After the epidemic, the respite will return to the original ecology, and the spring of personalized homestay is far away?
With the recent gradual recovery of surrounding tourism, the guesthouse industry is expected to usher in a respite from the rising people's willingness to travel. The picture shows the corner of Love Tree Paradise Town. Photo courtesy
The homestay needs to return to its original ecology and become the spiritual back garden of urban life. The picture shows the corner of the Baima River on Love Tree. Photo courtesy
As a nascent industry, the development prospects of homestays in recent years have been favored by many operators and attracted many investors to enter. However, the arrival of the epidemic has caused many homestay owners to face difficulties such as broken funds and zero income. How can they help themselves? Can the homestay platform and landlord go hand in hand to get through the difficulties? With the recent gradual recovery of surrounding tourism, the guesthouse industry is expected to usher in a respite from the rising people's willingness to travel. However, industry insiders pointed out that in the long run, the homestay will return to the mainstream form of the original owner and operator, and there will be risks in operating the homestay after renting the property.
Revenue to zero, it will take time for the bed and breakfast market to recover
Ms. Wu runs a homestay “Silver Creek Building” located in the west bank tourist area of Xiqiao Town, Foshan. The homestay is a nascent industry in Foshan. In order to operate legally and compliant, Ms. Wu has invested a lot of effort to build it. After more than a year of hard work, in December 2019, her B & B obtained a business license for industry and commerce. After cooperating with relevant identification work, the Spring Festival holiday is coming. At this time, the business is as hot as expected, and rooms during the Spring Festival are booked. full.
However, the arrival of the new crown pneumonia epidemic suddenly broke all this. Guests from all over the country have unsubscribed. Not only can't expect the investment to "return blood", Ms. Wu said that the various ingredients and consumables prepared by the homestay cannot be digested, only Handle part of it yourself, the rest is wasted. In the past three months, the guesthouse was unable to operate and had no income. At the same time, it also had to bear the cost of manpower and rent. "It can only be supported. After all, it is a project that has invested so much capital and energy."
Under the epidemic, the tourism industry was hit hard, while the guesthouse industry was almost zero. It is understood that in this crisis, the Guangdong guesthouse industry has faced a plummeting number of customers and revenue. At present, there are multiple pressures such as serious shortage of customers, shortage of reinstatement and production of anti-epidemic materials, financial pressure on continuing operations, brain drain, and difficulty in restoring consumer short-term consumption confidence.
On the other hand, the various homestay platforms that had risen rapidly during the air vent period were also “very hurt”. According to the data from Piglet's short-term rental, most landlords face a large number of cancellations and cancellations during the Spring Festival, revenues are approaching zero, and platform orders have lost more than 90% during the Spring Festival. Tujia's homestays have experienced a large number of cancellations. From the beginning of January, customers have cancelled their bookings. They reached the highest peak when Wuhan closed the city on January 23. The cancellations were mainly concentrated on January 20-27. A few days. In addition to domestic tourist cities, homestays in places such as Osaka, Singapore, Nagoya, and Kyoto have also been affected.
After the epidemic situation has gradually stabilized since March, some areas have begun to resume orderly operation. However, due to multiple factors such as consumer confidence, population movement management, and holidays, the recovery of the homestay market will take time. Orders for piglet short-term leases increased significantly in March compared with February. Orders in Zhejiang, Hainan, and other places saw the most significant increase in orders, but they were still at a relatively low level compared with the same period last year.
Live broadcast + pre-sale, industry launches multi-channel self-help
The epidemic has accelerated the arrival of the shuffle period in the homestay industry, and more homestay owners are beginning to think about how to "live". Self-rescue methods include in-depth cooperation with the OTA platform, pre-sale and return funds, live broadcast promotion, and so on. Li Yong, general manager of Zhaoqing Xinghu Lanyue Song Culture Hotel, said that the advantage of the OTA platform is that it has a wide range of promotion, but the revenue is low. The pre-sale income is high, which can quickly withdraw funds, but the income time is long, and the audience area is narrow. Therefore, their homestays choose to combine the advantages of various methods for self-rescue. While leveraging the influence of the OTA platform for online pre-sale activities, they also reward old customers for offline pre-sale solutions.
Several homestay platforms have successively introduced assistance policies to help landlords better pass the stagnation period of outbreak management. Among them, Xiaozhu Short-term Rental is aimed at the platform's 800,000 suites source. All orders are free of commission before May, and offers weekly long-term rental discounts for housing. In cooperation with Ali's Alipay and Feizhu platform, live broadcast has been launched. Nearly 100 homestay hosts across the country participated in the live broadcast, reaching over one million users in total. Little Pig also cooperated with the leisure fish platform to launch a long-term rental project plan for bed and breakfast listings to help landlords transition their listings to short-term and long-term rentals. Taking Chengdu as an example, long-term rental orders for bed and breakfast listings increased by 200% in March. The longest long-term lease order is 6 months.
At the same time that Tujia continuously upgrades its policy on consumer refunds of orders, it also actively helps landlords solve funding problems, assists landlords in reducing rents, and supporting loan applications. During the epidemic, the attention of "cloud tourism" rose. With the power of the platform, many landlords shared live broadcasts and live entertainment guides with live entertainment, and opened up new promotion channels to help drive the industry's recovery. Tujia said that the “cloud economy” promoted by “Live +” will also become one of the necessary marketing methods for Tujia in the future.
In addition, "weekly rent and monthly rent" has become a new way for landlords to ease business pressure. Airbnb data show that the weekly and monthly rented listings on the platform in the epidemic have performed significantly, and nearly 60% of landlords are willing to increase the weekly and monthly rent ratio to ease business pressure. Based on this, Airbnb tilted this part of traffic to relevant landlords, hoping to help landlords with listings and tenants in need to match.
The original ecological homestay will gain long-term development
Before the Spring Festival this year, Zhaoqing Xinghu was identified as a national 5A-level scenic spot. Li Yong believes that this is an opportunity for Zhaoqing's tourism industry. At present, Zhaoqing's economy is developing rapidly, and scenic spots, humanistic concepts, and urban hygiene have been rapidly improved. Li Yong believes that as long as this environment exists, the tourism industry will still usher in growth. The prospect of homestays is still worth looking forward to. The tide of recovery is most likely to come during the May Day holiday.
The current recovery of surrounding tourism and the successive restoration of various scenic spots are also good news for the hotel and guesthouse industry. Tujia's B & B browsing and booking data show that during May Day, there will be a clear peak, followed by a small peak from the Dragon Boat Holiday, and some users have already booked a B & B in August. Tourists have shown a clear willingness to travel, and many tourists choose to travel around the province or travel inside the province, which is significantly higher than the same period last year. Tujia predicts that the open-air landscape-type high-quality homestays around the city may first pick up, and family-driven self-driving trips will become the focus.
It is worth noting that the search volume of domestic travel listings for Airbnb during the May Day holiday has increased by more than 2.5 times compared with the same period last year, and the number of domestic travel listings for summer travel has also been higher than the same period, releasing positive market signals.
After the epidemic, people pay more attention to health and the environment. Yang Hu, the chairman of the Guangdong Bed and Breakfast Industry Association, believes that in the next two years, consumer demand for rural homestays will increase, and consumption restraints will usher in a rebound in consumption. But at the same time, Yang Hu pointed out that due to the overall economic slowdown, people value saving more and reduce overdraft consumption. Therefore, consumption of non-necessities such as bed and breakfast consumption will not retaliate and rebound excessively. The investment in B & B led by the government and state-owned enterprises will increase rapidly.
In an interview with Nanfang Daily reporters, many industry experts emphasized that the homestay needs to return to its original ecology and become the spiritual back garden of urban life. Zhao Huanyu, chief knowledge officer and senior economist of Huamei Consulting, pointed out that the original homestay is the owner and operator, and the advantage is to promote local customs and lifestyles. Such a homestay will develop in the long term. Operating a homestay after renting a property has operational risks. The risks include the impact of the off-peak season and changes in supply and demand, and rents still have to be paid without income in the epidemic. In addition, branded and chained business operations are contrary to the individualized, diversified, and diversified characteristics of the original ecology of the homestay. Under the epidemic, such homestays face the danger of cash flow disruption, which is very difficult. Therefore, after the epidemic, the homestay will return to the mainstream form of the original owner and operator.
Nanfang Daily reporter Zheng Jielin