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compared to b&bs where service quality is not guaranteed, actual experience is difficult to predict, and food hygiene may be worrying, you may trust standardized and uniform hotels more, because you will not waste your money, nor joke with your own experience.

written by qingliu

according to media reports, the once popular homestays are on the road to being abandoned.

according to the description reported by the workers’ daily,

from the developed coastal areas to the remote western regions, from the jiangnan water villages to the northern wilderness, we often hear sighs from b&b operators. the cold reception of b&bs has become a major feature of this year's summer tourism market. the unit price is half of the usual price, and the passenger flow has dropped significantly, which seems to be a common phenomenon.

this is not a new phenomenon, and similar descriptions can be seen in some other reports:

around a tourist resort in east china, the number of homestays, which used to grow at a rate of 10% to 20% per year, has seen a wave of transfers in recent months;

in dali, it is a common situation that b&bs are not fully occupied. on social platforms, many b&b owners have posted messages lamenting that business is difficult;

according to sanya homestay practitioners, the market situation this year is indeed difficult, with some homestay room prices dropping from 500 yuan to 180 yuan, etc.

what happened to homestays, which were once so popular and regarded as the representative of the sharing economy?

01

judging from the data alone, homestays have indeed experienced a growth spurt in recent years.

according to data released by an organization, the scale of china's homestay market has exceeded 30 billion yuan in 2023. as of august this year, there are 160,000 homestay-related enterprises in my country; by august 2024, more than 30,000 new enterprises were added, an increase of 15% compared with the same period in 2023.

the reason for this is mainly due to the relatively low entry threshold of the homestay industry.this industry requires almost no cost. you just need to buy a house and manage it yourself.

this has given many people an easy way to start a business. in fact, this is true. most b&bs are run by individuals. many people flocked in at once. in addition, many internet platforms for b&bs have been built one after another, and the business logic of b&bs has taken shape - independent operation and internet marketing.

picture/tuchong creative

at the same time, policy dividends have also arrived. in 2020, the ministry of culture and tourism, the national development and reform commission and ten other departments jointly issued the "opinions on deepening the "internet + tourism" to promote the high-quality development of the tourism industry", which clearly proposed to promote the standardized development of "internet + tourism b&bs" on the premise of ensuring the safety of houses.

with the support of multiple factors, domestic homestays are developing by leaps and bounds.b&bs are rapidly spreading across the country, and a series of beautiful imaginations such as entrepreneurship, pastoral life, poetry and distant places are all imposed on themselves. concepts such as "b&b + e-sports", "b&b + camping", "b&b + fishing" and so on have emerged one after another.

until one day, a crisp breaking sound was heard.

02

in may 2022, airbnb, a leading homestay brand, announced its withdrawal from the chinese mainland market.

from the perspective of time, people can say that this is due to special factors, such as the epidemic at the time. moreover, as a foreign company, airbnb can also be explained by the common "not adapting to the local conditions in china", after all, a series of foreign companies before it are precedents.

but airbnb’s failure is not just a business management issue, but rather a result of it really not making money.

before airbnb withdrew, reports showed that in 2021, the homestay industry had to pay the price of an average room price falling below 300 yuan in exchange for the occupancy rate barely remaining the same, and the average room revenue dropped from 122 yuan in 2020 to 114 yuan.

this trend continues.

according to reports, the average occupancy rate of the homestay industry during the may day holiday in 2024 was 64.1%, slightly lower than 65.7% in 2023. the average room rate (adr) dropped significantly, from 499.4 yuan to 414.1 yuan, a decrease of 17.1%.

all these show that b&bs are really in trouble.

in fact, if you think about it, you can understand that the entry of a large number of homestays will inevitably lead to rapid market saturation. incremental revenue is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain, and the only option is to compete for existing stock. it is not difficult to predict that the average customer price will drop.

picture/tuchong creative

moreover, b&bs are expanding too fast, and quality assurance is beginning to be stretched. on the internet, you can also see many netizens leaving comments, and complaints such as "unsanitary", "random price increases", "aging facilities", "poor food" and so on are almost everywhere. the reputation of b&bs seems to be experiencing an avalanche.

according to the "platform hotel and homestay industry complaint analysis report" released by a certain platform, in terms of the number of complaints, the number of complaints about homestays is far higher than that of hotels. among them, a certain homestay platform topped the list with 6,054 complaints, accounting for 44.07% of the total complaints.

a media outlet once launched a poll on the internet, asking netizens where they usually stay when traveling.nearly 10,000 people voted, and only 910 votes were cast for b&bs, accounting for only one-tenth; while more than 7,000 votes were cast for budget hotels and star-rated hotels.

from this we can see that b&bs are indeed on the verge of being abandoned.

03

it is obvious from the above that, to some extent, it is the hotel that beats the b&b.

the data can also support this point. against the backdrop of the recovery of the tourism industry, the performance of hotels is indeed impressive. according to data, in the first half of the year, the seven major listed hotel companies in china achieved a total operating income of 26.857 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 13.30%; the net profit attributable to the parent company was 4.474 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 43.08%.

this reminds me of a word - "capital". regardless of whether the definition of "capital" in the domestic public opinion field is accurate, this conforms to a capital narrative: b&bs are individual, small-scale businesses that represent ordinary people's entrepreneurship, while hotels are powerful, unified, more systematic and standardized capital operations, and have defeated the former.

but the defeat of b&bs to hotels actually exposes the illusions of many people in society about "capital".you can loudly express your dissatisfaction with capital, but your body is honest: compared with homestays where service quality is not guaranteed, actual experience is difficult to predict, and food hygiene may be worrying, you may trust standardized and uniform hotels more. because you will not waste your money, nor will you joke about your own experience.

photo/vcg

to some extent, this is the power of "capital". the power of capital is not the all-powerful conspiracy theory, but it must evolve from a commodity economy to a credit economy. it must bear greater credit risks. whether it is quality or service, it must meet higher standards to maintain its credit.

it’s like no matter how badly people give a b&b on social platforms, the influence is ultimately limited. this b&b may even just need to change its name to start over.however, if a hotel has negative public opinion about even one of its branches, the entire company needs to endorse and apologize for it.

it is in this context that hotels can only continuously improve their quality. of course, this improvement is not without cost. the cost of hotels is bound to be higher, and the price will not be as affordable as that of b&bs, which have a competitive advantage. but one thing can at least be guaranteed, its approximate level, you can imagine it.

04

i am not here to praise one over the other, or to use hotels to highlight the unbearableness of b&bs. rather, in the ups and downs of b&bs, everyone might as well think about it a little more.

that is, in modern society, why are there huge amounts of capital and giant companies? are they really the dark and hideous faces in people’s literary imaginations? are they deliberately manipulating something behind the scenes, or are they just the result of the natural effects of economic laws and credit economy?

even if we cannot give a precise answer, people’s travel choices are actually explaining the problem and voting with their feet.

of course, i still sincerely hope that b&bs can revive. in any case, one more choice in the market will force other competitors to come out and will also bring greater benefits to consumers.

however, how decentralized and atomic homestays can solve the embarrassing dilemma of uneven quality may require the industry to continue exploring and come up with new answers.