase Sapphire Reserve and the Amex Green card for more information.

If a high annual fee doesn't deter you but you're not sure the Sapphire Reserve's Lyft and DoorDash benefits are the best fit, you can also consider the Platinum Card. Like the Sapphire Reserve, it has as $550 annual fee, and it comes with plenty of luxury travel benefits, like airport lounge access via Amex Centurion Lounges and Delta Sky Clubs (when you're flying Delta) in addition to Priority Pass Select membership. 

The Platinum Card earns 5x points on flights booked directly with the airline or through Amex Travel and 1 point per dollar on everything else. So, it can be easier to rack up bonus points with the Chase Sapphire Reserve®. But the Amex Platinum card also stands out for offering several annual statement credits, including an airline fee credit of up to $200, up to $200 in Uber credits, and up to $100 in Saks credits.

See our comparison of the Amex Platinum and the Chase Sapphire Reserve for more details if you're not sure which card is a better fit for you.

Bottom Line

The Chase Sapphire Reserve® can be an incredibly valuable card if you're able to put its benefits like up to $300 in annual statement credits toward travel to use.

Its appeal isn't as broad now that the annual fee is $550, since the new benefits won't be useful to everyone. But for frequent travelers who can utilize most of the perks, it's still a top option to consider — and it earns some of the most valuable points around.

• Related Content Module: More Credit Card Coverage

SEE ALSO: Here are all the amazing ways you can use the points from your Chase credit card

Join the conversation about this story »

• The coronavirus pandemic has thrown the travel industry into disarray. 
• Airlines are in danger of bankruptcy, hotels are sitting empty, and destinations that rely on tourism are suffering.
• We asked leaders in the travel and tourism industry how the coronavirus will change their company, industry, and the world.
• This feature is part of a series based on conversations with more than 200 CEOs on how business will be transformed by the coronavirus. To read more, click here. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The coronavirus pandemic has upended the travel industry.

Commercial airlines are on the verge of collapse, empty hotels are desperately selling bonds for future discounted travel, small businesses are struggling to stay afloat, and destinations that rely on tourism are taking huge hits. The World Travel and Tourism Council estimates that 100 million travel and tourism jobs could be lost due to the pandemic.

We spoke to top leaders across the travel and tourism industry, from companies like Airbnb and Hilton, and asked them three questions: How will the coronavirus change your company, your industry, and the world?

Their responses revealed a common theme: Travel will come back, but your vacation will never be the same. 

The answers, edited for length and clarity, are below. 

Additional reporting contributed by Troy Wolverton, Matt DeBord, Brittany Chang, Kristen Lee, Shana Lebowitz, Alex Nicoll, Tom Pallini, and Madeline Stone.

SEE ALSO: Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky predicts a wildly different future of travel and living, and it sounds pretty great

NOW READ: Travel influencers used to sell the dream of a jetsetting lifestyle. Here's how some of the biggest industry names are making ends meet and trying to reinvent themselves in a new, remote world.

Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb: 'We used to do a lot of travel for work and then we entertained ourselves on screens. That's going to inverse.'

Airbnb is about connecting people. Before this crisis, we brought 2 million people together a day, and when this crisis ends, we're going to get back to doing just that. But to get there, we are going to need to be scrappy. We're going to be nimble, we're going to simplify our operations and focus on what makes us different: our community of hosts.

No one knows for sure [how the crisis will change the travel industry], but I can give you two thoughts. First, when the comeback starts, it will start locally. People are going to take trips that are close to home and they're going to want something affordable. Second, I think we're seeing that you can do a lot [via] video conferencing, and that's going to have a big impact on how often people travel for work. Business travel isn't going to go away, but I think it's going to look very different in the future.

We used to do a lot of travel for work and then we entertained ourselves on screens. That's going to inverse. I think we'll work more on screens and entertain ourselves in the real world.

I also think many people are realizing they don't have to be tethered to one city. So you'll see more people who are going to choose to live around the world, spending a few months at a time in different places. And we're going to focus in part on longer-term stays to better serve those people.

I've also been thinking about what won't change. In 1950, 25 million people crossed a border, and last year 1.4 billion people did. That happened because there is an innate human desire to travel, to explore and that is never going to go away. Travel may be on pause, but it's going to come back.

Bob Wheeler, CEO of Airstream: 'There's some indication that as we settle into a new normal, folks will forgo air travel, cruises, and overseas trips in favor of destinations closer to home.'

There is really no part of our business that has not been impacted by the coronavirus epidemic and the resulting recession. We were forced to shut down our production operations almost immediately, and have spent the last weeks rightsizing the company for the new market realities when we return. We went from sneaking up on the idea of a remote, dispersed workforce to having to embrace the practice immediately. Our days of welcoming 800 production associates to work every morning are over, and we're planning a health assessment for folks as they arrive at work. In other words, it's a profound change.

The RV industry is well positioned to survive big downturns, with high variable and relatively low fixed costs. So, we can scale down quickly and when the market returns, scale back up to meet the need. And as we start to envision the post-COVID, post-recessionary landscape, we see many indicators that point to a strong recovery for the RV industry, perhaps ahead of the economy as a whole. There's some indication that as we settle into a new normal, folks will forego air travel, cruises, and overseas trips in favor of destinations that are closer to home. RVs are the perfect vehicle for that kind of mindset. You can move at your own pace, and bring along your own environment in which to live and cook and relax. RVs give you the flexibility to choose the travel experience that works best for you, no matter the circumstances.

Time will tell, but the fear of contaminant, crowds, planes, and the like will carry over for some time. Companies that now realize the efficacy of a dispersed workforce will rethink their operating structures. The pervasive urbanization trend may slow, and perhaps even reverse in some places. The effort to prevent and prepare for the next novel virus will be intense and span many industries, and countries. These are a few theories, but growing trends certainly seem to point in this direction.

Larry Korman, president of AKA: 'People will be hyper-focused on the cleanliness and safety of their surroundings and these facets may take the lead when planning a trip or experience.'

The future of our world and our industry will be very different from where it was before the global pause. People will be hyper-focused on the cleanliness and safety of their surroundings and these facets may take the lead when planning a trip or experience.

At AKA, we have always stated that the angels are in the details and applied that to design, presentation, and above all, cleanliness. We've seen these high standards leave lasting impressions on our residents (guests) and be a main reason for return stays.

We are now planning for the future by creating and executing even more rigorous sanitization protocols and policies. We understand that we now need to show and demonstrate it to prospective residents who may not have experienced it yet as a firsthand resident. Our Resident Services Team, who cares and creates the experience for our residents, will be trained and armed to detail our cleanliness protocol in the same way they can for our amenities, policies, and suite accommodations — it becomes another key pillar in our presentation.  

In addition to health and safety protocols, there will also be a sense of freedom and yearning to travel once the resurgence begins, with travelers first reconnecting with brands they already know. I anticipate that people will have a deeper appreciation and gratitude for life, and more meaningful connections, travels, and experiences will occur because of it.

Ben Fraser, CEO of Ready.set.van: 'We've already seen a pretty strong uptick in demand for vans that are already built.'

Honestly, I think [coronavirus] is probably going to be quite good for the camper van industry. For the next year at least until there's a vaccine, I don't think anybody's going to want to go to a resort, get on a plane, or even go and stay in a hotel in a densely populated city. People are trying to figure out what they can do. Getting in a car and going somewhere is something most people feel like they can do.

We've already seen a pretty strong uptick in demand for vans that are already built. For us it's been so much more interest than we could possibly ever supply for a van that's ready to go. When we say we don't have [something] that's built and ready to go, their interest drops off.

Our communications people can work from home, but obviously, we can't build vans from home. Me and [three] of the guys [are] living out of vans at the shop. I go home to visit my family periodically, but we've just quarantined ourselves here and everybody agrees that it's the best thing.

I have a pretty grim view on [coronavirus]. We're so incredibly grateful to be in a thriving business during this extraordinarily difficult time. But when I talk to all the various small business owners that I know, every single one has a number of weeks or months that they can survive until insolvency. None of these people can survive six months.

Carolyne Doyon, CEO and President of Club Med North America: 'We believe there will be increased demand for resort options that are less dense ... resorts that are integrated in, and respectful of, their surrounding natural environments and are spread out across larger areas, with low-rise buildings that blend in rather than traditional concrete high-rises.'

After a long period of social distancing and staying indoors, we believe people will want to either revisit places they're familiar with or reconnect with a brand that bring them joy and memories. The travel industry, from tourism boards and hotel operators to airlines, will work very hard to ease travelers' concerns by adjusting their operations and offerings to cater to this new world we live in.

For example, Club Med is currently in the process of creating new safety and hygiene protocols that will be implemented once our resorts open, as we know health and safety will be one of the main factors in consumers' decisions to travel. Examples include monitoring guests' temperatures upon arrival, as well as the temperatures of our staff, serving even more single-plated food at buffets, and continuing to sanitize all areas of each of our Children's Club daily. It is our mission to ensure all guests and employees feel safe and comfortable when staying with us.

We also believe there will be increased demand for resort options that are less dense, giving a newfound importance to what's been at the core of Club Med's philosophy since its inception 70 years ago — resorts that are integrated in, and respectful of, their surrounding natural environments and are spread out across larger areas, with low-rise buildings that blend in rather than traditional concrete high-rises.

With a new sense of freedom, we anticipate travelers will be excited to get outdoors and explore nature, and we look forward to providing them with opportunities to get outside through customizable experiences that fit their needs — from private oceanfront dining and wellness and spa experiences to a diverse range of included sports and activities. We also believe families have truly been able to reconnect during these unprecedented times, so once travel resumes, they will not only look for opportunities to unwind and recharge on vacation, but will also look for opportunities to keep that connection strong.

Prior to the pandemic, we noticed more multigenerational families choosing to stay with us, so we conducted a research study that confirmed that "family togetherness" and "intergenerational bonding" were the two biggest drivers for choosing a vacation. We anticipate these two driving factors will prove even stronger once families are able to travel again, and we will be ready to provide them with a comfortable, safe and memorable experience that will allow them to bring home cherished family memories.

Francis Davidson, CEO of Sonder: 'It's going to take our industry some time to recover, but we think that travelers will turn their attention even more towards flexible accommodations as they look to stay while staying safe.'

Over the past month, we've implemented several initiatives to meet the needs of travelers and broader communities while preserving our business amidst an intense slowdown in travel demand. In addition to prioritizing the health and safety of our community, our strategy is to counter the cash impacts of the slowdown of revenue we're experiencing.

While our core business is typically centered on stays of seven nights or fewer, we recognized that we are uniquely positioned to offer temporary shelter to those in need. We have since opened our doors to those affected by the pandemic by offering a discount of 40% on stays over 14 days and have seen very positive feedback on the offering from a wide range of individuals who have been displaced during this time, including college students, military personnel, displaced foreign diplomats, members of the press and healthcare professionals. We've essentially created a new line of business to focus entirely on our long-term rental offering right now, which has included engineering work, performance marketing, and B2B outreach.

Our spaces are self-contained apartments and the digital services we provide allow us to operate with fewer on-site staff, resulting in limited in-person interactions. Most offer full kitchens, living rooms, and washer dryers, meaning guests can easily stay put for extended periods of time. This has allowed us to keep occupancy rates near 50% and will help us to bounce back when travel commences again.

It's going to take our industry some time to recover, but we think that travelers will turn their attention even more towards flexible accommodations as they look to stay while staying safe.  

Andre Haddad, CEO of Turo: 'We anticipate road trips and personal auto travel will rebound faster than group travel.'

Looking ahead to the post-isolation world, protecting the health of our community through cleaning and disinfecting Turo cars before every trip is our top priority. We will also double down on our investment in contactless check-ins by expanding Turo Go, which allows guests to unlock Turo cars directly from our mobile app.

As home isolation orders are lifted yet physical distancing remains top of mind, we anticipate road trips and personal auto travel will rebound faster than group travel. Travelers will prefer the privacy and comfort of traveling in their own car with close family and friends, and Turo is well positioned as the leading car sharing marketplace to fulfill those trips.

In addition, with record-high unemployment rates and economic uncertainty, car owners will be looking for alternative ways to offset the costs of their car and earn extra income. By sharing their cars on Turo, car owners can generate income for their families that will help them weather this difficult economic storm.

Thomas Flohr, CEO of VistaJet: 'The commercial network that was so well built over many, many years, and actually decades, has come to a complete stop.'

I think we need to look at two periods of time. We [initially] saw an unprecedented demand for flights from one continent to the other. In the January-February time frame, there was very strong demand away from Asia into the United States and Europe.

As the virus was in Europe in February, and moved on to North America as Asia was recovering, we saw the reverse trend that people were flying back into Asia after they were leaving Asia in the January-February time frame. This coincides with the massive reduction of commercial flight connections point-to-point being available. 

Since the end of March, we have seen a reduction in our flight activity and this was obviously mainly due to the shutdown by governments and really only allowing the repatriation of nationals of different countries. 

We see that the commercial network that was so well built over many, many years, and actually decades, has come to a complete stop. For a commercial airline to rebuild that network, that density of flights and routes, and do it profitably, will be a very, very hard job and might take years.

This is due to the fact that their business model is depending on the load factor — how many people they can get on a flight and then operate it profitably. So we're seeing that with our business model of a floating fleet that we can immediately fly again when the governments are allowing it.

Undoubtedly, the experiments we're all going through by using video conferencing, FaceTime facilities for quick meetings a quick exchange of ideas has certainly changed significantly our behavior. So that in the short-term, I don't see travel [is going] to rebound anywhere in the near future.

However, our client base, which are the chairmen and CEOs of significant companies, they still need to go and be with their companies. They need to go and see their customers.

That's where we've seen over and again — that business is done between human beings, and it's that travel which we believe should rebound first. 

Christopher Nassetta, CEO of Hilton: 'Hilton is already leaning on our industry-leading technology like Digital Key to provide a seamless, contactless experience for our guests.'

Hilton has always been a business of people serving people. For more than a century we've created unforgettable experiences for our guests, while protecting their health and safety as they travel the globe – all thanks to our incredible Team Members who welcome our guests each day.

As the focus on health and well-being increases, so too have our on-property hygiene standards and cleaning protocols. Hilton is already leaning on our industry-leading technology like Digital Key to provide a seamless, contactless experience for our guests. I've also heard from countless guests who are eager to travel again but whose expectations are changing, so we are creating a new standard of hotel cleanliness and elevating our hygiene practices from check-in to check-out.

Our hotels become part of the fabric of our communities, often serving as the gathering point for cherished cultural events and business meetings alike. That will endure through this pandemic and beyond, though likely with some adjustments. As wedding receptions, business meetings and social gatherings return, the way our team members deliver food and beverage service will also change. We can expect the demand for buffet and communal dining to change, and the opportunity for personalized, one-on-one service to increase.

Even as the hospitality industry faces its greatest challenge, I am reminded of the things that remain true for us all. People will still want to travel and experience new cultures and destinations. We will continue to seek out meaningful connections with one another, over mountains and across oceans. As the effects of this pandemic recede, the world will be ready to travel once more – and our team members at Hilton hotels everywhere will be ready and waiting to provide our signature hospitality once again.

Rob Katz, chairman and CEO of Vail Resorts: 'What we need to do as an industry is provide guests the time, flexibility and assurance they need to make travel plans and then ensure that the experience we provide has their health and wellbeing top of mind.'

This crisis has hit the travel industry particularly hard, the ski industry included, and it will take time before we see normalcy return. That said, I'm optimistic about the future and believe that we will be able to continue to offer an incredible experience to our guests, even as we navigate potential new restrictions that will ensure the safety and wellbeing of everyone at our resorts.

Recognizing the uncertainty that exists around travel and tourism generally, we have taken steps to provide peace of mind to our guests. We are redefining pass protection with the introduction of our new 'Epic Coverage' which will offer pass holders refunds on certain resort closures and eligible personal events, and eliminated our traditional spring deadlines to give our pass holders more time to plan.

Many people are eager to travel and enjoy the outdoors again. What we need to do as an industry is provide guests the time, flexibility and assurance they need to make travel plans and then ensure that the experience we provide has their health and wellbeing top of mind.

• Amazon is partnering with Vogue and the Council of Fashion Designers of America to launch a digital store that allows shoppers to purchase items from high-end independent designers.
• The partnership further solidifies Amazon's presence in the fashion world, which it has been trying to build for the past three years.
• But some fashion editors, writers, and critics don't think it's a good idea and worry about what it means for the future of the industry.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Amazon, Vogue, and the Council of Fashion Designers of America, are coming together to launch a digital storefront that will allow customers to buy luxury goods from independent designers on the e-commerce giant, reports Vanessa Friedman of the New York Times.

The partnership, called "Common Threads: Vogue x Amazon Fashion," is meant to help independent high-end designers that are being negatively impacted by the coronavirus, those behind the initiative say. Already, the storefront is selling notable designers such as 3.1 Phillip Lim, Derek Lam 10 Crosby, and Tabitha Simmons. Fashionista reports that more brands are set to join. 

"I'm thrilled to announce this partnership, and want to thank Amazon Fashion, not only for its generous support of 'A Common Thread,' but also for so quickly sharing its resources to aid American designers affected by the pandemic," Anna Wintour said in a statement. "While there isn't one simple fix for our industry, which has been hit so hard, I believe this is an important step in the right direction."

Amazon's next move towards becoming a top player in fashion

The deal has come as a shock to some in the fashion world. Many luxury designers have long avoided Amazon, both because they don't want to be associated with an "everyday store" and because of a hesitance to have their high-end goods sold alongside cheaper "dupes." 

But now, the pandemic has turned the industry on its head. In a world where brick-and-mortar stores have shut throughout the world in accordance with coronavirus lockdowns and online luxury e-commerce platforms, such as Net-a-Porter, have had to close their warehouses, many designers now see Amazon as a viable way to sell their goods during this time. Amazon has emerged as one of the most popular retailers amid the pandemic, as more people are staying home, browsing online, and doing their shopping on the internet.

As Friedman reports for the Times, the idea for the digital store stemmed from the "Common Threads" initiative launched by Vogue and the CFDA last month. The first iteration of the "Common Threads" grant program raised over $4 million for various designers, retailers, and garment manufacturers, to help keep them afloat amid the pandemic. 

Amazon is giving $500,000 to the grant program, and, according to Freidman, when the online retail giant asked Vogue and the CFDA how else it could help the struggling fashion industry, the digital storefront idea was born.

This partnership now solidifies Amazon's undeniable presence in the fashion industry — which began when Christine Beauchamp was hired to run the Amazon Fashion platform in 2017 and continued with the launches of Prime Wardrobe, styling tool Echo Look, Amazon-exclusive collections, and "Making the Cut," a fashion competition show from the hosts of "Project Runway" — and could change the way luxury is sold in a post-coronavirus world.

Already, Amazon is innovating within the space, allowing shoppers to purchase winning designs from "Making the Cut" immediately after episodes air.

"Amazon is really starting to become a leader in the fashion space through initiatives like this," Jason Altuzarra, designer and judge on "Making the Cut," previously told Business Insider. "I think it will make a difference." 

But fashion editors, critics, and writers have already taken to Twitter to express their disdain for the Amazon partnership

While many knew that fashion would be forever changed after the pandemic, this isn't exactly the way they wanted it to shift.

French fashion journalist Pierre M'Pelé, known as Pam Boy on Twitter, expressed that the partnership was simply Jeff Bezos' way of telling the "snobby luxury world that despises him" that he has "more money" than them.

Meanwhile, Tyler McCall, editor-in-chief of the digital fashion publication Fashionista, expressed her upset on Twitter, saying that "working in fashion is like being on the Titanic as it's sinking and everyone still getting fully dressed and sitting down for dinner at the appointed hour 'because that's what we've always done.'"

She then went on to characterize the partnership between Vogue and Amazon as "bleak" and wrote that the CFDA is "too in bed with Vogue."

Many on Twitter expressed doubts that people would go to Amazon to purchase luxury items, with luxury marketer Shelby Ivey Christie tweeting that "people want to see at LEAST 100 reviews on $2 + $20 products to feel assured," and asking, "how do we think consumers will feel buying $500 designer products with 0 reviews?"

Another fashion journalist, Alexandra Mondalek, known for features in Business of Fashion and Vogue Business, questioned whether consumers would care if "they bought $750 Chloe Gosselin sandals off of Amazon versus Net-a-Porter, if the product is the same price."

Later, Mondalek posted a poll to her Twitter page, asking her followers where they would most likely purchase their luxury goods: from Amazon, a luxury e-commerce platform, or directly from the brand. At the time of publication, less than 7% said they would buy luxury from Amazon.

SEE ALSO: Cashmere sweats for lounging and $18,000 silk gowns for parties that aren't happening: Here are the 7 biggest online luxury shopping trends right now

DON'T MISS: Fashion is one of the most polluting industries in the world. Amid the coronavirus pandemic, designers and other industry leaders are finally reckoning with that.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: How waste is dealt with on the world's largest cruise ship

• Jeff Bezos could become the first trillionaire by 2026 if his wealth continues growing at 34% a year, according to an analysis from Comparisun.
• That's before accounting for the coronavirus pandemic, which has sent the value of his Amazon shares soaring, and despite the $38 billion he lost in his recent divorce settlement.
• Bezos is worth an estimated $143 billion, thanks to a $28 billion bump in 2020, according to Bloomberg.
• Bezos' wealth is growing rapidly as Amazon faces increasing criticism from employees and lawmakers over its labor practices.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

If Jeff Bezos' personal fortune keeps growing at its current rate, he could become the first trillionaire by 2026 at the age of 62, according to an analysis from the software-review site Comparisun.

Bezos' wealth has been increasing at an average yearly rate of 34% over the past five years, according to Comparisun, and that's despite him turning over Amazon shares worth an estimated $38 billion to his ex-wife, MacKenzie Bezos, as part of their recent divorce settlement.

Comparisun looked at 25 of the richest people and found that only 11 had a realistic shot at becoming trillionaires during their lifetimes. Bezos will likely get there first, but Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg could be the youngest, with his current growth rate on pace to put him in the four-comma club by 2036, when he will be 51.

Comparisun used Forbes' billionaire list to determine Bezos' personal wealth, but it pulled data from September, meaning its analysis doesn't account for the gains Bezos has seen during the coronavirus pandemic, which has caused Amazon's stock to skyrocket as more people turn to online shopping.

Bezos is worth about $138 billion and has seen his fortune grow by $28.3 billion so far in 2020, according to Bloomberg.

Bezos isn't alone there. While the coronavirus has ravaged the economy, forcing 36 million Americans to file for unemployment over the past two months, US billionaires quickly saw their collective wealth rebound by $282 billion, about 9.5%, between March 18 (close to when the stock market hit its low point) and April 10, according to a report from the Institute for Policy Studies.

At the same time Amazon's success continues to boost Bezos' personal fortune, the company is facing growing criticism of its treatment of workers during the pandemic, including its recent move to drop a $2 hourly raise for warehouse employees.

Workers have staged multiple protests over working conditions in recent weeks as the number of COVID-19 cases have surged among warehouse employees, according to a Reddit tally by a person who says they're an Amazon insider.  (Amazon has refused to share official numbers.)

Lawmakers and regulators are also putting a closer eye on the company. Officials in New York City and the National Labor Relations Board are both looking into Amazon's firing of whistleblowers, while Democratic lawmakers recently called for a federal investigation into warehouse conditions.

SEE ALSO: Google reportedly cut back its diversity programs, and employees said the move was meant to avoid backlash from conservatives

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: How waste is dealt with on the world's largest cruise ship

• Services like Netflix Party and Kosmi have skyrocketed in popularity during the pandemic, as people look for ways to watch TV and movies together while physically apart.
• A Chrome extension called Scener, which has been around since 2018, has partnered with HBO to allow users to coordinate virtual viewing parties for content on the premium network.
• Here's how to download and use Scener to binge watch popular HBO series like "Succession," "Insecure," and "Westworld."
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Services offering ways for quarantined internet users to host virtual watch parties have skyrocketed in popularity since social distancing measures were enacted. Thanks to a new feature, fans of popular HBO series like "The Wire" and "Westworld" can now join in on the joy of binge-watching while physically apart.

A Google Chrome plug-in called Scener recently partnered with HBO to allow people to co-watch during quarantine while also being connected over video, audio, and text chat. Although Scener has been around since 2018, it's been revamped and become the first browser extension to partner with a premium network.

Millions under shelter-in-place orders have spent the past couple months poring over new options for online entertainment in place of in-person socializing and events. A longtime co-watching browser extension called Netflix Party became newly popular in March, showing just how much users are looking for connection, albeit virtual, while social distancing.

The app's new partnership with HBO lets users watch shows using subscriptions through HBO NOW and HBO Max — the platform's subscription streaming service — or via HBO Go, which offers online access to the network's content through your existing cable TV package. Google's Chrome web store currently shows Scener with over 50,000 downloads.

Here's how to install and use Scener to watch even more of your favorite shows and movies while stuck inside.

SEE ALSO: TikTok is putting steep restrictions on how brands can use music in their videos to preserve the 'authenticity' of the platform

Navigate to scener.com/get, where you'll find the direct link to the Scener extension in the Google Chrome web store.

In the Chrome Web Store, click "Add to Chrome."

Make sure you click "Add extension" in the tab that pops up in your browser in order for Scener to be successfully installed.

You'll now see the Scener icon in the top-right corner, alongside your other existing extensions. You'll be automatically directed to a new tab to create your Scene profile — all you need is a first name and an email address.

Once your account is created, click on the Scener icon to launch the co-watching extension.

Scener includes two different Chrome windows: the big one on the left is for watching your show, and the small column on the right is your navigation panel. Both windows will pop up, side-by-side, upon launch. Click "create private theater" to set up your viewing party. If you're joining an existing one, here's where you enter the theater code.

You'll then be directed through a series of prompts, giving you more information about how to use Scener and recommendations for the best viewing experience. Make sure you click "allow" on requests for permissions so you're able to log into HBO.

Scener offers co-watching for both Netflix and HBO, and the set-up processes function in similar ways. Once you click on the service you want to use — in this case, HBO — you'll be directed back to the Chrome browser to enter your log-in information for HBO Go or HBO NOW. Make sure if you're using HBO Go, you click through to select your cable TV provider.

After logging into HBO, grant Scener access to your camera if you want to have a video chat with friends while watching. You can also deny access to keep communication via audio and text chat. You'll see your chat window on the right side, and the HBO website on the left.

Invite friends — up to 20 participants — by sending them the theater code or the invite link. Whoever set up the theater will have the "remote," which gives them control over choosing what to watch. You can see what's playing in the status bar above the participants' faces.

However, watching your show this way doesn't take advantage of all the real estate your computer screen has to offer. Clicking on the "show full screen" icon on the HBO panel will fill up the screen, but then you'll be unable to see the video and text chat you have going with other participants. Instead, click the full screen icon in the right-side panel for directions on how to best set up your viewing experience.

For a PC with Windows 10 software, you can easily put the two Chrome windows side-by-side using the click-and-drag method. On a Mac, navigate to Mission Control — which can be done by clicking the "control" button and the up arrow, or via other shortcuts you may have set up.

First drag the HBO window up to the bar on the top of your screen, where a box for "Google Chrome" will be created. Then, drag the chat window up to that same box, and your Mac will automatically click the two windows into place side by side.

Now, you can click the "full screen" icon under the content you're watching.

Entering full-screen will cause the HBO content to only take up the entirety of its window, while leaving your chat window viewing and usable to virtually argue with your friends about what you should watch next.

• After eight weeks on strict coronavirus lockdown, France has started easing its restrictions.
• On March 16, France's president, Emmanuel Macron, ordered residents to stay home unless absolutely necessary, banning walks outside and requiring residents to carry a certificate when leaving the house.
• France began a phased reopening on Monday, allowing outdoor exercise to resume and primary schools, certain non-essential businesses, small cultural attractions, and places of worship to reopen.
• For the time being, cafés and restaurants, high schools and universities, and major tourist attractions remain closed.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

SEE ALSO: Photos of crowded cafés and parks show what life is like in Sweden, one of the only European countries not under strict lockdown during the coronavirus outbreak

NOW READ: Photos of Danish children returning to school while staying six feet apart highlight the country's cautious approach to lifting its lockdown measures

After eight weeks on lockdown, Parisians started easing back into normal life on Monday after France lifted certain restrictions.

Source: Government of France

France began its lockdown on March 12 with school closures. A few days later, the government shut down most shops, restaurants, and attractions, and on March 16, it ordered residents to stay home unless absolutely necessary.

Source: Government of France, Reuters,Business Insider

Residents could only leave their house for essential reasons, like visiting the pharmacy or picking up bread at a bakery.

Source: Business Insider

Walks outside were prohibited, and residents had to carry a certificate indicating their reason for leaving the house. If they broke quarantine orders, they faced fines up to €135 ($150).

Source: Business Insider

As of this week, Parisians can once again exercise outside and leave home without a certificate, though they must bring a form of identity with them.

Source: Government of France

Small non-essential stores and businesses such as flower shops have been able to reopen as long as they observe social distancing.

Source: Government of France

Parisians can also visit "nearby cultural places" like media libraries, libraries, small museums, and monuments ...

Source: Government of France

... attend places of worship ...

Source: Government of France

... and shop at open-air farmers' markets.

Source: Government of France

France's social distancing guidelines still require residents to remain at least three feet apart in public and avoid gatherings of 10 or more people.

Source: Government of France

Nursery and elementary students have returned to school, and those in the 5th and 6th grades will be able to return on May 18 in areas least affected by the virus.

Source: Government of France

Teleworking is still encouraged, and residents may not travel more than 60 miles from home; however, Parisians can now ride public transport if traveling to and from work, a medical appointment, or school.

Source: Government of France

Through the end of May, officials will clean metro cars, trams, trains, and buses daily. They will also enforce social distancing by marking lines for queues ...

Source: Government of France

... and blocking off one out of every two seats.

Source: Government of France

For the time being, cafés and restaurants, universities, and major tourist attractions remain closed. France will decide on a reopening date for restaurants and cafés toward the end of the month.

Source: Government of France

• More than 180 species of "magic" mushrooms produce the psychoactive compound psilocybin.
• When you ingest psilocybin, your gut converts it into another chemical called psilocin, which triggers changes in the brain.
• It increases activity in the visual cortex, leading to changes in perception and it decreases network activity in the "default mode network," driving the experience of ego loss.
• Researchers believe it's the combination of these effects that makes psilocybin an effective tool for combating depression and addiction, for which research shows support.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. 

Following is a transcript of the video. 

Narrator: This is the map of a typical human brain, and this is the map of a brain on psilocybin, the psychoactive compound in magic mushrooms. All those new connections you can see don't just make people trip. They're also the reason that psilocybin is one of today's most talked-about drugs in certain medical circles. Worldwide, more than 180 species of mushrooms produce psilocybin, likely as a defense strategy. Scientists believe that psilocybin may dampen the appetite of predatory insects like ants so that they feel full long before eating their way through the entire mushroom. Humans, on the other hand, well, they trip.

Johnson: Psilocybin is a so-called classic psychedelic, so it's in the same category as drugs like LSD and works in the brain in basically the same way.

Narrator: When you take psilocybin, your gut converts it into another chemical, known as psilocin, which binds to serotonin receptors called 2A, and experts think that's what triggers what they call neuronal avalanching. It's essentially a domino effect of different changes in the brain. You've got increased activity in the visual cortex, which leads to changes in your perception, and then decreased network activity in the default mode network, which leads to a loss of ego.

Johnson: And that may be why people often report at high doses a profound sense of unity, transcending beyond themselves.

Narrator: But perhaps most importantly, psilocybin increases connectivity among different regions of the brain.

Johnson: Because of that receptor activation, there is a profound change in the way that different areas of the brain synchronize with each other.

Narrator: Think of it like an orchestra. Normally, the brain has different musical groups that each play independently.

Johnson: A sextet there, here's a quartet there. This one's playing jazz. This one's classical, and a number of other ones.

Narrator: But once psilocybin enters, it's like you suddenly have a conductor.

Johnson: So there is this communication between areas that are normally kind of compartmentalized and doing their own thing.

Narrator: Scientists believe that it's a combination of these effects that make psilocybin so useful for combating depression and addiction. When new areas in the brain start talking to each other, for example, you might have new insights into old problems. And that's why some experts describe tripping as a condensed version of talk therapy. And then dissolving your ego, Johnson says...

Johnson: Can be profoundly healing.

Narrator: And there's actually an increasing amount of research to prove it. In two studies published in 2016, researchers gave cancer patients with depression a large dose of psilocybin, and even six months later, at least 80% of them showed significant decreases in depressed mood. And research on addiction is equally promising. In a study led by Johnson, 15 volunteers took psilocybin to quit smoking, and after six months, 80% of them had kicked the habit, compared to a rate of about 35% for the drug varenicline, which is widely considered the best smoking-cessation drug out there. Yet despite these results, psilocybin is still listed as a Schedule I drug, a category reserved for compounds that have no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. Now, taking magic mushrooms recreationally does come with some risks.

Johnson: So a dramatic example would be driving under the influence of psilocybin or using it in a way that interferes with your job, or your family relations, or your schoolwork, for example.

Narrator: But as far as scientists know, long-term use doesn't damage the brain in the way that other drugs can, and according to at least one study, it's actually the safest drug out there. In 2018, for example, just 0.3% of people who reported taking them needed medical emergency treatment, compared to 0.9% for ecstasy and 1.3% for alcohol. Taken altogether, that's why some states across the country have campaigned to decriminalize psilocybin, including Denver, which, in May of 2019, became the first ever to succeed.

EDITORS NOTE: This video was originally published in May 2019.

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• Mark Zuckerberg turns 36 today. 
• The Facebook cofounder and CEO has an estimated $76 billion net worth, according to Forbes.
• Zuckerberg's net worth is largely tied to his Facebook stock.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Facebook CEO and cofounder Mark Zuckerberg turns 36 today.

Even though Zuckerberg's personal fortune has been on a rollercoaster ride since Facebook's catastrophic year in 2018, he still remains one of the world's richest people.

His estimated net worth is currently just over $76 billion. In spite of his billions, Zuckerberg doesn't have a taste for opulence, especially when it comes to cars, clothes, and travel. He does, however, have an affinity for developing his real-estate portfolio— he most recently dropped $60 million on two Lake Tahoe properties.

As a member of the Giving Pledge and cofounder of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which he started with his wife Priscilla Chan, Zuckerberg has also dedicated much of his fortune to charitable causes.

No matter how he spends his money, it seems that Zuckerberg will always have billions left over. Here, nine mind-blowing facts show just how rich Zuckerberg really is.

SEE ALSO: Mark Zuckerberg spent almost $60 million on 2 waterfront estates in Tahoe last winter. Here's a look at the 10 properties he owns across the US, from a modest Palo Alto home to a Hawaiian plantation

DON'T MISS: We did the math to calculate exactly how much money billionaires and celebrities like Jeff Bezos and Kylie Jenner make an hour

1. Zuckerberg is so rich that he's able to live off an annual salary of $1.

He previously made a reported $770,000 from his Facebook salary and bonuses, but he slashed his salary to its current rate in 2013. That means a huge chunk of his wealth is tied to Facebook stock, of which he owns nearly 17%, reported Business Insider's Jake Kanter.

Unfortunately for Zuckerberg, Facebook shares dipped 7% after its 2019 fourth-quarter earnings report, reported Salvador Rodriguez for CNBC.

2. Each year since Facebook's IPO in 2012, Zuckerberg has added an average of $9 billion to his net worth.

At $16 billion, Facebook is the second biggest tech IPO in history. Since then, the stock has increased by more than 408% for a current market capitalization of $547 billion, reported Lucinda Shen for Fortune.

3. Zuckerberg's 2019 net worth sank by nearly $9 billion compared to the previous year — but he still retains a spot in the world's top 10 richest people.

Zuckerberg's net worth fell following a year of Facebook scandals, reported Kanter. He dropped three places down Forbes' 2019 billionaire's list from 5th to 8th place. But since then, the CEO's ranking has recovered — and then some. As of May 14, 2020, Forbes ranks Zuckerberg as the world's fourth-richest person.

4. In 2018, Zuckerberg earned roughly $1.7 million an hour, according to previous Business Insider calculations.

Business Insider found the difference between Zuckerberg's 2017 and 2018 net worths (as provided by the Forbes' 2017 and 2018 richest people in the world lists, published every March) to determine his annual earnings. Zuckerberg's annual earnings came to roughly $15 billion.

We then divided all annual earnings by 8,760, the number of hours in a year, to calculate how much he earned an hour.

5. It took Zuckerberg less than an hour-and-a half to earn what the average American man with a bachelor's degree will earn in his lifetime — $2.2 million, according to the Social Security Administration.

The average American woman with a bachelor's degree will earn $1.3 million in her lifetime, according to the SSA.

Zuckerberg dropped out of college during his sophomore year.

6. In less than two minutes, Zuckerberg makes what it takes the full-time median US worker a year to earn — $48,328.

That's based on data by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Zuckerberg earned $28,538 per minute last year, according to Business Insider's calculations.

7. The average American household spending $1 is similar to Zuckerberg spending about $780,000.

The median net worth of an average US household is $97,300. Dividing that number into $76 billion comes to about $781,089.

8. Zuckerberg's net worth is greater than the GDP of Jordan, Nicaragua, and Barbados — combined.

Jordan's GDP is about $46.4 billion, Nicaragua's is $12.5 billion, and Barbados is $5.3 billion.

9. Zuckerberg could give every single living person in the US $100 — and still have more than half of his $76 billion net worth left over.

The US population is currently 329,649,324 according to the US Census. Giving every American $100 would cost Zuckerberg roughly $32.9 billion.

• Vice reported Thursday on a video from April, showing a former Google employee named Zach Vorhies, detailing a campaign to send the "Plandemic" video viral.
• In the video, Vorhies said he ran the social media accounts for Judy Mikovits, the discredited scientist who appeared in the "Plandemic" video seen by millions across social platforms.
• In the past, Vorhies has worked with right-wing activist group Project Veritas, and has tweeted about QAnon and other conspiracy theories.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

A recently discovered YouTube video from an ex-Google employee shows he's been crafting a campaign since April to make the "Plandemic" video go viral, which included running the social media accounts of Judy Mikovits.

The unlisted YouTube video, uncovered by Vice's Anna Merlan, shows Zach Vorhies telling the camera about his plan to promote claims made by Mikovits, the discredited scientist who was the star of the 26-minute documentary-style video that went viral last week on YouTube, Facebook and other platforms. Vorhies' video, posted on April 19, appeared more than two weeks before the "Plandemic" video was first posted online.

This video is just one part of the actions Vorhies took in April to plant the seeds ahead of the "Plandemic" video's debut on May 4. The video, which garnered millions of views, forwarded widely debunked coronavirus claims about social distancing making people more susceptible to get sick and the virus being man-made so vaccine manufacturers could profit. Despite Facebook and social platforms' efforts to ban the video and deal with other types of harmful content, misinformation has continued to flow freely online.

The same day he posted his YouTube video, Vorhies launched a GoFundMe campaign titled "Help me amplify Pharma Whistleblower Judy Mikovits," according to The New York Times. A day earlier, a newly created Twitter account for Mikovits posted its first tweet, since deleted, to thank Vorhies "for helping me get on Twitter!"

Both the GoFundMe page has also been deleted. The crowdfunding platform told the Times that Vorhies' fundraiser violated its policies on "campaigns that are fraudulent, misleading, inaccurate, dishonest, or impossible."

Both Vorhies and Mikovits were already known in conspiracy theory circles prior to this month. Mikovits has made a name for herself for speaking out against vaccinations, and published a book in April called "Plague of Corruption." Since her viral stardom, the book has sold out on Amazon.

Vorhies, a former software engineer at YouTube, is a self-proclaimed "whistleblower" who made headlines in 2019 for an interview with right-wing activist group Project Veritas where he alleged Google had an anti-conservative bias. He provided the group with over 900 pages of internal documents on Google's search algorithms as evidence.

On Twitter, Vorhies posts about a trove of conspiracy theories regarding Pizzagate and vaccines' links to autism, as well as anti-Semitic and white supremacist claims. Recently, he's focused in on posts supporting the fringe conspiracy theory QAnon.

Join the conversation about this story »

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• New Jersey will be opening public and private beaches starting May 22, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy announced at a press conference on May 14.
• Earlier this month, the state reopened its golf courses and state parks.
• As of Thursday, New Jersey had over 140,000 cases of the coronavirus, though Gov. Murphy announced that the state has flattened its curve of new infections.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

New Jersey's Jersey Shore, made famous by the MTV reality show of the same name, will be open in time for Memorial Day weekend, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy announced at a press conference on May 14. The popular strip of beaches will reopen starting May 22 with "social distancing guidelines in place." Murphy wrote on Twitter that "The Shore is central to our Jersey identity and we want to ensure that families can safely enjoy it this summer." 

"The Jersey Shore, after all, is where memories are made," Murphy said at his daily press briefing."The last thing any of us wanted was for a summertime down the shore to be a memory."

Effective May 22, all public and private beaches in Jersey must enforce capacity and admission limitations and six feet demarcations in certain areas; special events are still banned, and playgrounds, rides, picnic areas, and other water play areas are to remain closed. Restaurants can also to remain open, but for takeout or curbside pickup only, according to NBC Philadelphia. 

Murphy also said that face masks will not be required, but officials "highly recommend" that people wear them, "particularly when social distancing is difficult to maintain, such as waiting in line for a slice of boardwalk pizza."

The governor also noted that the shore towns along the coastline are "a tremendous driver of local jobs and revenues" during the summer season.

Earlier this month, Gov. Murphy announced that golf courses and state parks could reopen with limited capacity. As of Thursday, New Jersey has over 140,000 cases of the coronavirus, with nearly 10,000 reported deaths. The state passed its peak last month, with recent data showing a decline in hospitalizations. 

 "The data we are seeing gives us confidence that we can begin the careful and responsible restart of the economy to get people back to work and begin to set the stage for the steps to come," Murphy said.

SEE ALSO: A Texas mayor apologized after violating her state's stay-at-home order to go to a nail salon

DON'T MISS: Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp went on Fox News to defend his plan to start reopening the state

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Inside London during COVID-19 lockdown

• Safari lovers, take note: A first-of-its-kind luxury hotel, suspended 50 feet above South Africa's Kruger National Park, is taking reservations for 2021.
• The "Train on the Bridge," scheduled to open in December 2020 or early next year, will consist of 24 rooms built in converted train carriages atop the historic Skukuza Bridge.
• The bridge is where some of Kruger National Park's first visitors, arriving by train in the 1920s, would stay overnight.
• Together with the "Bridge House," a collection of seven land-based rooms nearby, the Train on the Bridge will form Kruger Shalati boutique hotel. Nightly rates start at $430 per adult.
• Here's an early look at the Kruger Shalati boutique hotel located in the heart of South Africa's largest nature reserve.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

SEE ALSO: Photos show wildlife roaming freely as humans are on coronavirus lockdown, from 'bear parties' in Yosemite to lion naps on South Africa's streets

NOW READ: A network of 28 tiny, one-bed hotels in Amsterdam is being called the most beautifully designed hotel of 2019 — and it consists of a series of converted bridge houses. Take a look inside.

Twenty-four hotel rooms built in converted train carriages will open on the historic Skukuza Bridge in South Africa's Kruger National Park either later this year or in early 2021, pending South Africa's reopening plans.

On March 26, South Africa implemented one of the world's strictest coronavirus lockdowns, banning outdoor exercise and sales of alcohol, cigarettes, and clothing. Beginning May 1, the country transitioned from a "level 5" to "level 4" lockdown, meaning that some businesses have been allowed to resume operations, but extreme precautions are still being taken to limit the spread of the virus.

In an address to the nation on May 13, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa indicated that he hopes to move most of the country to a "level 3" lockdown by the end of the month.

Source: Kruger Shalati, Business Insider, Reuters, Government of South Africa

The Train on the Bridge consists of 13 train cars from the 1950s and, together with seven Bridge House rooms built on land nearby, will be known as the Kruger Shalati boutique hotel.

Source: Kruger Shalati

The future site of Kruger Shalati is a five-hour drive from Johannesburg, in the heart of Suzuka, the largest rest camp in Kruger.

Source: Kruger Shalati, SAN Parks

Kruger became South Africa's first national park in 1926. At 7,700 square miles (roughly the size of Slovenia), it is one of the largest wildlife reserves in Africa.

Source: SAN Parks, Worldometers

The park is home to hundreds of species and cultural sites and drew over 1.8 million visitors in the 12 months leading up to March 2019.

Source: SAN Parks

The Skukuza Bridge, suspended 50 feet above the Sabie River, is where some of the park's first visitors stayed overnight back in the 1920s.

Source: SAN Parks, Kruger Shalati

Before rest camps and tourist facilities existed, visitors would arrive on Selati Railway, dine by bonfires on solid ground near the bridge, and then return to sleep in the train carriages, Kruger Shalati general manager Judiet Barnes told Business Insider.

The Selati Railway ceased operations in 1973.

Source: SAN Parks, Kruger Shalati, Kruger Safaris

Once renovated, the Train on the Bridge will feature a central lounge car, observation deck, and pool connected to rooms by outside walkways. Dining will take place on land at the Bridge House, like it did in the early days of the railway.

Source: Kruger Shalati

Both locations offer plenty of opportunity for wildlife sightings, like this elephant crossing Barnes witnessed last weekend from the bridge:

Source: Kruger Shalati

While the opening date for Kruger Shalati is up in the air due to the coronavirus pandemic, Barnes said that they are accepting reservations for 2021.

Source: Kruger Shalati

Train at the Bridge rooms cost $485 per person for double occupancy, with a minimum age requirement of 12.

Source: Kruger Shalati

River-facing walls will be lined with floor-to-ceiling windows ...

Source: Kruger Shalati

... and furnishings will celebrate local art and design.

Source: Kruger Shalati

The nearby Bridge House rooms cost $430 per adult for double occupancy and are open to children of any age.

Source: Kruger Shalati

Six of the Bridge House rooms can be interconnected for large families. The seventh, a Honeymoon Suite, costs $485 per adult per night.

Source: Kruger Shalati

Rates for all 31 rooms include meals, drinks and select spirits, transfers to and from the Skukuza Airport ...

Source: Kruger Shalati

... as well as two game drives daily in open Land Rovers. Private game drive vehicles can be booked in advance for an additional $460 per day.

Source: Kruger Shalati

• Per capita, the Bronx has more than double the COVID-19 cases of Manhattan.
• To understand why, we broke down census, labor, and healthcare data between the two New York City boroughs.
• We found that COVID-19 is not the great equalizer.
• While Manhattan, on average, has higher incomes and better access to healthcare, the Bronx is up against generations of food deserts, income inequality, crumbling public housing, and poor clinical care. Plus, more frontline workers and subway riders are coming from the Bronx right now.
• With 50% more Latino and black residents in the Bronx than Manhattan, you begin to see why being a person of color living in the Bronx makes COVID-19 two times deadlier.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Following is a transcript of the video.

Narrator: Why is COVID-19 hitting some communities harder than others? And who exactly has been hit hardest? We're seeing this happen across the country. But to better understand the divide, we zeroed in on two New York City boroughs: The Bronx and Manhattan.

Even though Manhattan has more people, The Bronx has more cases and more deaths. We wanted to understand the reasons for this gap, so we compared the boroughs based on three criteria: why more people are getting infected, being hospitalized, and dying from COVID-19. And it's revealed this pandemic is attacking two very different Americas. Let's look at why there's a difference in infection numbers between the two boroughs. We'll start with income.

The Bronx is the poorest borough in the city, with a median income of $38,000, compared to Manhattan's $82,000. Almost 60% of people in the Bronx are paying more than they can afford for housing, which has led to more multigenerational housing in the Bronx and more residents in public housing than any other borough. For every apartment in the Bronx, there are 2.8 people living in it. Compare that to the two people living in every apartment in Manhattan. More people at home likely means more people get sick.

Overall, there's 350,000 more housing units in Manhattan than the Bronx, and better-quality housing. See this map? Most residents in the Bronx are dealing with maintenance problems, like leaks, rats, cracks, plumbing, and broken toilets. These issues alone make it more challenging to live at home, not to mention having to work from home because of COVID-19. That is, if you can work from home.

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, of those Americans making less than $33,000 a year, which are these neighborhoods in the Bronx, 9% of people could work from home. Whereas of those people making more than $79,000 a year, all of these neighborhoods in Manhattan, 60% could work from home. On the other hand, in the Bronx, residents who can't work from home are most likely out of a job and tight on money, or they're essential workers.

Think grocery-store clerks, transit employees, trash collectors, healthcare workers, many of those people you see daily out on the front lines. 17% of frontline workers in New York City are coming from the Bronx, while just 12% are from Manhattan. And for the majority of these essential workers, getting to their job means taking the subway. Subway ridership has dropped across the city, but not by the same amount. In Manhattan, 75% fewer people are riding, but in the Bronx, ridership has dropped only 55%. So trains to and from the Bronx can be packed, especially with reduced subway services. Plus, people from the Bronx face longer commutes than people in Manhattan. On average, 12.7 minutes longer of standing body to body with that person who's maybe coughing.

OK, let's move on to the second criterion. Let's say someone in each borough does get the virus. What will influence whether they become hospitalized? The Bronx has had over 10,000 hospitalizations. Manhattan? About 6,000. Every year, New York counties are ranked based on their health. Last year, Manhattan was sixth best in the state. The Bronx? Dead last, out of 62 counties. This is based on things like access to clinical care, the environment, and preexisting conditions.

The Bronx has higher rates of preexisting conditions like asthma, heart disease, and obesity, conditions that increase the risk of a severe COVID-19 case. To explain why this is, we're gonna have to go deep. We'll start with obesity rates between the two boroughs. Studies have shown that poor diets and lack of exercise are linked to obesity. And in the Bronx, families facing money problems or limited time are forced to turn to cheaper, prepackaged foods. 87% of kids in the Bronx rely on free or reduced school lunches, which are packed with salt and fat. Plus, the Bronx has almost double the amount of food stamps per individual compared to Manhattan.

But the greatest contributor to diet, though, is access. And the Bronx has historically had some of the worst food deserts in the country, where it's hard to find affordable and healthy food close to home. All of these factors have created a lack of healthy resources for generations in the Bronx. They lead to unhealthy eating habits and high rates of obesity and diabetes, both preexisting conditions that increase your risk of death from COVID-19. On the other hand, in Manhattan, life expectancy and access to healthy food is much higher. People not only have more access to grocery stores, they also have more gyms to choose from. Simply put, these things and disposable income make it a lot easier to be healthier here.

Another preexisting condition that skyrockets risk of COVID-19 hospitalization: asthma. In big cities, studies have shown pollution is a major cause of asthma. Pollution is bad across New York City, but the Bronx has the highest rates of asthma-related emergency-room visits. There's even a place nicknamed Asthma Alley in the South Bronx. It's surrounded by four highways and sanitation and sewage facilities. There's also a bunch of trucks coming and going from all of these distribution centers, these food wholesalers, and the FreshDirect distribution center here and the Wall Street Journal and New York Post printing press here. At last count, asthma hospitalizations were 27 times higher in this area than the rest of the city. Bad asthma equals a higher risk of being hospitalized with COVID-19 and needing a ventilator to help you breathe. But it gets worse when you take into account how accessible medical professionals are in these areas.

In Manhattan, there's one physician for every 750 people. In the Bronx, there's one physician for every 1,770 people. There are also fewer hospital beds in the Bronx. Manhattan has almost double the amount of hospitals for only a 15% larger population. That brings us to our third and final criterion. Why are more people dying due to COVID-19 in the Bronx? In Manhattan, four emergency hospitals were constructed to combat coronavirus. While the Bronx was promised one, the borough hasn't gotten it yet. Quality care also isn't as accessible in the Bronx. On average, Manhattan hospitals received three out of five stars. Bronx hospitals received 1.2 out of five stars. Jacobi Hospital in the Bronx is one of the five worst-rated hospitals in the nation.

Add in the effect of preexisting conditions we talked about earlier, and the Bronx has had 2,800 deaths of people with underlying conditions. Manhattan? Almost 1,300. Altogether, as of May 10, Manhattan's death toll was 1,946, while the Bronx hit 3,177 deaths. And when you break down New York City's death toll, people of color are two times more likely to die of coronavirus. In the Bronx, the population is 85% black or Hispanic. Whereas in Manhattan, 64% of the population is white. This is why you're seeing headlines that a disproportionate number of people of color are dying of COVID-19. But these deaths go beyond coronavirus.

For the Bronx, cycles of income inequality, food deserts, poor healthcare, fewer hospitals, and crumbling housing have harmed communities of color for generations. And we see this pattern repeat itself again and again with black and brown communities across the country. Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, Los Angeles. This disease is not the great equalizer. Yes, anyone can get COVID-19. But not everyone is as vulnerable to dying from it. That has everything to do with the problems in place long before this ever started.

Join the conversation about this story »

• An estate chef quarantined with his employers in the Hamptons gave Business Insider details on his day-to-day.
• He's making lunch and dinner for a family of five and two other households of six people each, and he hasn't gotten a raise for it.
• Grocery shopping, he said, is "like a war zone" but he still needs to deliver what his employers want during lockdown.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Imagine having to quarantine with your boss.

That's the case for one estate chef in the Hamptons, whose work days are spent chopping away at the kitchen counter for a family of five.

The chef, who wanted to stay anonymous for privacy reasons but whose identity Business Insider was able to verify, said he never gave much thought to the possibility of quarantining with the family but that the subject came up naturally in late February. As he tells it, his employers anticipated ensuing chaos before the coronavirus was even declared a pandemic and asked him not to leave the property unless going grocery shopping, even on his days off.

He said he stayed out of respect and partly because he was afraid of being furloughed, although his employers never insinuated that would happen during the request. "They're kind of freaked out, and I've become family to them," said the chef, who has spent four years working for them. "Plus, I'm not exactly roughing it in the guest house."

He says he's currently staying in one of several guest houses on the three-acre estate, which also includes an eight-bedroom main house. The chef, who lives by himself in a non-quarantine world, doesn't have family quarantining away from him but says he misses his own shower and bed.

More work, same pay

The chef wasn't offered a raise for quarantine, but he's still found himself taking on more work than normal since he's the only household staff member working. The four other housekeepers, he said, are all quarantined in their own homes.

Because of this, he's had to become a jack of all trades. He said he's tried to "step up" by acting as a partial house manager, whether by picking up stuff around the house or desanitizing all packages that come in. "It's more of a juggling act now," said the chef, who dons a mask and gloves while working.

In the kitchen, the chef isn't just whipping up lunch and dinner for his clients, but for two other households — the employer's friends, both families of six — who live nearby and don't have the luxury of a private chef quarantined with them. He said he packages their meals in takeout boxes and each family's household manager comes by every day to pick up each meal.

These families also aren't paying him, he said, although one gave him a bottle of tequila as a thank you gift. According to him, cooking for more than one family isn't unheard of in the Hamptons right now.

But the chef is managing this all in his typical 9:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. shift. Instead of picking up more hours, he said, he's increased his time management.

It also helps that he has access to two ovens and a double oven, which allows him to cook multiple meals at once. He's also making less snacks during lockdown as the boss has complained that "her clothes don't fit," he said.

Grocery shopping is "like a war zone"

The chef told us that the biggest challenge during lockdown has been that "the needs and wants of the clients don't change."

In the midst of a pandemic, delivering those needs requires creativity. Consider the time the chef needed to serve filet mignon. He couldn't find it anywhere the week his employers requested it, so he bought ribeye instead and had the butcher cut it thicker and shape it like a filet. "You have to make it happen," he said.

The chef began stockpiling goods when he was first asked to quarantine and says he stays stocked on pantry staples for three weeks ahead. Regardless, he still shops twice a day, in the morning and after lunch, to accommodate the needs of his clients and whatever they want to eat that day.

While there's not a massive food shortage, he said, it's still difficult to obtain some ingredients like flour and yeast. Like many other places, the Hamptons had been out of those baking staples for a month, he said. 

It's resulted in what the chef dubs "drug deals" among the Hamptons chefs, who meet in grocery store parking lots to trade off yeast for flour, the latter of which is sometimes substituted with cocoa powder. The chef has also taken to ordering some from Baldor, an online food purveyor, when he's required to make bread.

Joe Gurrera, owner of Epicurean market Citarella, where the chef likes to shop, also told Business Insider that flour has been hard to come by. While most stock is pretty constant, he said, "From time to time we come across an item that we can't get for a few days, particularly something like chicken because not all the processing plants are open."

While Gurrera saw a "tidal wave" of panic buying in the beginning of lockdown, customers have since realized Citarella is constantly replenishing and have cooled off on their stockpiling. But it's still busy, he said.

The chef said that grocery stores have been packed, and there's always a line to get in that he tries to skip by entering through the back of the meat department. He likened it to peak summer season or a "war zone." Apparently, in the Hamptons, they mean the same thing.

Are you a household staff member quarantining with your boss? We'd like to hear from you. Email hhoffower@businessinsider.com.

SEE ALSO: Some wealthy homeowners — like Martha Stewart — are quarantining with their staff and paying a premium for live-in service

DON'T MISS: Rich urbanites are fleeing big cities and draining resources in smaller, more remote vacation spots. Here's where they're going — and how the locals feel about it.

Join the conversation about this story »

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• To practice safe social distancing, my friends and I are staying far apart from each other.
• That means we won't be able to play Settlers of Catan, the popular board game, together anytime soon.
• So we, like many millennials, turned to the Internet for answers, and played an online version called Catan Universe.
• We used a Zoom chat to see each other while playing, and while our first game was a little rocky, it eventually turned into a delightful Catan game.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, options for entertainment can seem a little limited. As an extrovert who loves playing games with friends, I've been on FaceTime every night with friends, but it's not the same as the semi-regular board game cafe excursions we enjoy (we miss you Hex & Company!).

In particular, we wanted to play our beloved Settlers of Catan— a board game where you strategically build roads and settlements to acquire resources, rob other players, and acquire victory points. The first settler to reach 10 victory points wins. I am very bad at Catan, but I love my friends and being competitive, so I was excited to coordinate an online game.

Enter: Settlers of Catan-tine. I had heard about some friends getting creative and texting photos of boards back and forth, but we decided to use app/video game Catan Universe. You can play Catan Universe on your browser, download it as an app on Google or Android, or play it via Steam, an online game platform.

It's free to play, but you can buy "Catan Gold" within it to unlock features like different theme sets and expansions; 100 pieces of Catan Gold are $.99.

We started with four players: me from my childhood home in Boston; my friend Adam, who is currently quarantined after being evacuated from Spain; my roommate Rose, who remains in New York; and my friend Asya, who is also self-isolating in New York. 

All of us except for Rose played on browser; she played via Steam. One drawback of the game is that there's no video or audio option for players to communicate through (although there is a chatbox) so we set up a separate Zoom call and pinned it. Here's how it worked.

SEE ALSO: Virtual beer pong and Zoom dinner dates: 9 creative ways millennials are staying connected with their friends while self-isolating at home

First, we had to set up our accounts on Catan Universe.

I had to enter my email and create a username and password.

Next, we had to activate our accounts. This sounds simple, but it wasn't immediately clear that activation codes were sent to our emails.

Adam criticized us for not being great at creating new accounts. My counterpoint: Many platforms let you log in with accounts from social media, so I hadn't been sent an activation code in a while.

Next up was our first big challenge: creating a game. First, we had to add each other as friends. Turns out, it's actually pretty easy. First, you click on the top left diamond with your profile.

Then, click the "friends" option from the dropdown menu that appears.

Next, you'll see this screen. This is where Zoom came in handy: We told Adam all of our usernames and he added us. On each of our screens, a little pop-up window told us he had added us.

Here is Adam screensharing to try and explain to us how to add friends (it took him a little while). He was frustrated with our technological incompetence, but nevertheless we remained friends.

While Catan is generally played with four players, we quickly realized that Catan Universe was optimized for three players.

Technically, the game required us to buy an expansion for all of us to play.

We were able to use a "scroll" to unlock four player capabilities — we had all been automatically given two upon enrolling in Catan Universe — but we couldn't customize the game at all. This became a big problem later on.

To start a game, you have to click the game token — the brown one on the left — at the bottom of the screen.

We had to use "auto match" to play our game of four players. We all put in the same specifications so we would be matched with each other: We chose a custom board, all opted for four players, and indicated we only wanted to be matched with friends.

Important to note is that you all need to do this at the same time. The first time we tried, Rose was too late and we got matched with a (presumably) AI player named Melua. We had to end that game. Sorry Melua.

At long last, it was time to start the game. The board set itself and chose who went first. The rules were the same as in the board game: Every player got to put down one road and one settlement. I was selected last, so I got to place two roads and two settlements.

I could drop my roads and cities by clicking on those dots.

Finally, after everyone else went, it was my turn to roll the dice. All I had to do was click them — everyone with settlements on the corresponding pieces automatically received their cards. The dice are on the bottom right side of the screen.

Automatically receiving cards was a great feature of the game — it's definitely one of the trickier aspects of in-person game play.

To trade with another player or the bank, you have to click a little symbol on the left side of the screen. It looks like a money pouch with a recycling sign overlaid on it.

The symbol directly to the left of it — a money pouch with the recycling sign and an "x" — closes you off to trades, if you want to be unfriendly and/or mean.

If you're making a trade, you indicate what resource you have, and what you want. All other players get a pop-up with the proposed trade. Here's Adam trading with me.

To place a road or settlement, once I had the necessary materials, I could click on them during my turn. Then, I could click where I wanted to place the materials. Here's me expanding my empire.

Same deal with development cards: I could just click that black stack of them to the right.

We were finally getting the hang of it when I accidentally happened upon the reason that you want to play a custom match: There's an auto timer on each turn. If you don't press "end turn" — the black circle on the bottom right side of the screen — at the end of your turn, you get a message telling you you'll be kicked out of the game. So yes, I got kicked out ... and was replaced by an evil AI version of myself.

I accidentally timed out three times, as I was taking too long to document the game for this article, and got kicked out. But an AI version of me continued to play as the game continued — and apparently she was quite mean.

I did not want my Catan identity to be stolen further, so we decided to end the game early and regroup later. I like to think that AI Juliana, wherever she is, is crushing someone else at Catan.

We started a new game later that night, this time only with three players. This made all the difference — we could select who was in the game and turn off the auto timer.

This time it was just Rose, Adam, and me. Asya was taking a 9 p.m. nap, so she sat this one out.

From there, we jumped right in. We were pretty much pros at this point. Here I am playing the Knight, a development card that allows me to steal from the other players.

Adam was right: I did steal from him. At this point, our game was chugging along — we were executing trades, building roads, and playing much like we would have in person.

Not to fear: Adam still won. It was a little more abrupt than our usual game ending, because there's ordinarily some human error (and time) involved in calculating victory points. But Catan Universe processed his win immediately.

Overall, I had a great time. It helped us feel a little bit normal during these trying times, and I felt like I got better at Catan. I had a few major takeaways.

I felt like we lost some of the silliness for Catan — for instance, I didn't get to do my favorite bit, which is where I trade a different player for the exact same card. It was also frustrating to coordinate Zoom with the game; our free call ran out twice while playing.

That being said, the efficiency of card distribution and counting was a huge win. Those things often bog us down during in-person games.

I came away from the experience with some tips for anyone hoping to start their own virtual Catan game.

1. Sync up with Zoom. Try to have someone with a paid subscription host it; otherwise, you'll have to start multiple free 40-minute meetings.
2. Remember to end your turn properly. Don't be like me and accidentally time out.
3. Do a practice round before you start properly. Our second round was much smoother and more enjoyable.
4. Considering buying expansions if you're consistently having four players on the board. That being said, it probably can be done for free with a little practice — and it seems like we'll have plenty of time to practice.

If you're looking to capture the spirit of Catan, this is a great option. Alternatives like Colonist.io also do a good job of recreating the game, although Catan Universe seems to be the most similar to the actual board game.

Hopefully we'll be back together soon, but in the meantime, I'll be pinning some Zoom chats and trying to build virtual longest road.

• A sprawling Hamptons estate rented for $2 million from the end of March to Labor Day, breaking a record for Long Island's East End, The New York Post reported.
• The 11-bedroom mansion was rented by a Manhattan businessman and his family who left the city due to the coronavirus, the home's developer told the Post.
• The home, which was rented by Beyoncé and Jay-Z in 2012, has a 60-foot swimming pool, a spa, a two-lane bowling alley, a basketball court, and other lavish amenities.
• It's also listed for sale for nearly $40 million.
• Rental prices in the Hamptons have skyrocketed in the past couple months as wealthy New Yorkers flee the city.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The Hamptons, the ritzy vacation destination for affluent New Yorkers, is no stranger to high price tags.

But in March, as the coronavirus pandemic took hold in the US, a sprawling mansion known as the Sandcastle was rented for nearly $2 million, breaking a record for Long Island's East End, Jennifer Gould Keil reported for The New York Post.

Legendary Hamptons developer Joe Farrell, who built the house, said the 11-bedroom Bridgehampton home rented for close to its $2 million asking price a day after it was listed. It was snapped up by "a textile tycoon and his family who were stuck in Manhattan and wanted to leave the city on a day's notice. This was a COVID situation — not a normal summer rental," Farrell said, per the Post.

Farrell did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

The Hamptons rental season has started early as New Yorkers flee the city in search of larger, more secluded homes to ride out the pandemic. The market has skyrocketed, leaving even "middle-class rich people" priced out of the market.

The Sandcastle estate regularly draws celebrity renters, including Jay-Z and Beyoncé, who reportedly paid $400,000 to stay in the house for a month in 2012. The property boasts 31,000 square feet of lavish amenities including a movie theater, bowling alley, walk-in refrigerator, wine room, climbing wall, basketball court, private gym, and spa.

Per the Post, the estate was listed for rent with Saunders & Associates, who did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment. It's also listed for sale for nearly $40 million.

Julie Zeveloff and Callie Bost contributed to an earlier version of this story.

SEE ALSO: The demand for rentals in the Hamptons is so huge right now that one couple is paying $10,000 a month for a renovated 'fisherman's shack' — and that's on the low end of the price range

DON'T MISS: Uber cofounder Travis Kalanick dropped $43.3 million on a Los Angeles estate with a 7-bedroom mansion and a 7,000-bottle wine cellar. Take a look inside the property.

The Hamptons' $2 million rental, the Sandcastle estate, sits on 11.5 acres on swanky Halsey Lane in Bridgehampton, New York.

Bridgehampton is one of the Hamptons' central hubs, full of both modern beachfront estates and traditional shingle-style houses. The median home price is nearly $4 million.

The mansion has more than 17,000 square feet of living space.

Source: Saunders Real Estate

The spacious chef's kitchen has a walk-in refrigerator and is supported by an additional full prep kitchen, a butler's pantry, and a wine room.

Source: Saunders Real Estate

The home has 11 bedrooms.

Source: Saunders Real Estate

The master suite alone spans 2,800 square feet.

Source: Saunders Real Estate

The home is chock full of amenities including a two-lane bowling alley ...

Source: Saunders Real Estate

... a fitness center and a basketball court ...

Source: Saunders Real Estate

... and a spa with fireplace, in-floor Jacuzzi, hydraulic massage tables, sauna, steam room, and showers.

Source: Saunders Real Estate

Then there's the "Air Lounge," a children's entertainment center with virtual golf, a half-pipe, and a rock climbing wall.

Other amenities include a movie theater and a club area with a DJ booth, full bar, wine room, and a lounge with five TVs.

The view over the swimming pool and grounds from the second floor resembles a high-end resort.

Source: Saunders Real Estate

The main house overlooks the 60-foot by 20-foot heated pool, which has an underwater speaker system.

Source: Saunders Real Estate

Lounge areas and trees surround the pool.

Source: Saunders Real Estate

A covered outdoor lounge space and an outdoor kitchen are just steps from the pool.

Source: Saunders Real Estate

A 2,400-square-foot pool house includes two bedrooms, multiple yoga and studio rooms, and an underground hot tub out back.

Source: Saunders Real Estate

To top it all off, the Sandcastle estate boasts its own sunken tennis court.

Source: Saunders Real Estate