Source: Visual China
Author 丨Lius
Editor 丨 Kang Xiao
Produced | Shenzhen Network Tencent News Xiaoman Studio
For many homestay landlords, running a homestay is not only a business, but also a lifestyle choice, symbolizing the "poetry and far away" in their hearts, especially favored by slash youth.
The outbreak of the epidemic at the end of 2019 has brought the tourism industry into a standstill, and the revenue of a large number of homestays cannot cover the cost, and the loss is serious, which is very difficult. In order to withdraw funds, some homestay hosts attract customers through preferential packages, but the check-out rate is still uncontrollable.
With the recovery of domestic tourism in 2021, rural tourism and short-distance tours in the surrounding area are gradually back on track. As far as this year's Qingming holiday is concerned, Qunar big data shows that as of March 28, the proportion of tourists booking travel in the province reached 75%, accounting for more than 20% of the growth compared with the same period in 2021.
The homestay industry has finally ushered in spring. According to Tujia Homestay data, the overall booking volume of Qingming Small Holiday Homestay this year has decreased compared with the same period last year, but local tours have led to the growth of bookings in some country houses against the trend. In terms of price, this year may be the "most valuable" Qingming, the average booking price of homestays has dropped by 18% compared with last year, and some high-end homestays have appeared "cabbage price" of 100 yuan.
According to Ctrip data, theme hotels, "small and beautiful" hotels, and boutique homestays have become popular hotel types during the Qingming Festival, of which the number of boutique homestay orders increased by more than 50%.
Finding a nearby flower viewing, picnic camping, or staying at a country house for one night is perhaps the most comfortable way to "open" this Qingming holiday.
Back to the homestay industry
At the end of 2019, Denning made an important decision to temporarily close a homestay he ran in Huairou. Now, he decided to "pack up and go again."
This homestay was started in early 2019 in Denning, and a lot of effort was spent on the design of the newly built farm yard. In the summer of 2019, the courtyard was officially completed and put into operation. "Over the years, I have experienced many homestays in different places, and I also want to have a homestay of my own, receiving different guests every day to understand different lives," Denning told Deep Web.
Located at the foot of the Great Wall in Mutianyu, Huairou, this homestay has a white courtyard wall that reflects the bright sunlight under the sun, and there are jagged bamboo fences in the courtyard, and the shadows are blown by the gentle wind. Denning said that he is a person who loves romance and yearns for a poetic life, which is also the inner portrayal of many homestay landlords.
But when the epidemic came at the end of 2019, Denning had to bow to reality. It was the most complicated month since he opened the homestay.
He calculated that among the main costs of urban homestays, rent, manpower and mortgage account for about 60%-80% of the total cost, so once the occupancy rate declines, it will have a direct impact on the flow of funds; in contrast, the rent and labor cost of the country house only account for 10%-20% of the total cost. However, when the outbreak of the epidemic coincided with the peak season of the Spring Festival, sales also fell sharply.
After a year, the turnaround has finally arrived. From 2021, the epidemic will become normalized, and the first recovery of travel around the city has led to the original downturn in the homestay industry.
According to Tujia platform data, in 2021, the national homestay booking increased by more than 26% compared with 2020, and the homestay transaction volume increased by nearly 25% year-on-year. Last year, the average room night price of the platform homestay was 310 yuan / night, and the average number of stay days for the order was 1.5 days. Among them, the proportion of high-end homestays has increased significantly, and the transaction volume and room night prices of single-family and whole-courtyard homestays have increased significantly.
Similarly, Airbnb's fourth-quarter 2021 earnings report became the strongest fourth-quarter in history. Despite some impact from the Opmi kerong variant, the gross platform bookings (GBV) reached $11.3 billion in the quarter, up 32 percent from the fourth quarter of 2019 before the pandemic, thanks to a rebound in booking volume and an average room night rate (ADR) that remained high, the earnings report said.
10,000 yuan homestay down, Beijing Sanya has the highest consumption
As far as this year's Qingming holiday is concerned, local tourism is still the theme of travel. In terms of hotel reservations, Qunar platform data shows that the city's orders accounted for 45%, the province's orders accounted for 50%, and from the perspective of vacation orders, suburban tourism orders increased by 30% over the same period last year.
This means that guests in this province have become the main source of homestays.
Tujia told Shenzhen Net that the number of orders in the platform province accounted for more than 70%, and the cities with higher number of homestay bookings during the Qingming period this year included Chengdu, Chongqing, Guangzhou, Beijing, Hangzhou, etc.
According to their observation, from the increase in booking volume in Qingming this year compared with the same period last year, the booking volume of Altay homestays in Xinjiang has the highest increase. In addition, Suining, Guang'an, Deyang, Panzhihua, etc. in Sichuan also increased their growth rates. They believe that at present, the Altay snow resort can still ski, while the snow resorts in Changchun, Jilin and other places have been greatly affected by the epidemic, which has increased the number of Altay homestay bookings; the overall epidemic control in Sichuan is better, and many cities in the province are rich in tourism resources, which has also attracted many tourists.
In terms of price, the highest average price of Qingming homestay reservations is Beijing, with an average price of 842 yuan per night, followed by Sanya, reaching 439 yuan. The demand for renting yards and single-family villa homestays is still strong, and the cities with nightly booking prices of more than 1,000 yuan include Beijing, Hangzhou, Sanya, suzhou, of which the nightly booking price of single-family villas during the Beijing Qingming Period increased by 15% compared with the same period last year.
Overall, compared with the Spring Festival this year, the average booking price of Qingming homestays in major popular cities has a floating rate of 30%-50%, and some high-end homestays have even appeared in 100 yuan rooms.
Looking back at the Spring Festival, the reservation of single-family courtyard homestays was hot, the order volume increased by about 56% compared with the Spring Festival in 2021, the average price of reservations per night reached 3126 yuan, the average length of stay reached 2-3 days, and the unit price of Spring Festival guests exceeded 10,000 yuan.
Tujia told "Deep Net" that unlike in previous years, which booked Spring Festival accommodation a week in advance, most of the whole rental yard this year was booked out one month in advance; in the sold-out yard, nearly 40% of the yard was more than 8,000 yuan per night.
Among them, the better the facilities, the more scarce the homestay, and the more difficult it is to book. For example, in the whole rental courtyard that has been sold out during the Spring Festival, the proportion of more than 8,000 yuan per night reached 37.1%, 5,000-8,000 yuan accounted for 20.3%, and 2000-5,000 yuan accounted for 29.4%.
But this is not "normalized pricing", after the Spring Festival, the price of homestays has dropped by 2-30%.
Hu Yang, senior vice president of Tujia Homestay, told DeepNet that due to the concentrated outbreak of demand for holiday travel and the retaliatory consumption of the epidemic for a long time, some hot spots have outsupplyed demand, resulting in prices rising.
"The epidemic has allowed everyone to travel only in the suburbs, which has indeed pushed up the price of some urban suburban homestays; but in the long run, the price of high-quality, well-served homestays will remain above a certain level, because this kind of housing is relatively scarce in the market compared to standardized hotels."
The gathering and upgrading of homestays around the city has led to an increase in homestay rents. Behind it is more and more practitioners entering, and the demand is more exuberant.
The data shows that the proportion of new homestays in 2021 will reach 15%. Chongqing, Chengdu, Shanghai, Qingdao, Guangzhou, Changsha, Xi'an, Hangzhou, Kunming and Wuhan are the top 10 cities with the most new listings. The growth rate of single-family villas, loft duplexes, farmhouses, and villa single-room listings is relatively fast. From the perspective of customer sources, the main consumer groups are mainly young people in their 20s, there are more women than men, and the rate of outings, family trips, and multi-person travel is higher.
Feng Weihe, general manager of the business department of Meituan Homestay, also pointed out at an industry summit at the end of last year that in the past year' data, the entire industry has added a lot of listings, of which more than half of the new operators are basically close to the data before the epidemic, so it is seen that there are still new operators joining, and the old operators are increasing.
The average price in the countryside exceeds that of a city homestay
In fact, not all areas of homestay operations have recovered at the same rate. The growth rate of country houses is significantly higher than that of urban homestays.
Relevant data show that during the Qingming period this year, the average price of bookings in country houses was 10% higher than that of urban homestays. Lijiang, Sanya, Xiamen, Dali, Beihai, Suzhou, Xishuangbanna, Guilin, Qingdao and Zhoushan have the highest number of bookings for country houses, and the number of bookings for country houses around some cities has increased year-on-year.
"After the epidemic, the demand of tourists for country houses and whole courtyard homestays has greatly increased. The expansion of demand has also promoted the greater improvement of rural accommodation software and hardware, and the conditions of some country houses have exceeded that of urban homestays", Tujia told the "Deep Net" that during the Qingming holiday this year, many high-end rural hotel homestays were more than half cheaper than during the Spring Festival, and were at a "low point" in price.
International destinations have a low degree of recovery compared to peripheral destinations. Taking Huangshan and Yangshuo as an example, these destinations used to receive more international tourists, while the number of international tourists dropped to almost zero after the outbreak of the global epidemic, which greatly affected the homestays dominated by foreign tourists.
The manager of a homestay in Huangshan revealed that according to the proportion of customers in 2019, it is equivalent to directly losing one-third of last year's customers. "National destinations are also facing great changes due to the impact of the epidemic. Pure individual free travel is actually difficult to fill in the loss of occupancy rate in a short period of time. ”
The 2.0 era of the homestay industry
The homestay industry from freezing to recovery, on the one hand, comes from the recovery and transfer of tourists' consumption demand, and on the other hand, it is also closely related to the policy dividends that support the development of homestays.
The "Implementation Plan for the Rural Revitalization Strategy in the 14th Five-Year Plan Period of Beijing" released in August 2021 pointed out that a number of rural boutique homestays were launched to create a number of characteristic townships and towns of country houses, so as to achieve the overall improvement of the scale and quality of the city's country houses. In addition, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism will also issue a policy document to promote the high-quality development of country houses.
In this context, OTAs are also strengthening their support for high-quality homestays in the surrounding travel scenarios.
For example, Ctrip set up a resort farm and launched a new marketing IP "Super Peripheral Tour" to give traffic tilt and support to high-quality homestays around the city; Fliggy strategically invested in Piglet Homestay, and the two jointly built a country house cluster project.
A new change in the process is that there are more and more domestic niche destinations and homestays that are attracting the attention of travelers. Data provided by Airbnb to DeepNet shows that compared with 2020, the income of new hosts in coastal destinations such as Qinhuangdao, Qingdao, Weihai, Wanning and Dalian has doubled, becoming a new growth point in the post-epidemic era.
Hu Yang, vice president of Tujia, told The Deep Web that horizontally, the share of Chinese homestays in the accommodation market is far less than that of European and American countries, and the growth space is larger than that of hotels; vertically, domestic consumers are more and more inclined to personalized and customized travel methods, and the epidemic has further cultivated homestay consumption habits. "Different from the first generation of 'farmhouses', the blue ocean of the current homestay belongs to the personalized, high-quality, and really thoughtful homestay owners."
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