Homestay boom taking over China

The shared accommodation boom is sweeping across China, with transaction volume rising 37.5 percent year-on-year to 16.5 billion yuan  ($2.4 billion) in 2018, a new report said on Tuesday.

The report, released by the State Information Center, shows the country's main shared accommodation platforms offered 3.5 million housing units in nearly 500 cities last year.

Chengdu, Sichuan province topped all other cities in terms of the number of active users, followed by Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing and Xi'an in Shaanxi province. 

According to the report, second- and third-tier cities are accelerating the push to embrace shared accommodation services that offer short-term low-cost lodging.

Lijiang in Yunnan province, Qinhuangdao in Hebei province and Guilin in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region have seen significant jumps in the number of short-term lodging platforms' stayed nights, rising 650, 600 and 300 percent in 2018 respectively.

The report noted an increasing number of young people prefer to start a business in platforms that offer shared accommodation, as 70 percent of major shared accommodation platforms hosts were born in the 1980s and 1990s.

Specifically, more females prefer to be a host on those platforms, occupying 60 percent of the total on main shared accommodation platforms.

Vacationing with pets is a new trend in the market, the report said. More than 40 percent of shared accommodation users have pets, among which 66.7 percent prefer taking pets on vacation.

The report came as the nation's sharing economy marches into a new stage, where quality matters more than expansion speed. The report said the annual growth rate of the shared accommodation market is expected to remain around 50 percent over the next three years.