Draft:Tujia (company)

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Tujia is a Chinese peer-to-peer property rental company founded in 2011. As of 2019, the company was valued at $1.5 billion, having announced $300 million in new investments in October 2017.[1]

As of 2018, Tujia had 345 locations in China and over 1,000 international partnerships. It has been described as "tapping into a large affluent travelling class, revolutionizing the hospitality industry in China".[2]

History[edit]

Tujia was one of a number of Chinese companies established to copy the models created following the success of HomeAway and Airbnb.[3]


In 2013, HomeAway bought a minority investment in the company.[4] In 2016, Tujia acquired rival Mayi.com,[5] which had been established at the same time, as the market was created.[3]

Tujia has the backing of Tencent and Trip.com Group (formerly Ctrip.com International Ltd.).[6] Yu Holdings, owned by Chinese fashion figure Wendy Yu, has also invested in Tujia.[7][8][2]

As of 2017, it was reported that "four-year-old online vacation rental site Tujia, which is valued at $1 billion, offers Airbnb-like services with unique twists suited to the specific needs, wants and quirks of Chinese travelers".[9]

As of 2018, Tujia had 650,000 listings,[10] and had an approximately 24.5% market share among Chinese short-term rental platforms.[11]

"Airbnb rivals Meituan, Trip.com-backed Tujia and Xiaozhu all said they would take over for some landlords that previously listed on US-based platform".[12]

"After acquiring rival Mayi in 2016, home-sharing platform Tujia bought the homestay business of Trip.com, which itself is an investor in Tujia".[12]

Tujia is the most highly regarded as the Chinese edition of HomeAway and Airbnb. Tujia puts all accommodation types except traditional hotels online, including the inns, apartments, resorts, homestay houses, and villas, to provide short-term rental service, some housekeeper service and trusteeship for customers. Compared with HomeAway and Airbnb, due to the immature “trust system” in China, Tujia added many Chinese features to its business mode. On the one hand, it promises to the owners that they will take care of the houses and share the revenue accordingly; on the other hand, it transacts with the tenants directly as the house provider. The biggest problem of hotels is the housing resource; the hotel operators need to firstly contract for the houses before operation. Contracting requires expenses, and so does the maintenance for years; they will suffer losses if there are not enough guests. Tujia has changed that traditional business mode of house contracting into revenue sharing, different from the operation mode and logic of traditional hotels. When there are guests, it shares the revenue with the owners; when there are no guests, it doesn't have to pay to the owners.
With that brand-new housing resource acquisition and use mode, many owners, especially owners of idle tourism real estate, are willing to hand over their houses to Tujia. Now there are about 37% American and European travelers living in vacation rental houses instead of hotels during their trips, while the percentage of Chinese travelers is less than 10%. The Chinese tourist market is experiencing explosive development, with a large scale of tourist consumption and great demands for vacation hotels. So Tujia really has a promising prospect.[3]

Chinese companies like Tujia and Xiaozhu have imitated the overall idea behind Airbnb but have tailored their versions to the wants and desires of the Chinese people (Andre, 2016). ... Tujia partnered with HomeAway and is one of Airbnb's greatest competitors in China and has over 650,000 listings on its site. To cater to specific Chinese cultural preferences, Tujia is run more like a resort and not like individuals renting out their own property. Therefore, cleanliness is more consistent. Tujia uses property management staff to clean their properties and this includes 24/7 service availability of staff. Tujia's also offers butler services, bicycles, and car rentals at some properties. Tujia is essentially like Airbnb, but with a team of people who act as housekeepers and engineers for the properties. Also, Tujia addresses Chinese customers' dislike of staying with people they don't know and therefore, Tujia's strategy is based on renting whole houses or apartments or condominiums. In pursuing this type of listing practices, Tujia's customers were able to accommodate large numbers of guests. It takes advantage of Chinese travelers traveling with a large number of family members and friends.[13]

In China, Airbnb faces two major local rivals, both backed by Chinese heavyweights and in different segments of the sector. Homegrown Tujia focuses on professionally managed serviced apartments, often flats left vacant by property developers and individual owners in China's real estate building boom. Airbnb nearly merged with Tujia in 2017 but walked away from the deal involving an equity stake exchange similar to Uber's with former ride-sharing rival Didi in China. Tujia is well positioned, with 310,000 properties across 255 travel destinations throughout China, and has $300 million in funding from its former parent company Ctrip, China's largest online travel site, and well-known former Morgan Stanley Asia-Pacific research head Richard Ji, managing partner at AllStars Investment Ltd. Over the past few years, Tujia has acquired the homestay channels of Ctrip and Qunar travel sites, purchased short-term rental platform Mayi.com, and snapped up B2B booking platform Fishtrip to expand into Southeast Asia.[14]

References[edit]

  1. ^ He, Laura; Jing, Meng (October 10, 2017). "Top Chinese home-rental site Tujia's valuation surpasses US$1.5bn after latest funding round". South China Morning Post.
  2. ^ a b "Wendy Yu: building bridges between the East and the West". LUX Magazine. Spring 2018.
  3. ^ a b c Hongbing Hua, Mobile Marketing Management: Case Studies from Successful Practices (2019), p. 254.
  4. ^ Lori Hawkins, "HomeAway continues growth spurt", Austin American-Statesman (December 5, 2013), p. B7.
  5. ^ Osawa, Juro (June 23, 2016). "Tujia.com, China's Airbnb, Snaps Up Smaller Rival Mayi.com" – via www.wsj.com.
  6. ^ Ramli, David; Chen, Lulu Yilun (September 27, 2018). "Airbnb's China Foe in Talks to Raise Over $200 Million". Bloomberg L.P.
  7. ^ Wolfe, Alexandra (28 July 2018). "A Chinese Heiress Makes a Name on the Fashion Scene". The Wall Street Journal.
  8. ^ Quick, Harriet (May 5, 2018). "Meet the Met Gala's biggest new donor". Vogue.
  9. ^ Mahajan, Neelima (December 19, 2017). "How Tujia, 'China's Airbnb', is different from Airbnb". Forbes India.
  10. ^ "Tujia Seen as China's Airbnb, Has 650,000 Listings". Daybreak AsiaTV. May 23, 2018.
  11. ^ Forman, Laura. "Airbnb Wants the Key to China's Millennial Empire". WSJ. Retrieved 2019-06-25.
  12. ^ a b Deng, Iris; Qu, Tracy (11 June 2022). "China's hostile environment for Western tech pushed out Amazon and Airbnb, but competition remains the biggest challenge". South China Morning Post. Archived from the original on 11 June 2022.
  13. ^ Marco A. Gardini, ‎Michael C. Ottenbacher, ‎Markus Schuckert, The Routledge Companion to International Hospitality Management (2020), p. 191-92.
  14. ^ Rebecca Fannin, Tech Titans of China: How China's Tech Sector Is Challenging the World (2019), p. 96.

External links[edit]

This open draft remains in progress as of July 5, 2023.
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