Airbnb hand poor travel network, good model can landing in China market?

Intermediary transaction SEO diagnosis Taobao guest Cloud host technology Hall

"Liu Yang/Titanium Media editor" May 29, the local focus on outbound travel of the community web site and the United States housing short rental platform Airbnb announced an exclusive strategic cooperation. It is almost the first time that the "legendary" venture company has officially made its debut at home, and the 6-year American venture to try to cut into the Chinese market has officially begun to Airbnb.

The Airbnb chief operating officer, Varsha, had just flown from San Francisco to Beijing the day before the good news was announced at the poor Travel Network office. Interestingly, she did not live in the hotel in Beijing, and it is through their own company's Airbnb mobile applications rented to an alley in the local characteristics of residential.

Yes, although Airbnb has not tried to expand the Chinese market, there are already a large number of registered users of the app, from China's landlords and tenants.

What kind of company is this two?

Airbnb was founded in 2008 and headquartered in San Francisco, USA. Public information shows that Airbnb users are currently in more than 34,000 cities in 192 countries. Airbnb's model is very simple, that is, the individual release of housing, the owner and subscribers to trade between themselves. So Airbnb is also known as the "travel version of ebay."

According to titanium Media understand, Airbnb last year's revenue reached 250 million U.S. dollars, April this year, financing 450 million U.S. dollars, valuations have reached 10 billion U.S. dollars.

The other leading actor, www.qyer.com, is a vertical portal that focuses on providing outbound travel information, communities and services. The history of poor travel is longer than Airbnb. The history of poor travel can be traced back to 2004 years if the poor travel forum, founded by the founder of the Poor tour, is counted. According to the poor tour Community market leader Yao, the poor tour community's services have been from the international students to "all the tourists interested in outbound travel," covering the range from the initial European development to the global.

Why is it a poor tour?

According to Ms. Varsha, Airbnb has been "choosing the right partner" for the first cooperation in the local market. Just a few months ago, Airbnb co-founder, CTO Nathan Blecharczyk, had expressed Airbnb's bullish views on the Chinese market at Chinese user meetings. So why are you holding hands and having a poor swim?

1 user coincidence degree is high

Ms. Varsha, who visited the impoverished office a few months ago, was impressed by the "similar cultural temperament" of two companies, which led to a willingness to cooperate.

and technical partner Nathan has a judgment on the Chinese market: the first step in the Chinese market is not for local homeowners, but for outbound travellers, which provide travel services for outbound travelers, "and when these visitors experience Airbnb services abroad, they may consider renting out their spare space." ”

This may be a more important reason for cooperation between the two sides: the user needs of both sides are highly coincident.

The core user of the poor travel network is the outbound tour group. An early employee told TI Media that the earliest discussion of Airbnb experience was initiated from a poor community. Titanium Media editor in the poor tour on the internet to "Airbnb" for the keyword search, the results of the post has 400 +, questions and answers and itinerary each have 200 +. This on the one hand shows that the poor users do indeed have the need to use Airbnb, on the other hand, also confirmed that Airbnb by the Chinese outbound tourists well-known, poor tour made an early contribution.

According to the data published by the poor Travel network, its web users are nearly 40 million, and the mobile end users reach more than 10 million. Users of high education, residence overseas and the majority of people living in the first-tier cities, typical users with a strong consumption capacity and "The pursuit of tourism quality" characteristics-such outbound tourists, is Airbnb China's market strategy is the most important potential customers.

2) Complementary resources

In the titanium media, the resource complementarities behind the two companies may be at the heart of the eye.

Airbnb advocated the concept of "shared economy", its logic is that idle resources can be rented, improve the utilization of idle resources so as to obtain maximum benefits. At present, Airbnb has a global presence of offline living resources, while the poor tour's strengths are online to the mobile end of the travel services (including the provision and collection of information, data collation, user needs analysis, etc.).

Airbnb is a poor tour to achieve from the line to the offline resource integration ideal partner, a poor tour of the business is to sell tourism products, integrated rental services will be able to package into related products, enrich tourism services, while helping to create a complete O2O closed loop.

Airbnb share the economic model, take Chinese soil and water?

Taishan Brothers founder Fund partner Chen Liang is also a Airbnb user. And since last year, the VC venture has been studying the Airbnb representative's shared model. Chen was very much in agreement with Airbnb's shared economic model, "we are very optimistic about its cross-border business in the next 2-3 years, the Chinese exit and the arrival of foreigners in the accommodation needs." Chen Liang told TI Media.

But he admits that the model does have a role to play and depends on the environment. "The domestic market is relatively immature, consumer demand has not yet come to this stage, and social and social media is one of the factors," he observes, according to his observations of Chinese-type Airbnb entrepreneurial projects such as ants ' short leases. Therefore, the Airbnb must have the correct anticipation to the Chinese market. "In the context of the local environment, the venture's judgment is that it is not the best time for Airbnb businesses to enter the market."

At present, the Airbnb and the poor tour cooperation has not involved the product level. The two sides have identified the content of cooperation, mainly focusing on marketing and marketing promotion. For example, the poor tour of the Signboard products "Poor tour" to include the Airbnb Traveler Guide; Airbnb will participate in the programme of poor travel and light years, and the poor tour will spread the Airbnb "sharing economy" concept among users through its offline salon activities.

In fact, if you do not enter the two sides of the product cooperation, it is difficult to detect substantial market effects. In accordance with the planning of poor travel, the future may achieve the background data, open interface implementation, and so on--it is possible to let this market for the study of China more stories to tell. (This is the exclusive starting titanium media)