Airbnb has signed up China Broadband Capital and Sequoia China as strategic partners to help it capture the massive potential of the Chinese outbound market.
In an official blog post, Airbnb's CEO Brian Chesky explained that it wanted to be "prudent" in its approach to China and that the new strategic partners would provide "local knowledge and expertise."
One of the first steps will be appointing a dedicated Chinese CEO and building up a team.
Airbnb already has some traction in the Chinese outbound market, and has grown "700% over the past year" although the volumes are, as ever with Airbnb, not disclosed.
Although the post did say that Airbnb recently had "[its] biggest night ever, with nearly one million people staying on our platform worldwide."
Chesky seemed particularly excited about working with Sequoia's Neil Shen, referencing his having helped found China's biggest OTA, Ctrip.
Currently Airbnb does not distribute its inventory through OTAs.
Meanwhile, Chesky was careful to make sure Airbnb's existing investors were not left out of the announcement, noting that "Hillhouse, Horizon Ventures and GGV Capital all have long track records of helping international startups achieve lasting success in the Chinese market."
GGV's managing partner Hans Tung talked about the deal with Bloomberg TV.
The potential of the Chinese outbound market is news to no-one, and Airbnb's decision to step up its presence here is an obvious move as it looks to become a truly global business.
And it also comes only a fortnight or so after Tujia, a similar business based in China, raised $300 million
While western media may have used "China's Airbnb" as a convenient shorthand to describe Tujia, its CEO Melissa Tang set the record straight at a tech conference in the US earlier this month, pointing out the differences between it and Airbnb.
One major difference is that Tujia has a strong domestic presence in China. Airbnb's announcement puts its focus on outbound, although it does have "1000+" Chinese properties on its site. Tujia has 300,000.
There are other businesses in China operating in the Airbnb/Tujia space. Zhubaijia, a platform which puts Chinese-speaking hosts overseas with travellers from China, reportedly raised $31 million last week..
See also:
Online travel growth in China shows no sign of slowing down (Tnooz, August 15)
NBImage by Shutterstock
