Just two weeks after the release of the "biggest update in a decade", airbnb broke a big news again. According to several media reports, the online short rent and travel company will officially close its local business in China. Including: airbnb China (aibiying) will completely offline nearly 150000 listings and experience businesses in China, and only retain outbound business; It is expected to be completed this summer.
Airbnb China plans to officially inform employees in China of the news as early as Tuesday morning, May 24, Beijing time.
Airbnb China listings and users
Although it has completely shut down its local business in China, airbnb has not completely "abandoned", but will continue to maintain a large team in China.
According to silicon star people, the team that airbnb will stay in China in the future will be mainly composed of engineers participating in the R & D of global products and technology projects, as well as the business and customer service team responsible for the outbound travel of airbnb Chinese users, with a total number of about hundreds.
In fact, outbound travel orders from China are still a business that airbnb pays close attention to. This is why the company will still retain its team locally to serve these consumers.
It is said that in recent years, China's local housing and experience service business account for less than 1% of airbnb's global revenue.
After the news came to light, airbnb's share price fluctuated slightly today to close at $112.5. At present, the market value of airbnb is about $72.1 billion.
Airbnb in China
Airbnb was founded in 2008 and set up a small-scale team in China in 2014. It started business in the Chinese market in 2015. At the end of March 2017, it set the name "aibiying" as the Chinese name of the brand and products, that is, it officially provided online short rent services in China as a localized company.
Brian Chesky, the founder of the company, attended the press conference held by the company in Beijing in the past 17 years and expressed his expectations for Chinese "millennial" users: young Chinese travelers see the world from a completely different perspective than before. We hope that aibiying and our new travel platform can resonate with them and inspire them to travel in a new way.
Brian Chesky
Chesky's compliment to Chinese young users is behind the expectation of China's huge market.
After that, Airb made some positive achievements in the Chinese market and the global market:
For example, only two years after entering China and one year after its official name, China has become the most popular destination for global airbnb users to travel in the new year. Among the 10 most popular travel destinations, China accounts for 6. The urban agglomeration around Shanghai and Wuhan have become the most popular cross-border destination cities.
In that year, the growth rate of airbnb's housing supply in China reached an amazing 100%, and the housing supply also realized sinking and diversification:
However, having a Chinese name does not mean localization.
The problem of difficult feedback from airbnb customer service has been criticized by users and the industry in the early stage of localization in China; The competitors Tujia, Xiaozhu and other real local companies have significantly reduced the customer acquisition cost by integrating wechat Applet / payment and other means, which has brought great market share suppression to airbnb.
As a result, for a long time, airbnb's Chinese business was a good but not popular existence, which was criticized as "acclimatized".
As for the growth of houses in China, which airbnb believes, it is also facing fierce competition in the online short rent industry: many houses are registered on many platforms at the same time, not only on airbnb.
However, a report from AI media data center shows that in January 2020, airbnb will almost gain a firm foothold in China, and it is significantly higher than other similar apps (Oyo, Tujia, ant, pig, etc.) in the ranking of home stay reservation app coverage penetration.
No one expected that the epidemic from the horizontal air raid disrupted everything, and the whole tourism and export industry, including online short rent, suffered a serious blow. At the beginning of the epidemic, airbnb struggled hard, cut about 25% of its staff in May 2020, and then went public in November of that year.
Fortunately, airbnb stopped the loss in time later. In addition to layoffs, it also transformed the main global business form from global cross-border to local short-distance travel. Through this strong turn, it found a new growth point in the "post normal" era and survived. At the same time, airbnb China business failed to "return blood".
Peng Tao, President of airbnb China
Therefore, many people are not surprised to see the news that airbnb will shut down its local business in China. After all, the Chinese business now accounts for only about 1% of its revenue, and even before the epidemic, it was only 5%. With the sharp decline of US stocks for several consecutive days and the conservative spending of major technology companies, this may be airbnb's helpless move.
However, for Chinese landlords who want to operate their houses on the platform to obtain part of their income or meet different tourists, they can only say goodbye to "aibiying".
Text edited by Du Chen Vicky Xiao
Source: silicon star man (ID: guixingren123)