The summer tourism season has begun, and homestay platforms have started a “customer grabbing war”. Under the multiple pressures of surge in orders, sinking users, and upgrading demand, leading platforms such as Muniao, Tujia, and Meituan have come up with strange tricks, from scenario-based activities to high discounts, competing for market share in an all-round way. Who can stand out in this summer competition and become the real “king of involution”? This article will take you to find out.
After entering July, the tourism industry will enter the summer season in the traditional sense, and the market dividends will be fully released. Baidu index shows that since July 1, the keywords of summer vacation travel have fluctuated.
Especially for the summer orders predicted by various companies, Wood Bird B&B mentioned in the summer forecast report that this year may become the hottest summer file in recent years, and county B&B orders increased by 76.5% year-on-year. According to Meituan Travel data, as of June 30, the overall growth rate of cultural tourism bookings in the summer of 2025 increased by nearly 38% year-on-year, and Fliggy’s report also shows that as of now, the proportion of long-term travel consumption in this year’s summer has increased by 7 percentage points compared with the same period last year. At least from the current point of view, the first phase of the summer season has already achieved some success.
With this reference answer, the platform side will obviously have more optimistic expectations for the popularity of the summer market. However, some influencing factors still need to be fully considered.
First, compared with previous years, this year’s incremental market is more inclined to niche cities, and orders from traditional popular tourist cities such as Beijing, Nanjing, and Qingdao still occupy an advantage in the national market, but from the perspective of order growth, more and more users are pouring into the northwest, low-tier cities and counties, which is also a greater challenge to the supply chain of various homestay booking platforms. For example, the number of orders for county homestays in Muniao B&B increased by 76.5% year-on-year, and the growth rate of a few homestay clusters such as Enshi, Diqing, and Aba exceeded 200% year-on-year; For example, Maitreya, who was shortlisted for the top 10 of Tujia B&Bs for the first time this year.
Second, users’ requirements for homestay housing and service upgrades have been further improved, and the unexpected experience in addition to accommodation needs such as homestay features and value-added services has gradually become the rigid needs of users, and the upgrade progress of homestay landlords and the management of the platform may be more difficult.
After entering the hinterland of the summer stall, tourism practitioners will carry greater pressure and heavy responsibilities.
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Judging from past data, the summer file is indeed a ballast stone, whether it is the ability to continue to grow orders or the ability to explode in a single day, it is the only existence of the whole year. The three homestay booking platforms Muniao, Tujia, and Meituan have taken out “box-pressing” dry goods and appeared one after another, winning a steady stream of popularity in the summer file.
Squeeze back and squeeze back, but more lively
On the whole, the recent activities of each company still maintain a diversified market supply, covering seaside tours, surfing, summer peripheral tours, water tours, friends travel, etc., here is still on the beach by the sea to feel the wind of midsummer, enjoy the pleasure of surfing and the comfort of peripheral tours, there is a family tour launched the theme of mountains and seas, and Meituan’s gathering also has more stories…… There are also large coupons released by Muniao Meituan, which has boosted the growth of homestay orders.
On the whole, wooden bird homestays include “seaside healing” and “homestay surfing”. Among them, seaside healing gives three coupons, from its content description, the main focus is seaside sojourn; B&B surfing activities give four theme gameplay, landscape, ancient visit, theme park and Yunnan in-depth tour, which basically includes the theme of travel in recent times, replacing the city layout with scenic spots, strengthening the concept of destination, and setting up 5 coupons; The theme of summer peripheral tours is mainly set for weekend travel scenarios, and urban destinations and scenic spots and surrounding homestays are recommended according to the city positioning, which is more convenient for users to choose.
Tujia B&B has just launched the special activity of “Family Fun and Water Play”, the topic revolves around the seaside, mountain creek, swimming pool three water play scenes, recommended homestays are three-bedroom, four-bedroom, five-bedroom and other multi-person travel needs B&B, which is also focusing on the theme of Tujia’s family, mainly to undertake the vacation needs of Ctrip business travel users, most of the houses are villas rented, not very suitable for travel scenarios of less than three people. There are no additional discounts released in the event, mainly regular discounts + consumption points to be credited.
There are no new special activities on the Meituan B&B APP, Meituan Travel has launched a summer gathering activity, which is only available in the APP, the purpose should be to consolidate the positioning of Meituan’s large consumption platform, but the author did not find the coupon collection location after scanning the code, from the perspective of activity settings, the B&B section has designed three contents of “multi-person gathering”, “party bombardment” and “near the venue” around students’ summer gatherings, star chasing and other interests, and the target users are relatively concentrated.
On the whole, the proportion of thematic settings for seaside travel on the head homestay booking platform is quite high, and back to the platform battle, only a wider range of products and multi-type homestays can truly occupy the market. At present, the wooden bird homestay, which has the most activity topics and no limits, is expected to harvest a wider range of users of all ages in the summer.
Time waits for no man
According to Qiccha data, the overall growth rate of B&B-related corporate registrations has slowed down this year, the traffic has stabilized, and B&B services have also focused more on experience upgrades.
It can be said that after the blowout of user demand in 2023, the supply of homestays has completed a round of expansion and upgrading in the past two years, and for homestay landlords and platforms, a warning of a new round of reshuffle has been sounded, and how to reconstruct irreplaceability in the user’s mind and homestay market is a topic that must be solved. In this context, in the face of the summer season, the golden window for the growth of orders throughout the year, platforms and landlords have no choice.
Observing the activity settings of the three major B&B booking platforms, it can also be clearly identified that the industry is undergoing collective exploration. On the basis of the advantages of Internet celebrity homestays, Wood Bird B&B began to exert its mental efforts on seaside tours, peripheral tours and other scenes, and at the same time expanded the scenic spot as an important dimension of the destination, such as Wansui Mountain to Kaifeng, and there is still a lot of room for development in low-tier cities; Tujia B&B expands the high-passenger single villa vacation scene in the standardized accommodation needs of business travel; Meituan B&B relies on absolutely low-priced B&Bs to focus on college students. The platform no longer focuses on shallow B&B sales, but cuts into life scenes from a deeper perspective.
This exploration not only adapts to the upgrading of users’ demand for homestays, but also tests the platform’s ability to accurately control between operation and service. Muniao and Meituan chose the C2C operation method at the beginning of their establishment, and have rich experience in the operation and management of C-end huge small and medium-sized homestay landlords, while Tujia’s strength is that it is self-operated on the B-end, and it will be transformed into the C-end after shutting down its self-operation in 2020, and it will take a longer time to familiarize itself with the relevant content.
And in this process, it is a win-win situation. For the platform, it can improve user stickiness, increase B&B orders, and enhance brand exposure, and for B&B landlords, it can increase revenue for further expansion, and for users, they can enjoy more diverse choices and experiences.
The clarion call has been sounded, and it is worth looking forward to whether there will be another “top city” in this summer, how much growth tourism can achieve and what changes will there be. What is certain is that the market level continues to rise, and what it brings to users must be a pleasant and diversified travel accommodation feast.
