The end of B&B is self-media?

During the past May Day holiday, the popular tourist attractions were overcrowded. B&Bs, which have undergone changes over the past few years, have also seen new changes. The previous operating logic is no longer suitable for the current situation, and peers have begun to think about new ways to acquire customers. Will the end of B&Bs be self-media? What is the B&B industry doing?

Simu (pseudonym) has disappointed his fellow villagers again.

During the May Day holiday this year, her homestay in Changsha was fully booked long ago. However, the customer who liked her homestay refused to give up and offered to pay the penalty for breach of contract, and was even willing to increase the price appropriately, so that she could help cancel the order and vacate the room. Si Mu decisively refused, and the customer left disappointed. So some people went to the social account of the homestay to complain, "There are no rooms, don't go" and "The boss is pretending to be enthusiastic."

The residents near the B&B were also full of complaints. They complained about the noise of the guests and wanted Simu to give them some financial compensation, otherwise they would go to the street office to ask for an explanation. Simu was really scared. Not long ago, this group of old men and women had just ruined the private music festival that was already on the way at the B&B. Simu quickly bought fruits and other gifts and delivered them door to door, trying to coax them into compliance.

Although the process was not smooth and many people were dissatisfied, when Simu returned home and calculated the turnover, she immediately felt that "life is worth it." Her small B&B had a gross income of more than 140,000 yuan during the May Day holiday, which has exceeded the performance of the same period in 2019. She doesn't know if this is the so-called "revenge consumption" or whether B&Bs will continue to be so popular in the future, "but at least I have felt a spring breeze of recovery."

Hidden reefs are also exposed in the ups and downs of the industry. In Simu's view, the homestay industry has undergone earth-shaking changes during the epidemic. The previous operating routines have failed, and peers have begun to think about new ways to acquire customers. Seeing that local homestays are launching healing, stalls, and talk shows, Simu has also secretly made up his mind to re-organize the music festival that was ruined by "enthusiastic citizens."

1. Reported Music Festivals

"Tonight, we will first take down the iron frames, balloons, and tents, and quickly restore the lawn to its original appearance. We have received complaints from the public, and they asked us to respond as soon as possible, otherwise they will call the mayor's hotline."

When she received the call from the town clerk, Simu became anxious. She immediately asked the other party: "My music festival is scheduled for the day after tomorrow. Who will bear the loss if you ask us to dismantle the site now? Besides, we have reported this event in advance and applied for cultural and tourism subsidies from the town. How can you suddenly stop us from holding it?"

The other party tried to calm her down, explaining that he knew this was not an easy job, and promised to report the situation to the higher-ups to see if they could coordinate to postpone the event and hold it at a later time. "But now that we have received the report, we have to deal with it. It's better than being demolished on the day of the music festival."

Si Mu reluctantly said she would think about it carefully, and ended the argument. She knew in her heart that the approval process for this music festival was very simple, and some of the operations were not legal if examined in detail. In fact, there was no room for her to consider, and the only option was to cooperate.

Si Mu immediately stopped the workers who were setting up the tents and directed them to dismantle the iron frames, wiring, and billboards one by one. The scene, which was almost ready, was restored to its original state in less than three hours. She led her employees to pack up the spray-painted flags and explosion-proof balloons. Someone joked, "Next time, don't call it 'The Wild Music Festival'. Call it 'The Wild Music Festival' is more exciting."

These are still easy to handle. The most difficult part for Simu is to inform all the partners to suspend cooperation in time. In order to control costs, when she organized the music festival, most of the resources were obtained for free, such as guests, drinks and venues.

Simu told Hard Candy that many local bars are trying to set up singing and dancing stages, creating local Internet celebrities through live broadcasts and short videos, and attracting consumers from all over the world to check in. Considering that the fan loyalty of homestays is relatively low and it is difficult to support the appearance of the music festival, she found several such "bar Internet celebrities" and invited them to perform at the "music festival" in the form of travel expenses and joint promotion.

Most of the really popular Internet celebrities politely declined, but there are always some up-and-coming bar singers who are trying to gain exposure and hope to increase their online voice through this homestay music festival. "We invited seven main guests, including a small host from a local satellite TV station, and the total budget was less than 10,000 yuan."

According to the original plan, the festival will have a food area and a game area, and Simu will charge stall owners a certain amount of booth fees. In addition, she also plans to provide value-added services such as barbecue, dinner, and photo shooting. "These incomes are enough to cover expenses. We don't plan to make money from this thing. We mainly want people to book rooms to stay overnight and promote the homestay."

The music festival venue was obtained almost for free. Simu's homestay is located in the urban-rural junction, surrounded by residential buildings, forest parks and a piece of open space. Someone contracted the open space to use as a camping base. Last year, it was barely enough to make a living, but this year it is completely unpopular. "They are also worried about no business, so they rent it to me at a low price for the music festival venue, and by the way, expand the customer base and business."

Unfortunately, all these people's hopes were dashed. Later, Simu found out that it was the elderly people in the neighborhood who reported the music festival because they were worried about the noise and potential safety hazards. But she had investigated on the spot and found that her homestay was some distance away from the residential buildings and would not affect the normal lives of the residents.

Si Mu secretly speculated that it was possible that competitors were playing tricks, and that the seemingly revived homestay industry was actually too difficult to operate. But in any case, she planned to restart the music festival plan after the peak season was over, vowing to turn her homestay into a popular check-in spot.

2. Start with decoration

Although this low-profile music festival ended in failure, it also made Simu realize that it is not difficult to organize such an event, and the basic work can be implemented in three to five days. This also gave her the confidence to operate a homestay across industries to a certain extent.

According to Simu, many of the new batch of B&B owners have experience in self-media operations. It is especially common for internet celebrities to open stores in internet celebrity cities such as Dali, Chengdu, and Xiamen. Self-media internet celebrities have many ideas, strong execution and communication skills, and most importantly, are good at resource integration. Simu's ability to organize the music festival so quickly is inseparable from the experience of short video bloggers.

In 2017, Simu bought two apartments in Changsha and began to share his daily decoration life in short videos and graphic communities. Unexpectedly, his account gained hundreds of thousands of followers in half a year, and many netizens sent him private messages asking "Can I rent a place for a fee when traveling to Changsha?" or directly suggested in the comment section that he open a homestay instead.

Simu's investigation found that many self-media influencers in the tourism and home furnishing fields do run homestays. The reason is that these bloggers have their own online popularity and fans, making it easier to complete the conversion of the first wave of customers. The content they create is also closely related to homestays, which can accurately penetrate core users.

After some calculations, Simu listed two apartment B&Bs on the travel platform, and also purchased a villa and leased a piece of land, preparing to fully expand the B&B business. Today, the villa has been renovated and rented to students and workers for team building. The new rural B&B built on the land is mainly for tourists and fans.

After the B&B opened, Simu, through the introduction of a friend, got in touch with the production teams of several variety shows and participated in the photo shoot of celebrity posters by sponsoring the venue. The related materials quickly spread on social media. But sometimes the artist team would ask them for additional advertising fees when they saw the promotional content of the B&B later. "Especially the traffic stars are the most difficult to deal with. There have been many unpleasant things that happened."

So now she doesn't dare to post celebrity photos on TikTok or Xiaohongshu rashly, and usually only promotes them on WeChat Moments. Or she asks friends and relatives to pretend to be fans or passers-by, and take screenshots and forward them to social media, trying various ways to take advantage of the celebrity's popularity.

Three years after the pandemic, many B&B owners could not bear the losses and had to sell their homes. With the help of variety shows and celebrities, Simu's B&B has gained a strong presence and accumulated hundreds of thousands of fans on the Internet. She was reluctant to give up and gritted her teeth until spring came again.

She made a rough estimate and found that if the current business situation continues, the B&B will be able to turn a profit as early as the year after next. "This is still a relatively ideal situation. It usually takes four to five years for a B&B to make a profit. If the location is not well chosen or the operation idea is not right, the period will only be longer."

Next, Simu wants to continue to strengthen the operation of social media. She counted the source of customers during the May Day holiday and found that 70% were her old fans on Douyin and Xiaohongshu. "This is the key to attracting repeat customers and also the breakthrough for us to defeat our competitors."

3. Survival B&B

Today, the function of homestays has changed significantly, from a simple temporary accommodation space to a spiritual paradise. In the words of Simu, this container needs to be filled with more young and trendy additional services to be complete and attractive.

According to the "China Homestay Development Report" and "Mu Niao Homestay 2022 Annual Report", the domestic homestay industry ushered in the first round of explosive growth around 2017, and the user market expanded rapidly. However, the sudden outbreak of the epidemic caused a wave of homestay closures, and Airbnb withdrew from the Chinese market under pressure.

After this disaster, the B&Bs that really survived are those that have done a good job in online operations. They can accumulate attention and fans during the turbulent period, thus having a stronger ability to withstand pressure and providing more immediate feedback on market recovery.

The most obvious difference is that this year many B&Bs raised their prices during the May Day holiday, causing complaints from customers. The B&Bs themselves also encountered local supervision, platform removal and other penalties. "In fact, the more cunning ones started adjusting prices at the end of last year, slowly raising them to a psychological range that users can accept. They would not take the risk of committing suicide if they just checked Weibo and Xiaohongshu to feel the online public opinion," said Simu.

In her spare time, Simu uses short videos and graphic communities to find popular homestays across the country and learn from other owners' planning directions and operational ideas. She had previously noticed that many rural homestays cooperated with local governments to carry out cultural and tourism activities, and only then did she know that her local area also had relevant policy support, "You can apply for a 3,000 yuan subsidy for holding a music festival."

In Simu's opinion, Dali's homestay industry is developing the fastest, while other places are still trying to link up with photography, cute pets, and Hanfu, but they are already busy developing healing businesses. "Compared with individual tourists, this kind of group business is more profitable. If we can get in touch with training institutions and let them provide customers and orders, and the two sides share the profits in proportion, we don't have to worry about poor business during the off-season."

Most of the trainees or tourists who participate in the healing training like to take photos and short videos and post them on social media. These can be packaged as new business cards for homestays to attract new fans and consumers. "However, the temperament of each city is different. Changsha's homestays are not suitable for the healing route. We should add more entertainment."

Recently, Simu is seeking advice from a friend who works at a TV station, discussing whether he can cooperate with short video platforms or local influencers to create a micro-variety show on homestay management experience. "Short video users like healing and slow-paced settings, and our previous decoration videos were so popular."

How crazy are today's B&B owners? According to Simu, one owner heard that pets can attract customers, so he quickly raised deer and goats in his yard. "It's common to ask a feng shui master to change the name, invite a talk show actor to endorse the platform, and hold a birthday party for a local internet celebrity."

In short, only by struggling can you have hope of survival. B&Bs are far less romantic than imagined. Mr. Hard Candy's restless heart has now completely calmed down.

Author: Liu Xiaotu; Editor: Li Chunhui

Source public account: Yuleyingtang (ID: yuleyingtang), a warm self-media in the pan-entertainment industry.