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This summer, the hottest TV entertainment is undoubtedly "China's strongest voice." In addition to the traditional partner Mengniu of Hunan Satellite TV, there is another new sponsor face Tujia Network. In addition to providing four star celebrity instructors with a sea view villa “Guide Home” in Hainan, this dedicated service apartment online booking platform will also provide holiday villa awards to the final top three players.

The cooperation with Hunan Satellite TV was the first time Tujia.com tried entertainment marketing, but Tujia itself did not promote it. Tujia CEO Luo Jun said: “We don’t really want the guests too much. Affect the quality of service." In Sanya, Thousand Island Lake and other popular tourist destinations, Tujia's rooms are often full, and even a set of guests in the room to pick up the luggage to check out, another dial the guests have arrived outside the room waiting for the scene.

Unlike a hotel chain, Tujia does not own any hotel property. Tujia only manages and leases it; unlike OTAs such as Ctrip and Yilong, Tujia does not simply book online hotels. It must be online. Ten thousand houses are responsible for the offline room management and check-in services.

This is a brand-new business model, B2C, C2C, O2O, OTA, there is no way to accurately define the way home. This is an Internet company, but it is light and heavy; this is a hotel management company, but also a light weight. It seems simple and complicated to do. It is the best explanation for Tujia. This is why this company which was established for only two years can get a RMB 400 million yuan in VC, and it will also be questioned by various sources. . (Text / reporter Liu Deng)

Home-style Evolution of HomeAway

The "box lunch theory" is the basis for supporting the Tujia network. It is useful to use idle resources or share-based business. It is not difficult to understand the commercial value of this theory. There are many foreign companies that collect unused housing resources for holiday rental. Innumerable, the largest HomeAway has been listed on the Nasdaq with a market value of more than 3 billion U.S. dollars.

“Is there a larger idle property market than China?” Luo Jun, who was once the co-president of China Real Estate Information Group, knew the Chinese real estate market well. “The official data on idle homes is 65 million units, only a lot more.” On the other hand, China's tourism market is experiencing explosive growth. The domestic tourism market is ranked first in the world, and outbound tourism consumption ranks first in the world. "There are a large number of people who need resort hotels."

Luo Jun said that he had not organized any business plans before establishing Tujia. He spent only half a year traveling to various parts of the country and staying at various hotels. He then discovered a problem: The hotel resources were very few and the prices were very low. Extremely high, while these places have appeared in the tourism real estate market in the past two years, there is a lot of good idle private housing. "This market is there. Demand is so great. The things we have to do are very simple. Just connect the needs together."

It's simple to say. Why hasn't anyone done this simple thing? Because everyone has seen that copying the HomeAway model in the United States will certainly not succeed.

“I lived in a sea view room of a hotel apartment in Sanya Donghae, Sanya, and the scenery was very beautiful. But when I entered the room, there was garbage in the floor, bed linen was used by a guest, and it was too late to change. The complaint was later told that only this room was available. Can't just check out.” Luo Jun used his personal experience to explain why the mere online listing matchup failed. There is no professional management company, no mature platform specification, and small and scattered personal housing simply cannot meet the demand for high quality vacations.

In the United States, each mature community has standardized property management companies, real estate agencies are also well developed, and it is easy for owners and tenants to establish trust relationships. With a complete offline organization, HomeAway only needs to build an online information publishing and trading platform, and then accept advertising fees. Obviously, this road in China does not work: whether it is renting a house or renting a house, it will be difficult to generate enough trust, transactions will fail, and advertising costs will not be able to be discussed.

Therefore, to realize the value of “box lunches”, it is necessary to do more than just find the remaining box lunches and people who want to eat lunches. The ordering and cleaning of box lunches and even the provision of “dining environment” and “dining tools” have become necessary. Content. To put it bluntly, it is to open up the industry chain and make the Chinese-style evolution of HomeAway; if it does not sound well, it calls high technology to become hard-working and the Internet becomes a labor-intensive industry.

But Tujia has no choice but to take up the missing links: On the one hand, promises to take care of the houses and help them to operate. The income will be divided into five parts; on the other hand, it acts as a housing provider, directly with the renter. transaction. The unique Tujia model was born.

Use "chicken" as "heavy" Internet

A series of Chinese-style evolutions have made the Internet company Tujia extremely “heavily”: from top to bottom, Tujia has been involved in several very large and complex industrial real estate, hotel management, hotel services, and Online trading platform.

Is it possible to get such a long chain to work well through an online platform? This is a lot of skeptics who believe in the “box lunch theory” but do not believe it can be turned into a successful business case.

The biggest difference between HomeAway and Ctrip is that Tujia is more of a hotel manager's identity. However, Tujia.com is just an Internet company. How can it be able to do 66 cities and 30,000 in the country? The offline service of the room? The previous call has not been checked out yet. After the last call, the guest waits at the door, highlighting the difficulty of the management of the Tujia line. Another proof is that the process time and labor cost of inspections at the time of check-in did not allow Tu Tu to do so, and could only bear the losses that might result from this.

However, in the eyes of Luo Jun, these issues are completely ignored. He understands that it is impossible for Tujia to do everything himself. “The companies with very long lines abound. These companies succeed because they only integrate resources. "The operation of Tujia.com is so complicated that even if you think about it, you will feel a headache. Luo Jun said that he is actually not as imaginative as the pressure."

"I just need to figure out what points to make. It doesn't matter what you do. What matters is people, because only people know what these nodes should do."

The first node is the system. Find different developers and owners across the country to get tens of thousands of sets of different forms of housing, on a platform for customers to choose, book, order, pay, but also to deal with the room, check out or change the room Various needs, owner services, housing exchanges, and dozens of back-end support systems, including procurement systems, service systems, etc. Finally, linking these systems together is by no means an ordinary entrepreneur.

Luo Jun handed over these things to Yang Mengxi and the CTO of Tujia.com.

Yang Mengqi, who was responsible for Microsoft's search business in Asia, she founded Espartia, an online vacation rental company in the United States, and served as a CTO. Because her system is the best in the vacation rental website, Escapia was acquired by HomeAway. Yang Mengxuan let Tujia's complex business processes run smoothly online. Now Tujia can even open the door through a guest's ID. This complex and sophisticated system has become the core of Tujia. If you leave this system, Tujia's business will become a mirror of the water in the moon. "So we dare to call ourselves an Internet company." Luo Jun talked about it here and could not conceal his pride.

Another node is a listing. This is not a more suitable person than Luo Jun himself. “We are the Internet company that understands real estate the most.” Luo Jun’s real estate background made him well-known among major developers, Longhu, Vanke, Wanda, etc. The real estate developers have cooperated with Tujia and signed a large number of high-quality homes from the owners to buy houses and pick up the rooms. After all, relying on the pattern of one owner and one owner to collect houses, neither the cost nor the rate of expansion can reach the standard. Tujia.com has also recruited a large number of real estate elites. For example, the general manager of the Chengdu area was formerly the person of Sunco Real Estate. In Sanya, they also dug out the property manager of the rival Nomad Tiger. “They were studying the house all their lives and they were very poisonous.” Only in this way can Tujia ensure the best availability of homes, which is the biggest bargaining chip between Tujia and ordinary hotels.

The last important node is diversion, how to get the order in and sell the room. Luo Jun was extremely brave in this link and directly found the largest domestic OTA Ctrip. He used the stock exchange method to exchange for Ctrip's support and easily obtained tens of millions of precise traffic-oriented information.

In addition to these three major nodes, Tu Family also firmly controls the other two nodes. First, hotel management, Tujia standardization and standardization, quality control, and local listings are handed over to local third-party management companies. Whether it is the home's own house or a third-party managed property, as long as it meets the standards, it can be on the Tujia online line. The second is room service. It is also Tujia's service standard and assessment method. In the local bidding service company, if the service quality fails to meet the requirements, it can be replaced at any time.

Although the front is long and the operations are complex, after precise segmentation, each node is handed over to the most knowledgeable people to operate, so that the business model of Tujia.com actually stands up from theory to practice.

Goal: high-end, family, team

“If you stayed in Tujia's room, you wouldn’t want to go to the hotel anymore.” Luo Jun took a handful of listing listings for Tujia, “Sanya, Yalong Bay, pure seaview detached villa with swimming pool and private courtyard. , 5-star linen, direct pick-up from the airport.

In such a room, only 1688 yuan is needed for one night. ”

The price is not cheap, but you must consider the price/performance ratio. “This is a villa, and it's not a problem for 10 people to live in a family.” Luo Jun was a little excited. “You can't compare the four or fifty squares of the standard room with me. The suites in five-star hotels are not big enough for me. , at least 2000 or more."

Luo Jun then turned to a room with a price of 388. “The best apartment in Chengdu, the best local apartment, is also a five-star hotel. The rooms are absolutely larger than the same price. This is a suite. You can live in. Laundry and cooking."

From high-end to mid-range, Luo Jun tried to show the killer that Tujia eats from ordinary hotels. “First of all, it is definitely a price/performance ratio. We never advertised ourselves for a cheap price, but in the same price range, our room has an absolute advantage.”

“Thousand Island Lake Center villas, five or six hundred square meters, a butler service 24 hours, Evian mineral water in the refrigerator and the German beer casually drink, the cheapest time to sell 3,000 yuan a night, according to the head counted one night only a few One hundred, which hotel can do?” In addition to the cost-effective, it also shows that Tujia's other natural advantage is very suitable for family and team travel to live.

However, with such conditions and prices, can you really make money?

“Why is the hotel expensive? Because the hotel has a “sinking cost.”” Luo Jun gave an example to explain why Tujia has a price advantage. “For hotels, even if there are only a few guests in the off-season, the air-conditioning and ventilation systems must be opened. The waiters are all In the Tujia family, when a guest arrives, he or she will be sent to a waiter, who will have income before and only then will have the cost. For example, a small villa in Yalong Bay, 1,500 yuan a day, I will share 750 yuan with the owner of the five-five. What is the cost of Tujia?

A waiter cleans the room for a fee of 50 yuan, exaggerating a point that this guest has enmity with me. He uses 10 toothbrushes a day. When he comes in from the house, he uses the 5 tons of water to open the faucet. At night, he keeps the lights on and does not sleep. I want to This 750 yuan is certainly not used, the rest is profit. ”

Even so, the difference between staying in a holiday apartment and staying in a hotel is still worrying. For example, room dining services are not provided, and most rooms do not have facilities such as a swimming pool and a gym. However, Luo Jun believes that it is cutting down those services that are rarely used by people and improving the cost-effectiveness of Tujia. “The three meals a day are eaten in the hotel. How many guests need to go swimming and fitness every day? We don’t think it is much.” Luo Jun also cares about things that are necessary for the guests, such as the five-star hotels. The average value of linen is 1200 yuan per room, while the amount of linen allocated to Tujia is about 1,800 yuan per room.

Tujia also made more efforts on details to try to make the guests feel more relaxed. "We have a team that will go to the field to inspect and measure before each listing goes online." Luo Jun took out a hand-drawn map. "This is the standard configuration of each room. This hand-drawn map is marked with hotels." All information within a few kilometers around, dining, leisure, pharmacy, transportation, everything."

"We have cut off some hardware, but we never cut corners on the software." On Ctrip and eLong platform, the average score for the Tujia room is 4.4 points or more, which is far beyond the average hotel average.

Profitability depends on the size of the property

What are the actual occupancy rates for such attractive rooms?

“The average hotel occupancy rate is not suitable for measuring our model.” Luo Jun made a more professional explanation.

“There are many types of homes for Tujia, which are mainly divided into modes (ie, income sharing with the owner when they are staying) and charter mode (that is, Tujia pays the owner in advance for a certain period of time and then rents the room to the guests). With different modes, occupancy rates are certainly different."

"What is certain is that every room sold is profitable." At present, Tujia's annual revenue can reach the level of 100 million yuan. Nevertheless, Luo Jun’s prospects for the overall profitability of Tujia remain. Cautious optimism.

“The profitability of Tujia.com is not based on the occupancy rate, but on the number of listings and the maturity of the holiday rental market.” Luo Jun explained that the reason why it is still not advertised and promoted on a large scale is because there is not enough space. .

"As far as the current situation is concerned, Sanya's premium rooms will be booked two months in advance. If we advertise, we will finish playing when guests are not booked."

Luo Jun expects to increase the number of listings to 400,000 units within three years. At that time, the value of Tujia.com will truly be reflected. "As more and more people know and enjoy the services of Tujia.com, they will know that they must live in such a house when they go out to travel."

The current US holiday rental market share in the overall hotel market is 37%, while China is still less than 3.7%. “We can do it slowly, with no hurry.” Compared with the houses in the hands that are not yet on-line, the number of 30,000 people is now even less than the number of them. Luo Jun is confident about the future of vacation rentals: “This The market must be ours, can't run."

Unlike ordinary entrepreneurial teams, Tujia.com has a lot of people who have already become famous. Luo Jun said that even if he retires immediately, he will be able to live a very good life. “We have no pressure on our team. Everyone comes together because of their interest and wants to take the vacation rental market from the place where China has the largest sedimentation room. ."

The Tujia.com network, which had just received 400 million yuan in venture capital at the beginning of this year, may not be in a hurry, but is there any pressure for investors who invest in real money?

“We have selected seven of the 70 investment institutions because we are looking for the same ideas as ours.” Luo Jun does not care about the pressure on investors. In his view, investors are not investing in Tujia.com. Instead of this model, this team will vote for Tujia.com. The holiday leasing market exists naturally in China, but left Luo Jun and his team, perhaps no one can really do this market.

Luo Jun lit a cigarette and gave his career a summary: “Whether it is a traditional hotel or a vacation rental, its essence is to do real estate. To do this, I’m the best.”