Sonder, the San Francisco-based rival to Airbnb that had established a lucrative partnership with Marriott last year, has now lost that partnership and is shutting down entirely.

You may be familiar with Sonder only from a local controversy that arose in mid-2019, when it became known that the short-term rental company had taken control of a newly built residential building at Church and Market streets, which had been sold to the neighborhood as new rental housing. (Sonder sued to get out of that deal when the pandemic started.) Or you may have stayed in a Sonder property if you booked a short stay in a major city on one of the major booking apps in recent years.

The company provided hotel-like stays in Airbnb-esque, design-forward properties that it managed, and at its peak it was operating in 37 cities worldwide.

In 2021, Sonder went public at a valuation of $2.2 billion, just as larger rival Airbnb was seeing its newly available shares rising in value. And in 2024, Sonder inked a licensing deal with Marriott International that promised to put Sonder's 9,000 apartment-style units on Marriott's booking platform.

However, there seemed to be a major technology issue with that integration, and perhaps other problems as well. And as of Sunday, Marriott ended that agreement due to "default" by Sonder, per Reuters, with Marriott removing all Sonder properties from its channels.

And as the Chronicle reports, following a rocky few years that saw Sonder's stock price drop from $200 in early 2022 to around $50 in mid-2022 to under a dollar last month, the company announced Monday it was filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on Monday and would be winding down operations.

"Sonder has faced severe financial constraints arising from, among other things, prolonged challenges in the integration of the Company’s systems and booking arrangements with Marriott International," the company said in an announcement.

"We are devastated to reach a point where a liquidation is the only viable path forward," said Janice Sears, Interim Chief Executive Officer of Sonder, in a statement. "Unfortunately, our integration with Marriott International was substantially delayed due to unexpected challenges in aligning our technology frameworks, resulting in significant, unanticipated integration costs, as well as a sharp decline in revenue arising from Sonder’s participation in Marriott’s Bonvoy reservation system. These issues persisted and contributed to a substantial and material loss in working capital."

Sonder co-founder and CEO Francis Davidson stepped down from his role in June, and the company's CFO resigned earlier this year as well.

"What started as an idea as a first-year university student in Montreal has now become a leading global brand providing our guests with unique technology and design-forward accommodations," Davidson said at the time.