Airbnb released a report last week on Airbnb China’s women community. According to the report, as of February 10, 2020, 53% of active Chinese landlords are female, and China is one of the top 10 countries with the largest number of female landlords on the platform.

Among them, the millennial generation (Generation Y) and generation Z female landlords are the main players on the Airbnb platform. About 67% of female landlords are post-80s, post-90s and post-00s.

In 2019, Airbnb’s global female landlords are expected to earn US$14.9 billion (about 104.3 billion yuan) through shared accommodation, of which China ranks eighth in the world.

The year 2019 registered 6.01 billion domestic tourists person-trips in China, up by 8.4 percent over that of the previous year. Read more here.

Among the global landlords who receive at least 150 person-trips, more than 37% of the five-star rated female landlords are from China.

In 2019, the five-star rating of Chinese female landlords is 88%, higher than that of global female landlords (83%); the average rating of Chinese female landlords is 4.81, higher than that of global female landlords (4.77).

67% of the team leaders of Airbnb Chinese community are women.

The top ten cities with the largest distribution of female landlords are:

• Shanghai
• Beijing
• Chengdu
• Guangzhou
• Chongqing
• Hangzhou
• Shenzhen
• Xi’an
• Qingdao
• Wuhan

Last year, the top ten types of accommodations most favored by Chinese female tourists based on Airbnb report were: Inn, boat house, resort, island, farmhouse, country house, hotel apartment, boutique hotel, hotel, and apartment.

Among the top ten popular destinations most favored by global female tourists, China occupied four seats, namely Changsha in Hunan, Sanya in Hainan, Lijiang in Yunnan, and Beihai in Guangxi.

Among them, single-person travel is more and more popular with Chinese women. In 2019, the proportion of Chinese female tourists traveling alone in China increased by more than 1.6 times.

Characteristics of China outbound travelers in 4 segments

eLong, Home Inns, and Booking lead China’s mobile hotel booking apps market in March 2017. eLong and Home Inns both recorded over one million monthly active users. Airbnb also ranks the sixth with 126% growth YoY.

The MAU of China hotel service mobile apps is 4.35 million with a decrease of 25.9% YoY in March 2017.  The majority of users (over 50%) in this mobile app category are 30 years-old or younger. The top three by growth rates are Pod Inns, eLong, and Meituan Hotel.

Accommodations accounted for about 20% of total online travel transactions in 2016 and have the potential to reach 100 billion yuan according to China Housing Sharing Development Report 2017.

The number of users sharing accommodations was only 35 million in China in 2016 according to the report. Total transactions of China’s accommodation sharing market reached 24.3 billion yuan with over 2 million users providing such services.

The top online platforms for short-term accommodations in China include Tujia.com, Mayi.com, Xiaozhu.com, and Airbnb. Tujia and Mayi have the highest brand awareness in China (over 70%), followed by Xiaozhu and Airbnb (40%-70%) according to iResearch data.

Search engines, social ads, and web portals are the top channels for China online users to become aware of short-term accommodation platforms.

Short-term accommodation market in China reached 8.78 billion yuan in 2016 with a growth rate of 106.1%; it’s estimated to grow by 42.6% and 35.5% to reach 12.52 billion yuan and 16.96 billion yuan in 2017 and 2018 respectively.

Close to 60% users in China booked short-term accommodations for family trips. Traveling with friends (17.5%) is the second largest user group.

Over 60% users book short-term accommodations 2-3 times per year. And, over half (50.6%) stayed an average duration of 3-4 nights.

Apartments are the most selected room type (50.6%) for short-term accommodation market in China in 2016, followed by inns (23.2%) and farmhouses (12.3%).

43.6% charged an average daily rate of between 200 and 300 yuan, which is about the price of economic hotels in China. 36.9% between 301 and 500 yuan.

Unlike hotel bookings on Ctrip or eLong in China (most require no payment for bookings), over one-third of short-term accommodations require full payment for booking and 40.6% charge deposits. Users are currently not comfortable with this; over one-third of users expect no payment at all for booking rooms.

Having more rooms for selection is the top factor for Chinese users to choose a specific short-term accommodation platform; photos, reasonable pricing, and customer service are also important factors.

Mobile clients are the top channel for online bookings of short-term accommodations.

84.6% short-term accommodation users prefer to book their stay around scenic spots; 61.6% in business districts; 46.2% near airports; and, 32.4% near subways.

Over 60% short-term accommodation users in China are between 26 and 35 years-old. Near 80% have a degree; and, over one-third have a monthly family income of between 15K to 20K yuan.

Also read: An Overview of China’s Local “Airbnb” (Xiaozhu, Tujia, Zhubaijia…)

Following the rising success of Airbnb, China’s short-term accommodation market is also booming during the recent years and reached 24.3 billion yuan in 2016. Players leading this market include Tujia.com, Mayi.com, Xiaozhu.com, and Airbnb.

Tujia Short-term Accommodation, Tujia.com

Founded in December 2011, Tujia acquires bulk and standard new housing sources working with real estate developers and room owners. And, it standardizes the management and operations of the rooms. It offers the most comprehensive room selections in the short-term accommodation market, over 400,000 rooms across travel destinations and key cities in China.

Xiaozhu, one of its main competitors, mainly targeted at first-tier and second-tier cities while Tujia mainly at tourism destination cities market, which was similar to HomeAway.

In terms of the business operation model, HomeAway and Tujia are totally different. Tujia cooperated with about 80% of China’s top 100 real estate developers, providing design ideas and solutions of houses to make it more in line with consumers’ expectations. The standardization of new houses could solve the shortage and quantity problems of Tujia.

In addition to renting houses from the developers, from the management point of view, Tujia would also support short-term hotel accommodation by standardized services and a large number of houses. In the future, Tujia would further integrate online and offline resources and transform to a combined model of both B2C and C2C.

Ant Short-term Accommodations, Mayi.com

Mayi.com, founded in November 2011, offers beyond 300,000 short-term accommodations including tickets of tourists attractions, car rentals, and etc. Mayi was acquired by Tujia in 2016.

It focuses on family customers and 80% of its bookings came from family travelers.

Xiaozhu Short-term Accommodation, xiaozhu.com

Launched in August 2012, Xiaozhu.com platform provides about 140,000 rooms. It advocates personalized accommodation space to encourage the landlord to share their own life experiences, allowing users to enjoy deep and unique experiences.

China’s “Airbnbs” actually began from online classified information platforms, such as mayi.com, muniao.com and etc. Xiaozhu short-term accommodation was the closest in concept and business model with Airbnb. However, the exact clone of Airbnb model may not work well in China as proved; Xiaozhu had to adapt to localize its business.

By accelerating the growth of the supply end, Xiaozhu is devoted to building an order platform for C2C model. As of July 2015, the platform covered more than 200 cities, and the number of accommodations exceeded 50,000 and about 10,000 individual house owners. The number of transactions has increased by four times compared with that in early 2015.

Related: China Outbound Travel Forecast 2016-2021

Zhubaijia Short-term Accommodation, zhubaijia.com

Founded in March 2012, Zhubaijia focuses on outbound tourism market with over 250,000 rooms across 70 countries. Over 60% of its revenues came from overseas short-term accommodations in 2016.

Zhubaijia was a special existence in China’s short-term accommodation market. It targeted domestic outbound tourists who would rent houses abroad for a short period, which is different from Xiaozhu and Tujia.

Zhubaijia was originated from the Asian office of Wimdu in October 2012, formerly known as the “European Airbnb”. After Airbnb entering China, it first expanded the needs of Chinese outbound tourists, which was almost coincident with the strategy of Zhubaijia. However, many houses and services from Airbnb couldn’t be guaranteed and suitable for the Chinese, which was just the superiority of Zhubaijia.

Zhubaijia had its own set of access and audit standards of houses: the platform would follow the Putonghua proficiency level of landlords, attitude towards Chinese, reception of Chinese tourists, response speed, cleanliness, traffic, facilities and so on to search for good accommodation sources. In addition, Zhubaijia would supply a series of services including consultancy, language services, delivery, dispute resolution and others.

Most short-term platforms including Airbnb generate revenues by charging a commission while Zhubaijia does not charge any from users or landlords. The future business model of Zhubaijia would be to generate revenues through related outbound travel services and might support personalized services for different users.

With the development of the online travel market and the popurity of the tourism, short-term accommodation would usher in new development opportunities. And to gain profits, China’s short-term accommodation operators must change to meet with China’s unique situation; or they may be out of the market.

Also read:  China Travel Market to Reach $617.4B in 2015

Qunar was ranked the top generic travel booking app by coverage in September 2016 according to data from TalkingData, followed by Ctrip and LY.com apps.

12306, China Railway’s official app, remains the top choice for train tickets booking. Spring Airlines made it to the top among airlines booking apps with 0.43% coverage, followed by apps from Eastern Airlines (0.27%), China Southern Airlines (0.2%) and Air China (0.15%).

Among accommodation booking apps, Home Inns, eLong and Airbnb are the top 3 by coverage. Airbnb, Tujia and Mayi are the only three homestay network platforms in the top 10 while the rest are for hotel bookings.

Huawei, Samsung, and Xiaomi smartphones are the most popular Android brands among travelers during this year’s National Day holiday.

The top mobile apps for travel information by coverage are Mafengwo (0.58%), TripAdvisor (0.48%), Travel Translator (0.31%; by Mafengwo), Qyer (0.26%), and Breadtrip (0.22%).

Privacy exposure is the top concerns in China’s sharing economy according to a Tencent survey. And, the financial gain is the top gain to 70% owners surveyed.

Top valuable features of renting and sharing platforms to the owners are privacy & security, mature mutual credit rating system, and convenient and secure payment system.

72% Chinese users value the financial return most in the sharing economy in China. 19% think they want to rent to make new friends.

The security and privacy risks are the top concerns for Chinese (63%). Among those who don’t want to rent, “Don’t like strangers using their own stuff” is the top concern (42%), followed by security and privacy. Whether they agree to rent or not, many think the renting process is troublesome and time-consuming (17%).

42% Chinese who agree to rent expect the renting price to be 50%-90% of the market price. Only 3% renters expect the price to be 50% higher than the market average.

In terms of the renting duration and seasonality, 45% renters expect to have their apartment/rooms/car rented for the long term. Renters who hope to rent regardless of the seasonality account for 84%.

Renters who value the credit rating system account for 76%; and, 23% hope to rent to someone “who’s similar”.  Only 1% would like to rent to someone “who’s different”. 53-50% renters never mind nationality of the users while 37% renters prefer locals and 9.5% prefer foreigners.

38% renters show no preference of renting platforms. the number of  renters who prefer vertical renting platforms (35%) is 8 percent higher than that of preferring big and comprehensive platforms (27%).

The sharing economy is changing pure consumers to prosumers, which will hit the producer, but also promote enterprise transformation as well as innovation. The conflict between privacy protection and good services is also a big opportunity for new businesses.

Also read: An Overview of China’s “Airbnb”: Xiaozhu, Tujia, Zhubaijia

Fortune magazine published 40 Under 40 list last month and Tang Yan (35 yeas old), who is founder and CEO of Momo getting listed on NASDAQ, ranking 24, is the only one from China.

It is said that the list of 40 under 40 is an annual rich list published by Fortune. Many elites from technology industry had been in the list, such as founder and CEO of Tencent, Ma Huateng (Pony), founder and CEO of Jingdong, Liu Qiangdong (Richard), and Wang Jun, dean of BGI( Bejing Genomics Institute).

This year, the top one on the list is CEO of Uber, Travis Kalanick, followed by founder and CEO of Airbnb, Brian Chesky and Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and founder of Facebook.Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, ranked top on list in 2013. This year, she ranks 6 and she is still the only female one with high rank.

Also read: Fortune 500 2014: Top Chinese Internet Companies

After viewing the landing page, I realized Airbnb is likely to fail in its attempt in expanding into Chinese market; let me tell you why.

China is a huge market, not to mention its revenue potential for travel sector. It’s too appealing to be ignored by many internet based businesses such as Airbnb. Yet, it’s not dedicated at all in this one of the most competitive markets in the world.

The banner ad is in traditional Chinese while people use simplified Chinese in China. Though many Chinese won’t have a problem reading traditional Chinese, the non-localized ad make internet users feel disconnected.

Airbnb website does have a Chinese landing page, but some text doesn’t sound native and my guesses they automated it with tools like Google Translate with some possible manual editing.  And, the landing page is not appealing to Chinese internet users at all. It offers login method with Facebook which can’t be accessed in China.

Few friends of mine in China heard of Airbnb and for those who haven’t, what would they do? They would likely to conduct a search if they’re going to do anything at all. Airbnb should be worried about what’s on Baidu search results page of its brand term:

The subdomain, luckily, was indexed and ranked on top of Baidu SERP for this brand term. However, the title and meta description is clearly not optimized for Chinese audience, telling no unique benefits of using Airbnb.

The two listings below its official website about critique about its business model and a robbing incident.

My suggestion for all companies looking forward to expanding their business into China is,

1. Do your research and develop a business/market strategy for this unique market instead of making half dedicated efforts with a campaign on Google Display Network or Baidu PPC
2. Develop an integrated digital strategy for China with help from someone having local expertise in this market, ignoring whatever worked for you in other markets
3. Form a testing strategy. China is a dynamic and competitive market; it’s unlikely you can see results right after launching a campaign

For those not far from Zurich, you can join me in September Connect China conference when I’ll share some insights on China digital strategy.