Marketing strategies of Airbnb and other homestay platforms!

The consumer market gradually warmed up during the Spring Festival of the Year of the Tiger, further releasing consumption potential and showing a hot trend in this exceptionally cold winter.

During the 7-day Spring Festival holiday in 2022, the central bank showed that the national non-cash payment amount was 1.49 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 16.2%; the national domestic tourism trips reached 251 million person-times, a year-on-year decrease of 2.0%, and recovered to 73.9% of the same period of the Spring Festival holiday in 2019 on a comparable basis; the national railways, highways, waterways, and civil aviation sent 130 million passengers, an increase of 31.7% over the same period in 2021; pre-prepared meals and Spring Festival movies were hot sales...

Among them, one thing that must be mentioned is the hot sales of homestays. The opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics was held on February 4, which not only stimulated people's enthusiasm for ice and snow, but also demonstrated its super strong ability to sell goods. According to the Mu Niao Homestay Spring Festival Homestay Consumption Report, the number of bookings for homestays around the Spring Festival ice and snow tourism destinations increased by more than 70% year-on-year. Homestays have shown increasingly strong consumption power during this Spring Festival.

The tourism market after the Spring Festival is no less prosperous, with two major characteristics:

1) It’s the right time to travel during off-peak hours

More and more tourists are choosing to travel nearby, starting a "micro-vacation" travel mode and avoiding peak travel times. According to public information, compared with the Spring Festival holiday, consumption at tourist attractions in Sanya, Miyun, Wuxi and other places is still hot. Consumers postpone their vacations and travel during off-peak hours, which improves travel costs and comfort.

2) Continuous supply of promotional activities

As early as before the Spring Festival, in order to continue to stimulate consumption, tourism practitioners tried their best to launch new products, create conceptual marketing, and attract customers with preferential treatment. After the Spring Festival, the market is still showing its talents, continuously supplying "tourism feasts" to meet the diverse and personalized needs of tourists. For Valentine's Day and Lantern Festival, different themed products are launched for different festivals.

Regarding the Spring Festival and post-Spring Festival market, we recently paid some attention to and analyzed the three platforms of Airbnb , Mu Niao Homestay, and Tujia Homestay, and saw some interesting phenomena in the Spring Festival and post-Spring Festival market. Here we would like to share with you what we have seen and thought.

1. The popularity of celebrating the New Year at home remains high, but some families are happy while others are worried

Judging from the activities, all companies have participated in the "discount war" during this year's Spring Festival as usual. In addition to the uses of increasing traffic and improving revenue, the main reason why various platforms are rushing to seize the Spring Festival holiday is to leverage the growth opportunities brought about by celebrating the New Year in the local area for nearby tourism and the high attention paid to the Winter Olympics to achieve overtaking in business.

According to public data: the overall order volume of Mu Niao Homestay during this year's Spring Festival reached 1.5 times that of last year's Spring Festival holiday, and the transaction volume of Tujia Homestay increased by nearly 40% year-on-year. Although Airbnb did not disclose the overall consumption data of the Chinese market, judging from its Q4 financial report, although Airbnb's global short-term rental market performed beyond expectations, the Chinese market was still depressed, and it can be seen from its four quarters of 2021 financial reports that negative words such as "sluggish" and "recovery will take time" are mostly used to describe the Asia-Pacific market. The total revenue of the Chinese market is still a marginal area in Airbnb's global system.

2. Profits seem within reach, what to do after buying

Both Airbnb and Tujia Homestay offer Spring Festival promotions in the form of discounts. The difference is that Airbnb has adopted the marketing idea of ​​"exploring the local New Year atmosphere" based on Tujia's single discount model, attracting local experience activities to enhance communication and interaction.

But overall, the discount method poses a challenge to the platform's ability to control the supply chain's operations. A lot of effort needs to be put into the early stages of coordination with the supply side, services, consumer experience, etc. The recent fine of Airbnb for its promotional prices actually revealed the lack of platform supervision. Just as the consumption pattern of first rising and then falling was frequently exposed on Double Eleven in the early years, in essence, the operational risks and cost expenditures behind the platform are increasing. For landlords, participating in the platform's promotional activities requires a balance between traffic and profits.

This year, Mu Niao Homestay’s Spring Festival discounts are mainly issued in the form of discount coupons, which means that the discounts enjoyed by users this year are borne by the platform. The Mu Niao discount coupons received by users need to be used in specific scenarios as a whole.

When coupons of different levels and amounts are used, a consumption interaction will occur between consumers and Mu Niao. This requires high-intensity operation of the entire supply chain, customer service, products and other roles of Mu Niao Homestay, but it also makes the platform's control over the Spring Festival marketing costs more precise. For landlords, the method of using discount coupons allows costs to be completely passed on to the platform side. The competition for traffic forces the supply chain to improve its services, and the improvement in service willingness on the supply side forms an increasingly stable positive cycle.

During the Spring Festival, various homestay platforms rushed to "grab land" and compete for traffic. However, the traffic that pours in at one time can only be considered a cost-effective investment if it becomes "retention".

3. Making profits while adjusting, the market has various tricks to retain employees after the Spring Festival

Judging from the overall Spring Festival download volume of Qimai data, Airbnb experienced a rapid decline after the Spring Festival peak, Mu Niao Homestay showed a slow growth trend, Tujia Homestay also fluctuated after the Spring Festival peak, and Meituan Homestay also showed an upward trend. What is shown behind this is the continuation of the Spring Festival traffic by various companies. The Valentine's Day, Lantern Festival and other festivals that follow the Spring Festival make it particularly important for homestay platforms to grab orders.

Judging from the activities of each company, although Airbnb launched the "Go out and welcome early spring" event with special offers starting at 30% off after the Spring Festival, it only covered 12 cities; Mu Niao Homestay launched Valentine's Day and Lantern Festival activities after the Spring Festival to continue to tap into incremental monetization; Tujia Homestay was lackluster; Meituan Homestay cooperated with Homestay Bao to carry out promotional activities after the Spring Festival.

As the cost of acquiring customers continues to rise, platforms are no longer blindly pursuing quantity when it comes to traffic, but are beginning to pursue high-quality growth. How to convert traffic into "retention" has become the focus of measuring the value of traffic, and the key lies in how to take on the continuous conversion of commercial value brought by the Spring Festival activities.

During the second Spring Festival under the epidemic, many people's consumption patterns have changed. The travel radius is getting shorter, but the frequency of travel and average customer spending have increased.

Chinese consumers' consumption concepts are upgrading, and young consumers who mainly engage in experiential consumption are becoming the main force of market consumption. Quality has become an important factor for mainstream consumers to choose homestays. If the platforms are still at the level of offering discounts and profit-sharing promotions, then after the discounts, there will inevitably be a certain degree of consumption weakness.

On this premise, taking the lead in providing more personalized properties such as hot springs, bathtubs, caves, etc., stimulating landlords' service awareness, and achieving increasing returns to scale through bilateral network effects will become the fundamental way to retain the Spring Festival bonuses.

In summary, it is not the practitioners who define the consumers, but the consumers who define the industry. User acquisition and traffic conversion in the post-Spring Festival market need to establish a strong correlation with their consumption characteristics and behaviors, and personalized matching based on market staggered travel and preferential incentives to enhance consumer perception. Of course, products are the bottom line.

Author: After the Rain

Source: After the Rain