TuJia Wants to Give Chinese Travelers a Home Away From Home

The Chinese startup team behind TuJia, a vacation home rental service, reckons that now’s the time for this to take off in China. Like the American site Homeaway.com, which is the inspiration behind TuJia.com, it offers a hotel-like online booking system for vacant and fully-furnished holiday homes.

Its CEO, Luo Jun, tells Netease Tech today that renting a house while holidaying makes great sense to discount-minded Chinese consumers. For example, a high-end home rental on the tropical island of Hainan will cost about 1,200 RMB (US$190) per night, which is well below the 5,000 RMB ($790) or more for a five-star hotel in a nearby resort. Sure, you’ll lose the room service and have to cook your own meals, but Chinese tourists often prefer to roll that way when they travel, saving money instead for buying goodies like luxury brands.

Just like you might browse hotels, these are the search results for holiday apartments on TuJia.

Right now, TuJia is operating out of two Chinese cities: Beijing and the southern resort of Sanya, on Hainan island. Its available homes and apartments are limited to just Sanya for the moment – banking on “China’s Hawaii” being a big draw, especially now that Hainan is shopping tax-free, just like Hong Kong – with more areas coming online eventually.

Luo Jun himself has a great deal of experience in the real estate sector in the country, being the former GM of Sina’s (NASDAQ:SINA) heavily-trafficked real estate portal, and then a co-founder of China Real Estate Information Corp (NASDAQ:CRIC). Now he’s back as an entrepreneur, having ditched the ‘executive’ tag in 2011.

TuJia is actively working with real estate companies and landlords to bring on board the kind of high-end apartments and villas that would make a great fit for the site’s customers. With this different – and very involved – approach to the travel sector in China, I get the feeling this service is going to attract major funding sometime this year.

[Source: Netease Tech news – article in Chinese]