Home-sharing firm Xiaozhu to target business travelers
May 2, 2017 Category Travel, Weekly
Home-sharing start-up Xiaozhu, often dubbed “China’s Airbnb”, is looking at business travelers to boost the company’s growth in China’s short-term home-rental market. “Over 15% of our bookings are for business travel purposes,” Xiaozhu Chief Executive Kelvin Chen Chi said. “Sometimes employees need to stay in a city for two to three months to work on a project, and it’s not cost-effective to stay at a hotel. We want to fill this gap in the market that hotels cannot meet,” he said. Eligible homes need to be within 10 minutes by foot to public transport, offer 24-hour check-in, provide official invoices, guarantee a refund in case of hygiene-related complaints, as well as come equipped with office facilities such as a projector and a broadband internet connection, enabling employees to work from their temporary home. Xiaozhu already started rolling out its homes targeted at business travelers in about 20 cities, and is aiming to expand to more than 50 cities in China offering about 80,000 apartments by the end of the year. The company also hopes to sign deals with 5,000 companies this year, and is aiming to serve 100,000 business travelers. Xiaozhu is offering more services than Airbnb, such as helping hosts with renovation work, sourcing office facilities, and offering a cleaning service after guests have checked out. However, home-sharing start-ups are still operating in a grey area in China, as there are no official regulations, the South China Morning Post reports.
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