Online holiday rental platform bets on huge growth in overseas businesses

Tujia, an online holiday rental platform, is expecting its overseas business to grow 30 times from the present level, according to a top executive.

Yang Changle, chief operating officer of Tujia, said that after the acquisition of Fishtrip.com on Jan 31 this year, the platform's overseas business has expanded to more than 400,000 housing sources in 1,037 global destinations.

Tujia, which shares housing resources with Mayi.com, a short-term rental platform, Ctrip.com, Elong.com, Qunar.com, 58.com and Zhima Credit, witnessed a fivefold growth in trading volumes and threefold growth in housing sources during 2017, said Yang.

The company targets medium-high end consumers with Tujia, Ctrip rental vacation unit and Qunar, while it attracts younger tourists with Mayi.com. Fishtrip and Tujia's international operations will be united to serve Chinese travelers going overseas, particularly in the Southeast Asia region.

Tujia has also issued a rental vacation grading standard for its services, based on order tracking and repeat orders of more than 100 million Tujia users in the past two years.

Chen Jun, deputy director of Tujia, said grading of the various rental apartments and houses will help visitors get a quick impression of the house quality and make better decisions.

An industry standard will also help the property owners to improve their facilities with specific requirements to better position their products, Chen said.

Explaining the travel trends, Chen said younger consumers often make travel decisions very quickly. About 41 percent of the young travelers order and stay on the same day. Only 16 percent make their orders a day in advance and they are mostly in their 20s.

But travelers to international destinations often book a month in advance or several days earlier. The overseas stay of Chinese travelers booked through Tujia.com was 30.8 days on average in 2017. In comparison, the domestic stay on average is only four days.

Last year, there were more than 130 million person times of Chinese travelers going overseas, up 7 percent year-on-year. They spent $115.2 billion, which is 5 percent more than that of 2016, making China the world's largest outbound source country, according to the report by China Tourism Academy.

Among the leading 10 international destinations that are popular according to a Tujia survey are destinations in Japan, South Korea and Thailand. Chengdu, Shanghai and Beijing are the top three domestic cities where people rent houses to spend their holidays.

Dai Bin, dean of the China Tourism Academy, said traveling abroad for Chinese now is more like visiting a neighbor. "Chinese travelers value more about the experience of living in another city and being part of the local community during their visit," he said.