The concept of homestay can be traced back at least half a century ago. It is generally believed that modern homestays originated in western Europe. In order to increase income, the sparsely populated farmhouses in southwest and central England began to appear family-style hospitality, which is the earliest homestay. In Britain, it is called B&; B (accommodation plus breakfast); In Japan, it is called a host family. In Taiwan Province Province of China, it is called B&B Inn. In Taiwan Province Province, Japan and other places, there are strict restrictions on the definition of homestay. In a narrow sense, B&B emphasizes the host culture and a warm feeling of "returning home". They think that B&B is not the main business, but the place where the owners use their idle houses to provide tourists with rural experiences such as local culture and natural ecology, without professional operation.
There is a clear statement about what B&B is in the "B&B standard" document. "Tourism B&B is a small accommodation facility that uses local idle resources and is hosted by the host to provide tourists with experience of local nature, culture and production lifestyle." Here are three key words, the word "tourism" in front of the hotel, "people entertain people" and "accommodation facilities".
First of all, B&B should be B&B under the background of tourism;
Secondly, B&Bs should have a master culture, but the meaning of "people as masters" has been expanded in the B&Bs standard. According to the statement in 3.2, the owner is not necessarily the owner of the farm house or the house itself, but the owner or manager of B&Bs. This is obviously to encourage the development of B&Bs in the next stage, but the ambiguity expressed in the law itself is somewhat ironic.
Thirdly, the document classifies B&B as a kind of accommodation facility, but I think this is inappropriate. B&B's product attributes are innate.
The author believes that the "homestay" that constantly appears and evolves in modern commercial society is actually an expanded holiday accommodation product, and can even be approximately understood as a boutique hotel and hotel that has been "homestayed" to a certain extent. It broke through the innate limitations of democracy, not limited to democratic self-employment or one's own house, but retained the spiritual pursuit of "returning home". The homestay I am trying to discuss is a non-standardized holiday.
Second, why did B&B rise rapidly in the past three years?
(1) Macro-policy orientation under the five-in-one top-level design
Domestic homestays rose rapidly from 20 14 to 20 15. Especially after the 18th National Congress, the country put forward the five-in-one top-level strategic design, which raised the importance of ecological construction and local civilization to a new historical height. The phrase "You can see the mountains, you can see the water, and you should remember your homesickness" in the document of the Central Urbanization Work Conference in June 20 13 almost accurately summarizes all the spiritual cores of B&B products. Judging from the current market situation, quite a few of the most successful B&B brands are in rural areas. Since the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan", the state has paid special attention to guiding rural development in innovative ways.
(2) After the consumption upgrade, the demand for new products will be born in reverse.
At present, after decades of vigorous development, the service industry represented by tourism and vacation has changed the tourism consumption habits of upper and middle social groups, and gradually abandoned secondary products such as star-rated hotels and low-end farmhouses to find different tourism experiences. This phenomenon is especially concentrated in the leisure middle class groups in first-and second-tier cities. These people have excellent living conditions, and hope to get exquisite consumption experience at low time cost through light tourism and micro-vacation. B&B is such a product to solve the real needs of consumer groups, which has led to the rapid outbreak of new tourism and holiday products represented by B&B or theme boutique hotels.
(3) Under the background of double innovation, social capital represented by small and medium-sized enterprises is rapidly entering.
Non-standard accommodation is a funnel-shaped industry with huge market vacancy, with low entry threshold, large caliber and flexible mode. With the arrival of the upsurge of rural construction, many enterprises and capitals have begun to pay attention to it, which is determined by the profit-seeking nature of capital. While aiming at a large number of idle houses in rural areas, developers found that homesteads could not be bought and sold, and many homestay products that were leased and rebuilt quickly sprouted in such cracks. In the sub-sector of non-standard accommodation, it is difficult for large enterprises to carry out deep transformation, so many internet companies, small companies and even startups quickly occupy the market. These small companies generally have a strong ability to update their metabolism, which objectively helps the industry to develop and improve in a benign direction.
(4) The strong brand of B&B determines the industrial explosive power in the early stage of development.
Before the B&B boom, China experienced two rounds of rural reconstruction and construction-new countryside and beautiful countryside, but the outstanding problems of these two rounds were that they emphasized slogans, neglected content, emphasized monomer and neglected industry, and rural development lacked economic and industrial support. If we want to take a step from empty shell to industry, the importance of brand will be revealed, such as the amorous feelings of Yang Jiale in Moganshan, the amorous feelings of characteristic towns in Zhejiang and Jianfeng, the hometown of art. Because the brand is spiritual food, it can feed back the industry, tell stories to products and help products make content. In this comparison, most of the business categories that ordinary people do spontaneously are poor-quality farmhouse inns and farmhouses. Although there is no subversive difference between these farmhouses and today's homestays, in essence, boutique homestays have made spiritual innovations in product forms such as farmhouses, and achieved the goal of improving product concepts and cognition through upgrading software and hardware.
Third, where will the residents go?
(1) The market will continue to heat up, and the profit margin of B&B after entering the Red Sea will no longer exist.
The country's enthusiasm for rural construction and hotel industry continues to heat up from top to bottom, and from an economic point of view, the situation of oversupply will soon appear. However, the brutal market competition will not only reduce operating costs, but also put forward higher requirements for the cost control ability of this industry because of the particularity of the hotel's own products and the involvement of more and more non-professional operating teams.
Similar to the standardized hotel project, the cost of a single hotel project mainly comes from three aspects besides the investment cost: labor, material consumption and energy consumption at the operational level. Roughly speaking, these three items account for about half of the revenue, in addition to property rent (which fluctuates greatly and can even be as high as 20% in first-and second-tier cities), maintenance costs and daily consumption. At the same time, the commission of 10%- 15% paid by B&B project in order to improve the occupancy rate is another blow to B&B's already narrow profit space, and it relies too much on channels. At the same time, it cannot broaden its own profit horizon and increase the added value of secondary sales or products. After entering the Red Sea, the hotel industry will first face the dilemma that the profit margin is almost completely squeezed at the cost end.
(2) After the tightening of supervision, the entry threshold has been improved.
Even if the profit space is narrow, the pyramid schemes for short-term profiteers to enter hotels are still endless, ignoring the stage and policy risks of this profit model itself. Under the background of national hot speculation, the polishing and construction cycle of products has been greatly reduced, and whether it can be realized in a short time is a very realistic problem. For policy risk, the most typical imagination space is the further subdivision of financial institutions and the strict implementation of reward and punishment measures. Similar to Beijing's practice of sweeping away illegal cars outside Beijing in recent years, it seems that the return of the right to speak to the government is an inevitable stage after barbaric growth.
(3) Standard rules to adapt to more business scenarios will be continuously introduced, and the professional requirements for B&B products will be continuously improved.
According to the "B&B Standard" document, B&B is not a non-profit emotional work, and the country has regarded it as a characteristic industry category that can incite local economic development, which puts forward higher requirements for the application of B&B in different business scenarios.
Take B&B equity crowdfunding, which is popular with the rapid development of B&B in recent years, as an example. In this sub-industry, non-professionals often focus on the content of the project itself, ignoring the commercial potential behind the project. In essence, the crowdfunding of homestays is not much different from the crowdfunding of other types of products, and it belongs to a niche investment choice behavior. Before this kind of investment occurs, the first professional work to be done is to evaluate the B&B project to see whether a project has investment value and future growth potential, so as to judge the investment risk and income level. But the valuation of B&B is a big proposition, involving all aspects related to the project, such as traffic location, floor space, building area, room number, house price, decoration investment, operation (occupancy rate, profit rate, cost rate, etc. ), investment return forecast, brand appreciation expectation and management team value. Almost everything here can become an independent science, so the hotel seems simple, but the cross-border professional requirements behind it are rising with the development of the industry.