Beijing, China- Airbnb has announced its shutting down operations in China over a decline in business as well as costly and complex operation constraints.
In recent weeks, dozens of mainland Chinese cities have been locked down as authorities work to stamp out the COVID-19 pandemic.
As a wave of Omicron cases has spread across China, the government has doubled down on its policy of eliminating COVID-19. Major cities including Shanghai and Beijing have been subjected to city-wide or localized lockdowns, and there are widespread travel restrictions between cities and provinces.
“We have made the difficult decision to refocus our efforts in China on outbound travel and suspend our homes and Experiences of Hosts in China, starting from July 30, 2022,” said Nathan Blecharczyk, the chief strategy officer of Airbnb China, in a statement on its official WeChat account on Tuesday.
Airbnb is expected to remove close to 150 000 listings in China, which have accounted for roughly 1 percent of Airbnb’s business in recent years. Since launching its business on the Chinese mainland in 2016, Airbnb has registered about 25 million stays in the country
According to a University of Queensland report published last year, while Airbnb has been popular with Chinese travellers heading overseas, domestic travellers more often turned to local players and the Chinese companies were generally more trusted.
Nevertheless, as the rest of the world reopens, Airbnb claims it reached a record high number of bookings in the first quarter of this year, with more than 102 million bookings for accommodation and experiences adding that trends of people booking stay away from urban areas and staying relatively close to home continued, but guests were also returning to cities and making cross-border trips.
The US-based property rental service has joined companies like Yahoo, LinkedIn and eBay in drastically cutting its China operations.
