Hainan ties up with Xiaozhu to promote rural home-sharing model

Chinese home-sharing company Xiaozhu Inc reached a strategic agreement with Hainan provincial tourism development and reform commission on Wednesday in Haikou, capital city of Hainan province, to develop rural home-sharing business on the tropical island.

“Hainan is seeking cooperation with all kinds of tourism companies outside the island to help enhance local rural tourism, which has become a new growth point in Hainan’s precision-poverty-relief and rural revitalization efforts and the supply-side reform of its rural economy. Hainan’s 516 rural scenic areas attracted 5.45 million visitors in the first half of this year, an increase of 5.9 percent and generated 1.75 billion yuan for local farmers, or a growth of 14.2 percent year-on-year,” said Ao Liyong, deputy director of the commission.

Kelvin Chen, CEO of Xiaozhu, said the cooperation will focus on greater publicity of Hainan’s beautiful villages, cultivate more brand homes for sharing, organize international designing competition events for shared homes, train more business professionals and promote home-sharing lifestyles in Hainan, which is building itself as an international tourism destination and a tourism consumption hub.

Boasting China’s largest domestic home-sharing platform, Xiaozhu has more than 30,000 village rooms around the country. And each new sharing home creates about six jobs for the local people. In total, the company provides 420,000 shared homes in 652 cities worldwide and has 35 million active customers, according to Tarry Wang, COO and co-founder of Xiaozhu.

Also on Wednesday, the local authorities announced the establishment of Hainan provincial tourism home-sharing association. It is expected to help standardize local home-sharing business, upgrade relevant services and build up trade competency.