Airbnb to Transfer China Home Listings to Rivals as Part of Market Exit

By Anniek Bao

Airbnb Inc. will offer to move its existing Chinese homeowners and rental listings to rivals, including Meituan and a unit of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., as it winds down its domestic operations in China.

The home-rental giant said in a statement Friday that homeowners on its Chinese platform can apply to list their personal information and property details on other platforms, including on the hotel service platform of Chinese food delivery company Meituan and on Fliggy, a unit of e-commerce titan Alibaba.

Names, phone numbers, ratings and reviews would be transferred from Airbnb to the other sites, the San Francisco-based company said.

Nathan Blecharczyk, Airbnb's co-founder and chairman of its China business, said last month that the company would shut its domestic business in China by July 30 amid "challenges from the pandemic." Airbnb said then that Chinese users will still be able to use the platform to book homes and other services for overseas travel.

Airbnb is a small competitor in China's travel industry. It had more than 500,000 active properties in the world's second largest economy as of the end of April, according to market-research company AirDNA, out of its more than six million active global listings.

Write to Anniek Bao at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 03, 2022 06:33 ET (10:33 GMT)

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