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Several China-based hosts and users said they were not impressed and will use local platforms instead.
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Airbnb’s Beijing office and its hundreds of employees will target outbound businesses.
Airbnb will remove all 150,000 advertisements in China from July 30, the holiday rental company announced on Tuesday.
The announcement comes six years after Airbnb set up a branch in China in 2016.
“We have made the difficult decision to refocus our efforts in China on outbound travel and suspend our homes and experiences of hosts in China from July 30, 2022,” Airbnb co-founder Nathan Blecharczyk wrote in a letter to the official WeChat account. from Airbnb.
China’s zero-covid policy and constant lockdowns contributed to the company’s decision to pull out of China, a source familiar with the matter told Insider. The source requested anonymity for professional reasons.
In 2017 Blecharczyk moved to Beijing to lead the team in China. The company was renamed “Aibiying” in the same year. But since its launch in China, Airbnb has struggled to compete with domestic players. Bookings in China have accounted for about 1% of Airbnb’s total revenue in recent years, the source said.
“We will continue to incur significant costs to operate our business in China, and we may never achieve profitability or significant supply penetration in that market,” Airbnb wrote in its 2020 SEC report.
Airbnb hosts in China seem unimpressed with the announcement.
“I can’t talk about disappointment; companies have business laws,” Airbnb superhost Guang Su told Insider. Guang rents out two apartments in Beijing, ranging between $113 and $214 per night. He has 254 reviews, most of them positive.
Peiying, a Shanghai-based Airbnb host with 31 listings who only asked to be identified by her first name, told Insider she would continue to operate on other platforms. “I’m on Meituan and Ctrip. My prices are the same for all platforms and I hope to keep it that way. But it’s likely that I’ll have to reduce the number of listings I manage because of the Airbnb market drop-out,” she said. An architect by trade, Peiying rents out old houses in Shanghai that she renovated herself, according to her Airbnb profile.
Meituan is the leading online accommodation booking platform in China, while Ctrip is a travel aggregator that helps customers make hotel and flight bookings in China.
On Weibo, China’s Twitter, the predominant sentiment surrounding Airbnb’s departure from China was consistent with the reactions of Airbnb hosts.
“In the beginning, people used Airbnb to book homestays abroad. But after Meituan and Ctrip started having homestay sections, we found that Airbnb didn’t have as much discount as the last two, so I started using it less,” a Weibo user from Guangdong wrote on the social media platform.
“It is used to travel abroad, but the domestic competitors are too strong. Ctrip has great reviews – who wouldn’t use it?” a user from Zhejiang wrote on Weibo.
“Listings are a list; Airbnb listings can sometimes be cheaper, but there are also expensive listings – it depends on the situation. In the end, there is only one less option,” wrote a Weibo user from Yunnan.
Airbnb’s Beijing office will remain fully operational and will focus entirely on outbound travel, Blecharczyk wrote in the WeChat letter.
Airbnb is increasingly struggling to comply with China’s ever-changing regulations, the SEC report said. In September 2021, local authorities passed a ruling requiring short-term rental landlords to post six certificates in order to operate. Certifications include home ownership, owner’s IDs and a written guarantee of public safety signed by the police. The six certificates were not easy to obtain and non-compliant properties had to be removed immediately, the Global Times said. Airbnb also had to share user data with the Chinese government.
Airbnb has rejected Insider’s request for comment.
@ Insider
