【英语财经】“中国版Airbnb”途家完成3亿美元融资 China apartment-sharing app raises $300m

China’s answer to Airbnb, the apartment-sharing app, has raised $300m in a funding round that values it at more than $1bn, a vote of confidence in a sector that has seen significant investment in the past few months despite a crumpling stock market.

Tujia — “home on a journey” in Chinese — is the country’s biggest apartment-sharing and holiday rental website. It is fighting for a share of the growing tourism market in China, which is the largest source of overseas tourist spending in the world, the UN has said.

The company said that one reason it raised money was to expand abroad, to cater to Chinese tourists in Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea and Hong Kong.

Tujia has a partnership with US vacation rental site

HomeAway, which is also an investor, for help expanding its offerings overseas. In addition to listing properties on its website — which it expects to number 400m-500m by year-end — it is also a property manager.

Recent investors in Tujia also include Ctrip.com International, LightSpeed Venture Partners and GGV Capital. Despite the recent turmoil that has hit mainland stock markets, Tujia managed to ride a wave of investment into so-called online to offline services.

These successes include Didi Kuaidi — the car-hailing app backed by internet groups

Alibaba

and Tencent

— which was valued at $12bn-$15bn in a capital raising in July; Meituan, a Groupon-like site that raised $700m in January at what it says was a valuation of $7bn; and Dianping, a restaurant reviews site that raised $850m at a valuation of $4bn. Such sites, which meld offline sectors with online marketing, payment and logistics, have become the fastest growing parts of China’s internet economy.

中国版的空中食宿（Airbnb，一款住宿分享应用）在一轮融资中筹集到3亿美元，使其估值超过10亿美元。此举是对一个过去几个月吸引了可观投资的行业投下的信任票，尽管股市暴跌。

途家（中文意思为“旅途中的家”）是中国最大的住宿分享及度假屋租赁网站。它正在中国日益增长的旅游市场中争夺一席之地。联合国称，中国是世界最大的境外游消费客源国。

该公司表示，融资的一个原因是为了进行海外扩张，以便为前往泰国、印度尼西亚、韩国及香港特别行政区的中国游客提供服务。

途家与美国度假屋租赁服务网站HomeAway（也是途家的投资人）建立了伙伴关系，以帮助其扩大其海外房源供应。除了在网站上列出房源信息，该公司还是一家物业管理服务商。

途家最近的投资人还包括携程旅行网(CTRIP)、光速创业投资基金(Lightspeed Venture Partners)和纪源资本(GGV Capital)。虽然最近中国内地股市遭遇动荡，但途家成功地利用了涌入所谓的线上到线下(Online to Offline，即O2O)服务模式的投资洪流。

这方面的成功案例包括：互联网集团阿里巴巴(Alibaba)和腾讯(Tencent)支持的滴滴快的(Didi Kuaidi)，该叫车应用在今年7月的融资中估值120亿到150亿美元；美团网(Meituan)，这家类似Groupon的网站今年1月融资7亿美元，使估值达到70亿美元；餐厅评论网站大众点评网(Dianping)，融资8.5亿美元，使估值达到40亿美元。此类融合线下业务与在线营销、支付及物流的网站，已经成为中国互联网经济增长最快的部分。

译者/陈隆祥