AIRBNB: China and the entire Asian market will be the focus of AIRBNB development

Speaking of online travel, Airbnb is definitely the most dazzling star in recent years. The company, founded in 2008, almost single-handedly created the "short rent" industry, overturning the past hotel model.

Last year Airbnb published the Chinese version of the Web page, and began to pay more and more attention to the Chinese market. Its co-founder, CTO Nathan Blecharczyk has also come to China twice to participate in user meetings to understand the Chinese market.

In an interview with reporters, Nathan said that this year China and the entire Asian market will be the focus of Airbnb development. But Airbnb's first step in the Chinese market is not local homeowners, but tourists who travel abroad.

"In this way we can take advantage of the Airbnb globalization, and these tourists experience Airbnb service abroad, they will also consider to rent their spare space after returning home." "Nathan said.

Nathan came to China as early as 2006. He spent a summer teaching English in Hong Kong and Dongguan, and this experience gave him a taste of family life in China, as many children's parents would invite him to his home. 2007, Nathan went to China to travel, to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, but also climbed the Huangshan.

It was just before Airbnb was founded that it was very relevant to Airbnb to visit Chinese families and travel in China. Last December and this January, Nathan also came to China to attend the Airbnb party, to listen to the voice of the users and to better introduce Airbnb.

The first step in China market: Outbound Travel users

Airbnb's core business is short leases, where homeowners rent out their spare rooms or entire houses to tourists.

Financially, homeowners can get a better return than a long lease, and they can enjoy better service at a lower price than the hotel; emotionally, the relationship between the landlord and the tenant creates a bond of happiness and contentment--so, despite the short rental business, But Airbnb is more inclined to call himself a hospitality service (hospitality) company.

Today, Airbnb has more than 600,000 spaces for rent in 192 countries and regions-and it is not just a room but a variety of features, including tree houses, castles, and even the entire island. Earlier this month, it was reported that Airbnb had completed a new round of financing, valued at $10 billion trillion.

China's outbound travel has exploded in recent years. China was already the world's largest international travel cost in 2012, with a total cost of over $100 billion trillion and a 40% increase from 2011. This lets focus on outbound travel of the poor network from a small site into the public view, and Airbnb occasion in the Chinese market began to act.

In the future, more and more people in China will start their first international travel, and these people are potential users of Airbnb, says Nathan.

"The Chinese are very curious, many people are the first outbound travel, so will want to know about the various information about outbound travel." At the same time, the Chinese people attach great importance to the original ecology, like to experience local customs, integration of local living environment. This is also very consistent with the characteristics of Airbnb, so I think Chinese tourists are very easy to accept Airbnb. "Nathan said. He also revealed that China's Airbnb users grew 400% last year.

Asia is the largest destination for outbound travel from China, and currently there are 35 major cities in Asia, and each city has 200-2000 Airbnb to rent. This will make a big appeal to the Chinese who travel to other countries in Asia.

In fact, the first step to choose to do outbound travel users for Airbnb is also very sensible behavior. Although Airbnb has proved the value of short leases, the model remains to be tested in China. China's short-lived pioneer Eiges rent (almost is completely imitate Airbnb) has closed, other piglets short rent, ant short Rent and other development momentum and Airbnb initial development also has a gap.

Mainly to do outbound travel, on the one hand, to maximize the use of Airbnb global resources, and China's domestic companies engaged in short-term rental business differentiated competition; On the other hand, it makes Airbnb less localized in the matter of entering China- This is why most overseas internet companies are not doing well in the Chinese market. Multinational internet companies doing cross-border business in China often do well, such as ebay's Cross-border trade, PayPal's cross-border payments, Google and Bing's Cross-border ads (and even Facebook's cross-border ads in China).

That said, Airbnb has done a lot of localized work. In addition to launching the Chinese web site, Airbnb now supports Sina Weibo, supports UnionPay payments, iOS applications for micro-credit sharing, and Android phone apps tailored to China's different Android apps market. These have completely allowed a Chinese user who wants to use Airbnb services abroad without any hindrance to the use of Airbnb.

Although Airbnb first step to do outbound travel users, but in the absence of any market promotion, now Airbnb in mainland China also has more than 3,500 space to rent, of which about 1200 in Shanghai, Beijing has about 700. Some of Beijing's distinctive courtyards are usually booked two months in advance.

The Secret of Airbnb success

Airbnb is short of funding from two co-founder Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia. Because there was no money to pay the rent, they tried to rent out the space for the people who were not able to book the hotel during the industry meeting and provided a simple breakfast. This is also the origin of Airbnb name: Living room Air mattress + breakfast.

Nathan, a Harvard graduate, formally joined in February 2008 and became the third co-founder. August 2008, Airbnb started the trial run.

There were a lot of interesting stories about the early days of Airbnb, such as the three co-founders who had been selling cereal to raise money. They raised 30,000 dollars in almost 2 months and caught the attention of Paul Graham, founder of American Incubator Y Combinator, to enter Y Combinator to accept hatching.

It is the hatch of Y Combinator that makes Airbnb determine the direction of development and embark on a fast-growing track. Now the two companies Airbnb and Dropbox have become the most successful case of Y Combinator, with valuations in the tens of billions of dollars.

To say why Airbnb succeeds, it can be summed up as two points:

1, very willing to listen to the voice of users. When Y Combinator hatched, three co-founders went to New York (then Airbnb's largest market) to meet with space-renting people to understand their ideas and improve their products and services.

One example Nathan has mentioned to Tencent technology is that at the beginning of the Airbnb, in order to adhere to the concept of air mattress + breakfast, they only allow users to rent a room of their own house and to provide breakfast. But a band told them that the band often wanted to go on a global tour, so they wanted to rent their own whole house. Airbnb changed the rental rules for the band, and then they found that many users had this kind of demand. "Now most of the Airbnb are landlords who rent out the whole house," he said. "Nathan said.

2. Establish the trust between the company and the users, the landlord and the tenant. In order to build trust between the company and the user, Airbnb often organizes the present party, introduces the company's idea and idea to the user, thus wins the user's support. In order to establish the trust between landlord and tenant, Airbnb has made great effort in many details.

As a matter of fact, Airbnb has aroused wide scepticism in the industry because of the bad behaviour of tenants. But in the end Airbnb did not recover, but rather survived, and for landlords and tenants to provide better security.

Many trusts are not built on a point, says Nathan. The direct trust of landlords and tenants is established through social networks, photographs, reviews, and Airbnb guarantees. For example, Airbnb found that the quality of the landlord's photos had a big impact on attracting tenants, so they offered free photographer's door-to-door service, and Airbnb has more than 2000 contracted photographers worldwide.

"Now every night we have 150,000 people who live in other people's homes through Airbnb, and we will inevitably encounter problems." We also provide all kinds of protection for landlords, both online and offline. Recently we have also launched a project to provide free security supplies to landlords. Nathan said.

While Airbnb is working on the line, Nathan says they do not have a large ground promotion team, and they are more likely to influence users and attract users, in addition to organizing offline gatherings. "Now the mobile Internet is making the connection between software, people, places, and pictures even tighter, and we can take advantage of this feature of the mobile internet to connect online." ”