In the cognition of the earliest travelers, B&B is synonymous with poetry and distance, and later it became a trend to check in Internet celebrity B&B, and now when tourism is back on track, travelers recognize the value of B&B, and return to the original imagination.
Travelers' demand for homestays has returned to its original intention, but consumer demand has become complex, segmented and personalized, forcing the rapid iteration of new formats and models, and the competition in the homestay industry is becoming increasingly fierce. What kind of homestays are the most popular in the new environment, and what kind of capabilities will future landlords need to have?With these questions, Wen Lu andLiu Yang, Chief Commercial Officer (CBO) of Tujia B&BHave deep conversations.
Wen Travel:fromThis yearFrom the perspective of the recovery of the domestic homestay market, what do you think is the biggest difference from 2019?If summed up in a few keywords, youeyesWhat does 2023 look like?
Liu Yang:In 2023, China's homestay industry will usher in the first year of quality, and while meeting the basic accommodation requirements from the perspective of professional hardware equipment and software services, homestays will also focus on providing users with a personalized experience that distinguishes hotels.
Especially compared to 2019, the homestay industry in 2023 does have a lot of differences. First of all, on the user side, the customer group structure is younger, and the factors affecting consumption decisions are becoming more and more diversified and rich. The second is the destination side, the homestay space is expanding to the northwest, such as Hotan, Bortala in Xinjiang, Kashgar, Shigatse, and Nujiang, Lincang in Yunnan and other places The homestay products are gradually increasing. The underlying logic of all these changes is that the demand for homestays has returned to a distinctive and in-depth experience.
It can be said that distinctive and in-depth experience has become the most representative feature of the homestay market in 2023. Guests are looking for a differentiated experience, and B&Bs need a window to show a personalized experience, and a platform like Tujia happens to be the most convenient and efficient way to connect the two ends: let personalized users achieve a more efficient encounter with interesting hosts and better houses.
Wen Travel:Over the past yearWhat are the notable trends for landlords on the Tujia platform?
Liu Yang:This year, more and more homestay hosts have joined the ranks, with the number of new hosts increasing by 77% compared to 2019. Among them, the post-90s and post-00s have taken over as the main force of landlords, accounting for more than 40% of the new landlords.
A clear signal is that there are more and more slash youths running homestays. In addition to catering and accommodation, which are closely related to the industry and account for the highest proportion, the number of practitioners in culture and sports, architecture, the Internet, and education has also begun to increase. And often these "slash" landlords' skills have shaped the most distinctive personalized label of the homestay.
Wenlv: In 2023, the supply of the homestay industry is increasing, what do you think is the reason for attracting new landlords?Looking at it now, B&B is still a good business
Liu Yang:From the perspective of investment, the entire B&B industry is getting better and better in terms of standardization and efficiency, and with the continuous improvement of the platform's basic services, the entrepreneurial cost of entrepreneurs is decreasing and the transaction efficiency is improving. Hosts can also bring their own interests into the industry, which attracts a group of young Hosts to join the industry.
From the demand side, the growth of market demand is fundamental, and there must be a market for homestay products that can provide emotional value at this stage. **What the end has to do is to start from the demand, match the corresponding products, and add the empowerment of many measures such as authenticity, integrity score, landlord file and so on, so that it becomes easier to open a homestay.
Wen Travel:High-end hotels began to pursue non-standard characteristics to enhance the attractiveness of hotelsB&B industryitself"Involution" intensifiedHow can landlords build the core competitiveness of B&B?
Liu Yang:The most different thing between B&B and hotel is that behind these houses stand a lively and interesting landlord, who gives B&B a wealth of humanistic value, which can not only provide daily services, but also talk about hobbies and life with guests, and can also develop special services for users according to their own hobbies and environment, such as catching the sea, ski teaching, pottery making, etc. It is these special skills like opening blind boxes that make the emotional connection between guests and the B&B deeper and more layered.
Wen Travel:For the upcoming onesIn 2024,What do you thinkHow will the homestay market go, what kind of homestays, what kind of landlordsis the mostCompetitive?
Liu Yang:With the development of the homestay industry towards specialization and specialization, we are still very optimistic about the direction and development of the homestay market next year. Good-looking houses are the same, and interesting souls are one in a thousand. In the era of paying for emotional value, the key to how to provide different emotional values lies in how to dig deep into the landlord culture.
While the B&B meets the basic accommodation requirements from the perspective of professional hardware equipment and software services, the personalized B&B experience that the host can bring has become the key to competitiveness, and the charm of the host is also vividly displayed in the B&B. The relationship between the landlord and the B&B is more like a shadow projected on each other, just like living in a B&B, you can have a certain understanding of what kind of person the owner is, and this part is often the most exciting and attractive.
Wen Travel:There are many changes around the industry, the market, and the landlord sideWhat are the further plans or initiatives of Tujia as a platform?
Liu Yang:In response to the problems of homestay experience such as false positioning, mismatched goods, worrying hygiene, and potential safety hazards criticized by users, Tujia has been doing the work of verifying the authenticity of homestays. The platform has a "filter removal", that is, to break the filter and restore the real appearance of the homestay through real shots.
In order to meet the needs of users for a complex and personalized experience, Tujia B&B has also recently launched a number of social features such as Host Cards, Host Profiles, and Host Stories to help hosts explore their own personalized tags and services, so that users can feel the characteristics and unique experience of hosts before booking. In the function of the host's story, you can also see the activities that are being held at the host's house, the special services provided, and the interesting things that have happened, etc., as if you have opened the host's circle of friends. Some of these initiatives are things that we will continue to promote in the coming year.