China: Chinese home-sharing platform Tujia has announced it has exceeded 1.4 million global listings and expects to break even in the second half of this year, according to 36Kr.
The news comes as it is being rumoured that Tujia will go in for an initial public offering, perhaps as early as this year.
The company, which is backed by China’s largest online travel operator Ctrip, controls almost half of China’s home-sharing market along with Alibaba-backed rival Xiaozhu. Airbnb, meanwhile, has a seven per cent market share as it only entered the Chinese market in 2016.
Xiaozhu claimed to have been managing around 500,000 active listings in 710 cities back in January. In October 2018, the startup raised over $300 million from Jack Ma’s Yunfeng Capital after it was valued at more than $1 billion following a $120 million funding round in the previous November.
Airbnb itself believes that China will become its biggest market for home-sharing guests by 2020, with over eight million Chinese tourists using the platform as of August 2018. Of the firm’s estimated six million listings worldwide, 150,000 were believed to have been in China at that time.
Tujia and Airbnb were reportedly close to a merger in 2017 before the latter pulled out. Following the collapse of that deal fell through, Tujia raised $300 million in capital from Ctrip and All-Stars Investment at a $1.5 billion valuation in October 2017.
Market researcher iiMedia said it expects over 300 million people to be using home-sharing platforms in China by 2020, rising from a figure of 147 million last year.
China’s State Information Center reported that the country’s home-sharing market was worth $2.1 billion in 2017, up almost 71 per cent year-on-year.
Tujia was officially launched back in 2011 and it claims to be “devoted to offering guests a diversified, superior and distinctive”. Its lodging network currently spans across 345 domestic and 1037 overseas destinations.
For more information, visit the Tujia website here.
