This year’s summer travel market is particularly hot, with the number of travelers and consumption data hitting new highs during the May Day and Dragon Boat Festival holidays, laying a good start for the entire summer season. In this context, homestay booking platforms Mutumei, Muniao Homestay, Tujia Homestay and Meituan Homestay have geared up to launch a series of activities and strategies to attract users, trying to get a piece of the pie in this highly competitive summer market. This article will provide an in-depth analysis of the summer strategies of these platforms, exploring their respective “chips” and their positioning and advantages in the market, providing valuable reference for practitioners and consumers.
As the first battle of the summer season, the Dragon Boat Festival had 119 million domestic trips across the country, a year-on-year increase of 5.7%, making a good start to the summer season.
Summer has always been the most lively time node in the entire tourism market. As the most critical golden period of the year in the tourism market, data from the China Tourism Research Institute shows that the number of summer tourists accounts for almost 30% of the whole year, and has always played a pivotal role.
Looking at this year’s tourism market, May Day and the Dragon Boat Festival have continuously created large-scale growth, Tongcheng Travel said that this year has become the hottest May Day in the past three years, and the data of Muniao B&B shows that the Dragon Boat Festival rural homestay orders have risen by 21%, and the hot atmosphere of the market has continued until June, which also makes practitioners have higher expectations for this year’s summer file.
As an outpost of the summer file, in June of previous years, especially after the college entrance examination, homestay orders have increased significantly, this year is of course no exception, Baidu index shows that the popularity of travel search on the first day of the college entrance examination has exceeded 10,000, close to 3 times the peak of May Day, Mutumei tacitly began to compete for users, and the homestay market ushered in a wave of traffic surge.
The wooden road is beautiful and new
According to the Zhongxin Tourism report, it is expected that the number of summer travelers this year will increase by 70% compared with the same period last year, and the summer GMV will increase by about 80% compared with the same period last year, and the summer tourism market in 2025 is expected to become the most “hot” summer.
In order to seize the growth opportunities of the summer slot, each company often plans in advance. And this year, the game of chess is obviously played earlier than ever, which proves Mu Tumei’s desperate desire for this summer.
Keeping up with the popularity of the college entrance examination, Woodbird B&B has launched a special activity for the graduation season, and has configured a full discount coupon on the platform, which is divided into 5 levels. It is recommended that the city focus on the front line, matching the needs of study tours and visits to favorite colleges and universities after the college entrance examination to before volunteering. After the college entrance examination, it is a summer theme activity, which is still equipped with a platform full discount coupon of 110 yuan, from the perspective of activity settings, it is divided into special homestays, student discounts and annual special themes, for college students who have entered the graduation season, the last wave of wool of student certification has to be plucked.
Tujia B&B also launched graduation season activities, and cooperated with China Southern Airlines to give a 92% discount on domestic flights, compared with the other two platforms, the setting of the integration of aircraft and wine is more convenient. However, subdivided into homestays, Tujia homestays have no other discounts exposed, and the four travel scenarios of “graduation”, “couple”, “family” and “pet” are all set up with “big” as the keyword. This is also in line with the villas, courtyards and other rental housing suitable for multiple people that Tujia has been promoting recently, but for graduation and couple users, one-bedroom houses with greater privacy are more in line with their needs, and Tujia as a whole is still aiming at the family travel needs of business travel users.
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Meituan B&B has no new action released on the APP side, and it is still the content of the previous skydrop coupon, and the skydrop coupon page shows that it can only be used in 1000+ homestays, and the usage scenario is narrow. As a channel for Meituan’s accommodation sector in recent years, Meituan Travel recently officially announced the launch of the AI white-haired summer market. Judging from the content of the Meituan Accommodation Conference, Meituan Accommodation will continue to focus on local travel.
The chess started early, and the initial record also appeared early. The number of bookings for tourism products departing from June 9 to June 11 increased by 88% month-on-month.
Shipments in the first quarter of 2025 show that Huawei and Xiaomi have become models with a higher market share, and in the downloads of Huawei and Xiaomi app markets counted by third parties, Woodbird B&B has a greater advantage. This just shows that compared with channel advantages, talking about platform features is the key to order growth. From the perspective of platform stock competition, the current growth of users of homestay booking platforms fundamentally depends on high-quality housing.
No matter who you are, it won’t be easy to stand out.
The seats on the B&B platform are rearranged
There is an old saying that iron needs to be hard. Summer vacation travel is a huge “super traffic pool”, but people’s attention is limited.
In addition to the event, the three Mutumi companies arranged different specialties for users.
The most concerned about wooden bird homestays is Internet celebrity homestays. With the advantages of wide price bands and rich characteristic housing, although Muniao does not have a stable traffic entrance backed by large platforms like Tujia and Meituan, user popularity (downloads) still shows continuous upward popularity.
After taking the lead in achieving profitability, Wooden Bird B&B began to explore more dimensions. First, it was officially announced that it would settle in Tongcheng Travel, then launched the brand IP, and then officially announced the spokesperson. At the same time, in the recent rumors of JD.com’s entry into the machine wine, Muniao is also the only homestay platform online.
Obviously, while consolidating its own traffic, Woodbird B&B is trying to continue to expand its results with the help of more diverse channels and brand play.
The most recognized thing in Meituan B&B is the price, from the list of various listings, Meituan’s recommendation mechanism is also more inclined to the price dimension, the price band is generally around 100 yuan, and the quality and cleanliness of the room are slightly lacking. However, for the Meituan accommodation sector, which takes the low-quality and low-price route, the selling point of absolute low prices has allowed it to increase orders rapidly in the homestay market, and it was established six years later than Tujia and Muniao B&B, but it is still on the first echelon of the homestay industry.
In recent years, Meituan B&B is also cooperating with brand B&Bs and increasing business revenue by cutting into rental housing, but at present, the status quo of Meituan walking on one leg will continue.
The most recognized in terms of Tujia B&B is standardized apartments. Since the merger of Ctrip and Qunar’s apartment listings in 2016, Tujia has favored business travel users at both ends of traffic and housing. After the shutdown of Tujia’s direct operation in 2020, due to the growth pressure, it has successively followed the example of Muniao Internet celebrity homestay and Meituan monthly rental and began to transform.
However, for the homestay market, the main group is still focused on the post-95 population, and although Muniao and Meituan have different product advantages, they have absorbed a group of sticky young user groups with different playing styles. Tujia B&B’s focus on the core of non-main segments of the population may also be a good way out.
Looking forward to the summer tour in 2025 through the skirmish, various activities are still abundant, and it remains to be seen how much the growth rate of summer homestay orders can reach, we can only be sure that real high-quality housing will still become a magic weapon for homestay platforms to profit and acquire customers, and will also help the industry bring more surprises.
