Ctrip Keeps Supporting Tujia "WeChat Hotels" to Engage in Shared Housing

SHANGHAI, July 31, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Tujia held a mid-year analysis meeting on housing sharing in Shanghai on 27 July, 2017. During the meeting, Jiang Xinwei, an analyst from Analysys, a third-party analytical company, elaborated on the development trend of the housing sharing industry; and Luo Jun, Co-founder and CEO of Tujia, shared information about the platform's strategic layout and development in the first half of the year from the perspective of business practices. Ctrip, Qunar and eLong have achieved periodical results in the sharing of inventory of apartments and locally owned accommodations. The growth in booking orders and transaction volumes has been on the fast track, and the core competitiveness of these companies has been continuously reinforced.

The analysis meeting was supported by Tujia's strategic investor Ctrip. "Shared housing has become a very important part of Ctrip's housing resources," said Liang Jianzhang, Ctrip's Co-founder and Chair of the Executive Board, adding that Tujia, as the bellwether in the housing sharing industry, is set to continue its rapid and steady growth due to the impetus brought about by China's universal two-child policy, and the large market share won by sharing-based housing resources.

eLong's CEO Jiang Hao said, "Uses will be able to book Tujia's locally owned accommodations on WeChat. To put it specifically, they can visit 'Hotels' in the third-party services section on the 'WeChat Wallet" page of WeChat, and then click on 'locally owned accommodations', where they will find abundant housing products. This also provides consumers with more options."

As a matter of fact, Tujia's products can now be accessed in both the hotel-booking section and the locally owned accommodations booking section of Ctrip, Qunar as well as eLong.

Housing sharing industry enters a development period with huge potential for growth in the future

The housing sharing industry came into being in 2011 and has passed its introduction period and entered a development period after 6 years. Jiang Xinwei, an analyst of Analysys, who has long been keeping track of the housing sharing market, pointed out, "A straightforward reflection of the housing sharing industry is consumers' choice made in favor of apartments and locally owned accommodations. The market has been growing by 60% in the past 3 years and the transaction volumes in 2017 are estimated to exceed RMB 12 billion. Yet there is still a huge potential for future growth. A major cause of such a market phenomenon is that the flourishing development of mobile payment, third-party credit systems and the sharing economy in China, has created a sound market environment for the housing sharing market, in addition to the fact that apartments and locally owned accommodations are different from those traditional hotels, who are committed to stimulating consumption of customers, thus evoking a huge demand."

Meanwhile, Jiang Xinwei pointed out, "The current market situation is becoming clearer. Companies who can pay attention to flow, users and products of merchants as well as service innovation, and are even dedicated more to safety, health, search, abundance and diversity of housing resources, as well as quality assurance (QA) management, will be in a favorable position in the market.

Inventory helps continuous growth, and rich and optimized housing resources upgrade user experience

Such a point of view of the analyst is proven by Tujia's business practices. When sharing how Tujia has been materializing its strategies and development in the first half of the year, Luo introduced a group of core data:

Tujia has completed the sharing of apartments and locally owned accommodations resources with Ctrip and Qunar. The same sharing with eLong and its WeChat hotels is under way and expected to be finalized in Q3;

With such sharing available, transaction volumes in the first half of 2017, in spite of large-scale cut down of promotional subsidies, rose greatly from the same period of 2016. Take June as an example: the year-on-year growth was as high as 350%, showing a clear trend of accelerated growth;

In the aspect of getting abundant and diversified housing resources and optimizing them, Tujia is advancing fast together with the entire locally owned accommodation market. It secured 150,000 new housing resources in the first half of 2017, enabling them to be present in 503 cities. It also keeps strict control over the quality of merchants and incessantly phases out apartments that do not meet users' requirements. It has about 450,000 valid apartments available online;

Tujia injected huge amounts of resources to optimize user experience. On the average, more than 98% of users making effective booking orders give their thumbs-up to the platform, and there is a decrease of 100% in terms of rejecting order compared with the figure of last quarter.

In providing services to customers, the "do your cleaning assuredly" and "enjoy your stay safely" products put forward by Tujia have been quickly promoted in 18 cities, and the "smart houseware sets" product is provided on a trial basis, making the standardization of non-standard housing an important stepping stone for Tujia in the merchants' operation.

In overseas market, Tujia keeps growing fast in hotspot markets such as Southeast Asia, Japan and Korea, getting 500% more orders than last year, among which Japanese market has gained a crucial breakthrough. The amount of online housing resources it has in Japan are expected to outnumber overseas competitor brands in 2018.

In the field of nationwide tourism, Tujia has signed contracts and made its presence in places like Yixian County in Anhui Province, Sanya in Hainan Province and Xiangshan in Zhejiang Province. Its innovative mode of co-operation that is based on housing has received overwhelming recognition across the country, and talks with over 100 local governments for co-operation are in process.

Completely engaging in "WeChat Wallet" is achieved, and Tujia's steady development is supported by strategic investors

These key business indexes shared by Luo show that major measures announced in the beginning of the year by Tujia in its news conference have been effectively implemented. In his own word, implementation of strategies needs to be "speedy, precise and forceful." So Tujia's operations are in sound progress.

The steady growth of Tujia has been supported by its strategic investor Ctrip. Liang Jianzhang, Ctrip's Co-founder and Chair of the Executive Board, said, "We see that Tujia has achieved surprising growth within such a short period of time. This also shows the market demand is on a rise and recognition of such a market is going high."

"Under certain circumstances, this type of product will greatly satisfy users' demand on the OTA platform," said Liang Jianzhang, adding that companies such as Ctrip, will continue to help boost the development of the housing sharing industry.

"eLong will continue its support to Tujia, too. In order to become in accordance with the booking habits of more consumers, an access for booking locally owned accommodations is provided at the 'Hotels' section of "WeChat Wallet", where Tujia's products are completely available," said Jiang Hao, adding, "For the next step, we will continuously talk with Tujia on more modes of co-operation in areas of inventory, direct sales and marketing."

Liang Jianzhang also suggested that while characteristic and high-end housing resources are the first choice of Ctrip's high-level users, how to find out products that meet users' demand, suit certain scenarios and have premium quality, will be "the key to subsequent successes".

Luo Jun pointed out that the sharing of accurate flow channel among Ctrip, Qunar and eLong has already been paying off, and the potential growth in the future can be expected. In the meantime, the continuous brand promotion and optimization of Tujia's brand, will attract large amounts of new users and merchants, thus pushing booking transactions and the growth of merchants onto a new "fast track".

SOURCE Tujia