Make appointments with friends and relatives, and stay for two days in a private boutique hotel with beautiful mountains and clear waters. This is an increasingly popular travel lifestyle. Being close to nature in the wilderness, away from the city, watching the beautiful starry sky at night, and spending an undisturbed holiday with close family and friends, this scene is so beautiful to think about!
After more than ten years of development, domestic homestays have become one of the popular choices for tourists to travel and stay. After the outbreak of the epidemic, tourists' demands for privacy, hygiene, characteristics, and quality have been further enhanced. These characteristics of demand are more compatible with homestays. Therefore, since the resumption of peripheral tourism in May this year, the homestay industry has taken the lead in showing signs of recovery, especially during the Golden Week, when high-end boutique homestays were sold out in advance. Faced with changes in demand, the homestay industry has recently entered a new stage in which it is necessary to accelerate the upgrading of quality, and high-end boutiques, scenes, and branding have become new trends. As tourists, what new homestay experience will we have?
Market dynamics: the development of surrounding tourism promotes the iterative upgrade of homestays
On the weekend of the last two weeks, Ms. Zhang invited two friends to spend a vacation at a homestay in Conghua that faces the lake and is quite artistic. Ms. Zhang said that she did not expect such a secret place around Guangzhou, which gave her a new understanding of homestays: "I used to travel to New Zealand and stayed in a local Lodge. At that time, I still sighed why there is no such good-quality homestay around. Now I am in Guangzhou. I have experienced it.” Although the price is more than 2,000 yuan per night, Ms. Zhang feels that it is good value for money. The quality of the homestay is not bad compared with star hotels, and the scenery facing the lake is very good, and you can also drink afternoon tea. Strolling in the surrounding mountains and plains, although there are not many choices of food, they are all delicate. Ms. Zhang asked about the homestay. If the entire homestay is contracted for about 20,000 yuan, more than 20 people can be accommodated, so she decided to consider going for the next company team building.
Different from the "farmhouse"-style homestays in everyone’s impression, the development of domestic homestays in the past two years has shown different characteristics. Homestays are no longer just a place to stay in the countryside, but need to add more cultural and cultural connotations. Design efforts need to be made to improve the quality and service, so that the homestay has more reasons to live in. Especially after the outbreak, under the tide of cultural tourism recovery, surrounding tourism and rural tourism have developed rapidly.
After the May Day holiday, during the summer and the Mid-Autumn National Day holiday, the market has confirmed the recovery of homestays. According to the "Mid-Autumn National Day Holiday Homestay Trip Big Data Report" released by Tujia, during the Golden Week of November, the overall domestic homestay bookings have recovered to 91% of the same period last year. As of mid-October, only domestic homestays on the Tujia platform The total number of houses has exceeded 2.3 million, and the transaction volume of country houses is increasing rapidly. Li Zhenni, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer of Tujia, said that after the outbreak, users paid more attention to the safety and quality of homestay products, and users' demand for personalization and privacy of accommodation burst forth. Li Zhenni said that in this context, public travel is more inclined to travel around by car and stay in safer and more comfortable country houses. Those high-quality homestays that focus on style experience, leisure and oxygen absorption, and unique designs are ushering in greater development. Space, facts have proved that the proportion of the transaction volume of the country house’s platform has also increased from 24% last year to 41% this year.
Industry Trends: Accelerate the reshuffle of branded products into the direction
When hygiene, safety, privacy, and characteristics become the focus of most concern for tourists staying in homestays, changes in market demand have also forced the homestay industry to accelerate changes. With the support of domestic homestay development policies, branding and boutique development have become a clearer direction for homestay development. In late October, the "Guangdong Tourism B&B" brand logo was officially released. Guangdong B&Bs have a unified image logo. At the same time, the Guangdong Province Tourism B&B Management Construction System was officially launched. The system will use information technology to assess the basic situation of Guangdong B&Bs. A comprehensive understanding of the operating conditions will also help the homestay authorities to effectively solve various problems in the standardized management of tourism homestays and guide the healthy and orderly development of the tourism homestay industry. This is Guangdong's further strengthening of the supervision of the homestay industry, which plays a positive role in regulating the management of tourism homestays and establishing the brand of Guangdong tourism homestays, and can also accelerate the high-quality development of tourism homestays in Guangdong Province.
In addition, after the outbreak, individual homestays with low risk resistance are facing operational difficulties, resulting in some homestays being transferred or closed. This also gives professional homestay investors and managers a chance to enter the market and continue to replicate their successful experience. Xie Yunhang, president of Luyue Group, said when interpreting the big future of homestays and hotels, the homestay supply chain is very long and complicated. It is difficult for small-scale homestays to get the best prices and control costs by doing alone. More importantly The quality cannot be guaranteed. Huazhu Exploration under Luyue established a supply chain management system to build the entire industrial supply chain, including product design, engineering guidance, engineering cost accounting, and even photographing. All this shows that branding, chaining, and standardization will have more development opportunities under the normalization of the epidemic, and the power of branding will be promising in the homestay industry.
The challenge remains: Poor anti-risk ability, "core" improvement is not easy
In the development of domestic homestays, small scale, weak anti-risk ability, single profit model and unstable quality are all factors hindering the development of homestays. In the past, country houses used keywords such as “feelings” and “pastoral” to attract people, but after many people moved in, they might feel that they were “deceived”-there was a big gap between reality and photos. Mattresses, linens, etc. are not a little different from star hotels, and the quality is also unstable. After staying once, there are many customers who decide to "never live in a homestay". Therefore, during the upgrade process, high-end homestays with high-quality requirements have undergone a "core upgrade". It is not as simple as it looks beautiful. Brand mattresses, smart toilets, floor heating systems, smart fresh air systems, etc., are worth tens of thousands of dollars. It fits people's pursuit of characteristics without sacrificing quality.
However, Xiaotian, who runs a homestay in Wuyishan, said that in recent years, he has also considered improving the quality of homestays. For example, when the exterior is not moving, the interior decoration is used to make minor renovations, but the cost of interior decoration of each room is quite high. At least tens of thousands of yuan will be paid. If some water and electricity pipelines are to be renovated, the cost will be higher, but after the modification, the price of a room will increase by two to three hundred yuan at most. The cost recovery process is too long. Say there is a lot of pressure.
Future development: need to improve management level and introduce clear standards
For consumers, choosing a homestay also needs clearer standards to learn from. Recently, Tujia released a new "Homestay Classification Standard". By establishing an evaluation system and launching an online homestay diamond level, it will conduct an overall evaluation of all homestays sold online and comprehensive information, and classify the homestays according to two diamonds, three diamonds, four diamonds, and five diamonds. The five standards of Hejin Amber have been reclassified, and the standard assessment items have reached more than 100, including comprehensive factors such as image quality, decoration level, service level, homestay features, homestay features, local life features and other comprehensive factors, as well as room history transactions Evaluation of reference elements such as price and guest reviews. This type of system can become a professional operation guide for homestay landlords, as well as a selection guide for users to travel homestay consumption, and help promote the development of standardization of homestays.
In addition, after the outbreak of the epidemic, more and more homestay operators began to realize the importance of professional operation. Not long ago, Airbnb's "Country Homestay Quality Improvement" distance learning system was launched, and it served as a support for tourism poverty alleviation and rural revitalization projects. The whole society is free and open. This online system, which is led by the School of Tourism Science of Beijing International Studies University and combines the practical experience of Airbnb’s global homestay industry, hopes to contribute to the overall quality of country homes and give full play to the tourism industry in realizing rural revitalization. Positive role in
