The holiday home is not hot, is it the fault of the market?

This article is from the WeChat public account "Space Secret Exploration" (ID: MESPACE007), author: Xu Yu.

Some time ago, Netflix launched two seasons of travel show "World's Most Amazing Vacation Rentals", where six-lingual travel guru Jo Franco, interior designer Megan Batoon, and real estate agent Luis D. Ortiz traveled to different styles of holiday homes - tree houses sleeping with alpacas, luxury villas with private beaches, Supernatural style holiday home in the shape of a flying saucer... Nearly 50 holiday homes with different styles were featured in two seasons. Many viewers were shocked by the various forms of holiday home life, saying that life should be like this, and even expressing their willingness to spend the rest of their lives in these 50 holiday homes...

Resorts/camping are on fire, but what about holiday homes?

Since the epidemic, a series of data show that vacation has long become a new trend in the eyes of the tourism market and travelers.

Last month, Ctrip Group and the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) today jointly released the "Tourism Trend Insights" report, which mentioned that the growth of domestic tourism in China and the continued demand for domestic vacations are particularly prominent. Residents book hotels and play projects in the form of "home vacation" in the past, and even more and more consumers will integrate vacation with work and business trips.

The heat of the resort market has led to a rise in the resort hotel market, and high-quality resort hotels have recovered rapidly, becoming the main choice for leisure vacations for high-income groups in the city. In the data of different OTA platforms, resort hotels are a force that cannot be underestimated.

In the whole year of 2020, Ctrip's live broadcast and special channels have contributed a total of about 5 billion yuan in transaction volume, of which resort-type hotels equipped with high-quality parent-child parks, specialty restaurants, hot springs, swimming pools and other services are very popular. Qunar data shows that resort-type hotel bookings increased 2.36 times week-on-week, while Donkey Mom data pointed out that more than 60% of users tend to choose resort-type hotels. Most of the TOP10 OTA hotel bookings for this year's May Day and National Day Golden Week are also high-quality resort hotels.

At the same time, wild luxury camping has also become a new round of accommodation fashion that "moves life to the outdoors". On the Little Red Book, the number of notes related to camping during this year's National Day increased by more than 11 times. Behind this, is Yonghui data show that the sales of outdoor products such as camping tents, picnic mats, barbecue tools and so on have ushered in a substantial increase, an increase of nearly 70% compared with the same period last year, which is the 2021 year of enterprise investigation data, china's new more than 14,000 camping-related enterprises, an increase of up to 171%.

Compared with the popularity of resort hotels and camping, "vacation home", a product form strongly associated with "vacation", seems not to pay too much attention, which is still a fresh vacation format for the local area. And all kinds of data prove that under the appearance of calm, the holiday home has long been "ready to move". According to Airbnb data, as of April this year, the number of searches for wonderful homestays by global travelers has nearly doubled compared with the same period in 2019 before the epidemic, of which the search volume of yurts, huts, boats and other types of listings has increased by more than 10 times.

More investors who have already set their sights on this format have taken the lead in trying it out in North America on the other side of the ocean. According to Statistics from Douglas Elliman, the largest real estate brokerage firm in the United States, the number of Chinese buying vacation homes in Upstate New York has recently increased, "many Chinese buy these houses, some people go on vacation themselves, and rent out their vacation homes when they don't live, earning rent."

The "high-frequency word" of vacation abroad

Holiday homes that have not yet been sought after at home are a veritable "second residence" for the middle class in Europe and the United States abroad. Born in Europe in the middle of the last century, the concept stemmed from the traveler's desire to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city, get close to nature, and enjoy private time with their families.

A toronto real estate agent pointed out that for the Chinese, vacation homes are a leisure luxury, but for native-born North Americans, vacation homes are part of the memories of their childhood and youth, and are an unquestionable way of life. Local families often have an "ancestral" holiday cabin.

At the same time, because the holiday homes are mostly on the scenic water's edge or in the forest, giving them enough time to spend together in high quality, it is also an ideal place for adults to deepen social and commercial links.

Therefore, in foreign countries, many times, the holiday home has even become a unique cultural symbol, connecting film and television or literary works.

In the old 1957 film Wild Strawberries, the protagonist Isaac has three dreams during his journey, all centered around the summer vacation home of his youth, where Isaac spent "every summer before he was 20 years old", and the old garden, also known as "the place where wild strawberries grow"—a word that in Swedish slang means a treasure of private feelings.

In the French New Wave master Hou Mai's "Green Light", a large number of lens language is used to depict the sense of life away from the city life holiday home - the green yard, the miscellaneous flowers randomly born in the corner, the loosely dressed vacationers, the whimsical chat content...

There are also some holiday homes that have been given the whimsy of the owners. In "Universal Magic Holiday Home", there have been a series of unconventional holiday homes. For example, Quetzalcoatl's Nest (nest of the feathered snake god), which is located on the outskirts of Mexico City and only rented and not sold, inspired by the snake god in Mexican mythology, was built into a natural wind sculpture garden of more than 200,000 square meters, and travelers lived in the "belly of the snake".

In addition to home-occupied vacations, holiday homes are also an important part of the asset allocation of middle-class families. According to statistics, 45% of investment buyers and 6% of holiday home buyers rent out their homes after buying a vacation home to get a return.

Under the influence of the epidemic, travel has been restricted, but in the European and American markets, holiday homes have unexpectedly been sought after.

Some data show that during the epidemic period, the booking of short-term holiday homes has warmed up significantly compared with other housing types, and even has an increasing trend compared with the past. Airbnb's net profit in the third quarter, which covers a number of holiday rental businesses, surged 280% year-over-year, driven by the company's strong business performance in North America, Europe and Latin America.

In terms of holiday home sales, the National Association of Realtors report pointed out that from January to April 2021, the sales volume of vacation homes in the United States increased by 57.2%, and the sales of vacation homes in the United States increased by 57.2%, which is more impressive than the 20% increase in sales in the overall housing market.

Knight Frank, an international property consultant, expects an 83% increase in holiday home purchases outside London in the first eight months of 2021 compared to the five-year average. The central region grew by 58% over the same period.

A "sample" of chinese holiday homes has been presented

In China, although the format of holiday homes is in its infancy, there are already three types of commercial models that are not uncommon, which have become a new choice for many travelers.

01 Type 1: Hotel single-family room type

With the improvement of the "consumption tension" of local travelers and the increasing diversification of vacation demand, it is difficult for ordinary resort hotels to fully cover vacation groups of different ages, different purposes and different spending power. Therefore, some resort brands will create all or part of the single-family hotel type according to the property condition, becoming a holiday home category.

As a local resort, many hotels in Sanya have more intimate villa suites in addition to ordinary rooms. Raffles Hainan Lanjingting Villa has a beautiful landscape design landscape, and travelers do not need to check in at the front desk like staying in a hotel, but enjoy personalized check-in and 24-hour butler service as if they were going home.

The villas at MGM Resort Sanya cover three bedrooms and are large enough for a large family or multiple friends to enjoy privacy for everyone, yet social and entertaining on vacation.

02 Type 2: Airbnb Detached Cottage

Detached cottages are vacation rentals that consumers tend to be able to find in the category of fashionable cabins on platforms such as Airbnb. Similar to resort hotels, holiday homes on the Airbnb platform are also the right for consumers to spend money to buy holiday homes for a period of time, the difference is that this type of vacation homes, from the private listings of independent hosts, is larger in the price range than relatively standardized hotels, and is more flexible, more local, full of personality, surprises, and of course, "fright".

On the edge of Qingshan Lake in Lin'an, Hangzhou, you can rent a 10-bedroom villa, which can not only enjoy the lake, but also meet the needs of friends or extended family outings. Multi-purpose hall, outdoor barbecue, mountain bike equipment, providing passengers with sufficient recreational facilities.

At the foot of the Jinshanling Great Wall on the outskirts of Beijing, you can also rent a retro country cottage, a mountain view covered by oversized floor-to-ceiling windows, and vegetables with original vegetables, supporting the rural life that urban people look forward to.

03 Type 3: Cultural Tourism Real Estate Holiday Home

Compared with independent hotels and independent cottages, cultural tourism real estate holiday homes are more mature and stable, which is a real "vacation home" and the trend of the future development of local vacation homes. It combines investment and vacation use.

——Investors can obtain investment rental income by purchasing holiday home products, but also meet the needs of self-service vacations; for ordinary travelers, the vacation home product category is a more home-like vacation choice in addition to ordinary hotels.

Taking Fuyou City Lijiang Mediterranean International Resort as an example, the entire resort integrates four major experience sections of sojourn life, vacation accommodation, art and culture, and natural leisure, and integrates multiple formats including Club Med Resort, Theme Commercial Entertainment Block, Snow Mountain Secret Theme Park, Casa Cook Wild Luxury Boutique Resort, Aebino Holiday Apartment, etc., which covers 3541 sets of vacation homes, becoming the only and non-replicable holiday home at the foot of snow mountain in China.

The holiday homes in Lijiang Fuyou City create four different product formats, with different housing areas, both for the reunion of partners in the courtyard and the poetic perching of the ridge of the Snowy Mountains.

It can be said that in the whole process of project development, the living facilities required around the holiday home have been taken into account, and what travelers need to do is to enjoy a high-quality and diversified vacation.

In addition, some time ago, Taoyuan Forest International Tourism Resort, a new generation of world tourism and holiday destination created by Sunac Investment, was also officially unveiled, committed to opening a dreamy, romantic and beautiful holiday aesthetics.

In the planning of the resort, in addition to the first-line high-end holiday homestay brands such as Xipo, Dale Noye, and Jinglu Lanzha, there are also three theme private property vacation homes such as forests, islands and canals, with design masters to achieve the ultimate integration of natural environment, spatial aesthetics and vacation lifestyle.

The holiday home, on the way to the fire

In China, although holiday homes have not yet occupied a place in the holiday culture, many players have keenly smelled the changes in the direction of the market. The accelerated commercialization process of holiday homes is hinting at the "fire" of holiday homes, which is already on the way.

One is the change in the market. The domestic holiday fever continues to heat up, and gradually derives a variety of vacation forms, and the demand for medium- and long-term vacations has intensified. To adapt to more ways of traveling – long-term vacations such as "sojourn"– holiday homes are clearly highly anticipated.

The second is the change of travelers. According to McKinsey, the number of middle-class households in China will grow from 174 million in 2012 to 271 million in 2022. According to 21 financial data, the average age of China's high-net-worth people is 40 years old, the most important personal investment direction is real estate, and the most favored entertainment method is tourism.

It can be seen that the current number of middle-class and high-net-worth families in China has reached a considerable scale, and travel and vacation have entered the era of sojourn. Going to vacation homes and having a second residence is an inevitable trend after socio-economic development and the improvement of people's living standards, and it is the performance of the upgrading of leisure vacation mode.

On the other hand, parent-child travel and family travel are becoming the main force of travel and vacation. According to data released by Ctrip, in the first half of this year, the cost of domestic parent-child travel increased by 41% compared with 2020. The big data analysis of Tongcheng Travel shows that at present, the parents of the "post-80s" and "post-90s" have become the absolute main consumption force of parent-child travel, and they are more fashionable and pay more attention to quality in terms of consumption concepts, thus driving the parent-child travel market to diversify and develop in the direction of quality. In addition, the frequency of travel is also increasing. According to the Qunar platform, nearly half of the families in the country have traveled more than 3 times a year.

The changing trend of travelers' vacation needs and frequencies requires vacation products to have a deep living experience that is not possible with ordinary resort hotels. The appearance of holiday homes has come at an opportune time.

The third is the change of investors. The first is a change in investment patterns. Guo Qing, co-president of Fosun Travel Group and chairman of Lijiang Fuyou City, mentioned in an interview with Space Exploration that due to policies such as purchase restrictions, the value-added space of urban real estate is getting smaller and smaller, and it is difficult to obtain a return on operation or a high return on continuous operation, so the holiday home may be a good choice. For example, when investing in holiday home products in Fuyou City, the owner can meet his own vacation accommodation needs on the one hand, and on the other hand, he can also entrust management to Epinon when not in use, generating additional income. In the future, more and more investors will set foot in the holiday home market.

The second is the change of crowd. The investors of holiday homes, unlike the professional hotel investors of the past, are not speculative tenants, but are more inclined to consumer-oriented investments. Therefore, in the investment of holiday home products, these investors should not only meet the comfort of self-occupation, the quality of the surrounding environment and supporting facilities, but also consider whether the vacation home has brand endorsement and future value-added capabilities as an investment product.

In addition, today's investors are getting younger and younger. According to the "2021 China Private Wealth Report" released by China Merchants Bank and Bain Company in Beijing, the trend of rejuvenation of high-net-worth individuals in 2021 is prominent, the rate of wealth creation among young people is accelerating, and high-net-worth people under 40 years old have become the backbone, accounting for 42%. This group of young high-net-worth individuals is the target group of holiday homes and is leading the direction of industry investment.

In the past, although there were also many middle-class families in China, they bought holiday homes in Sanya and Xishuangbanna, and the popularity of the "second suite" has always been some opportunities. Perhaps in the future holiday home market, as Qian Jiannong, chairman of Fosun Travel, said, "The main investment direction of China's middle class is real estate, but the growth of traditional real estate is limited, and holiday homes have just begun." ”