Entering the summer vacation period, who will fire the first shot in the OTA summer battle?

The battle for vacation rental market share in the summer peak season has reignited, with the three major platforms Muniao, Tujia, and Meituan going all out! From coupon subsidies to scenario-based marketing, from fun interactive games to precise target audience positioning, a deep strategic game among the platforms is hidden behind this traffic competition. This article comprehensively breaks down the differences in each platform's summer operations, deeply analyzes their key contests over housing experience, traffic acquisition, and brand positioning, and reveals who will take the lead in this fierce summer competition.

Muniao, Tujia, and Meituan have all set their sights on special summer-themed campaigns, and the familiar competitive atmosphere has once again permeated the market.

Facing the annual summer peak traffic window, vacation rental booking platforms have long launched unique initiatives to lock in favorable results in advance. Graduation trips, suburban water activities, summer outings, family vacations, and World Cup-themed rooms have all entered the market one after another, supported by coupon subsidies, scenario-based travel experiences, and entertaining interactive games.

The three major vacation rental booking platforms are operating at full capacity and refusing to give an inch to each other. Who will ultimately establish a first-mover advantage?

Diverse gameplay combined with preferential offers, summer campaigns showcase endless creativity

Muniao Vacation Rentals has launched two special themed campaigns, namely "Mountain Rafting for Cool Summer Escape" and "Summer Coastal Getaways". In terms of preferential settings, Muniao has made adjustments this time: instead of the previous 110-yuan coupon bundle, it has uniformly launched a 4% off discount across all online listings on the platform. The design is simple with no complicated team-building requirements, users can claim the discount with one click, and it is valid for use across the entire platform. On the coupon page, users can see that the 96% of original price discount can be stacked with host-provided offers. In addition to platform coupons, users can also secure the best prices through regular preferential programs such as "early bird discounts", "extended stay discounts", and "student exclusive rates".

The "Mountain Rafting" campaign focuses on summer water-based activities, and is divided into three core sub-venues: internet-famous luxury vacation rentals, year-round exclusive offers, and student exclusive rates, precisely targeting two core groups: young post-90s and post-00s users, and family groups with children. The "Summer Coastal Getaways" campaign centers on coastal travel scenarios. Both campaigns are popular summer themes that align with core summer travel scenarios.

In terms of recommended listings, the main properties in each city are one-bedroom and two-bedroom internet-famous vacation rentals, with a large number of unique featured listings, whose core target group is young post-90s users.

Tujia Vacation Rentals has also targeted popular summer travel scenarios: mountain summer escapes and graduation trips. First, looking at the "Mountain Summer Escape" special campaign, Tujia offers discounts starting from 30% off. When users click into the listing details, they will find that Tujia's discounts are still limited to regular programs such as "tonight's special rate" and "early bird booking", with more focus on promotional packaging rather than releasing actual platform-wide preferential benefits.

In terms of campaign details, Tujia's main focus this time is still on large-space properties, namely the family vacation scenario, primarily targeting the family travel and vacation needs of business travelers. Although there are subsequent section divisions for trips with friends, couple getaways, and pet-friendly travels, the core theme remains "large space", with most of the property types being entire-home rentals with three or more bedrooms. The booking scenarios are relatively limited.

The graduation trip campaign caters to the travel needs of student groups, with the special campaign divided into three sections: "graduation trips", "youth gatherings", and "internet-famous ins-style properties". However, the listing details are similar to those in the summer escape campaign, mostly entire-home rentals with three or more bedrooms, which are more suitable for group graduation trips with multiple people. They are not very user-friendly for ordinary parent-child families and groups of friends traveling together, requiring users to spend a lot of time filtering suitable listings.

Meituan Vacation Rentals has focused its efforts on adding fun and interactive elements to its campaigns.

Coinciding with the World Cup, Meituan Hotels launched a card-collecting game for guessing match results, which emphasizes entertainment attributes, with most of the listings below being regular properties under the "tonight's special rate" program. At the same time, it has issued a 1666-yuan coupon bundle covering dining, entertainment, and local experiences as part of its regular summer campaign. Meituan's total coupon package is indeed very large with rich types, which is very suitable for users to enjoy one-stop local experiences, but the usage thresholds are relatively high.

Who will win the first victory in the summer battle?

At present, the types of summer campaigns this year are quite diverse, but users' attention is limited.

Among the summer campaigns of the three major vacation rental booking platforms, what is more worthy of observation than "what special campaign each platform has launched" is the strategic thinking demonstrated by the leading vacation rental platforms.

These contents generally involve resource allocation in the core direction of the company, reflecting the differentiated strategic choices made by different platforms when facing major peak seasons.

Judging from iOS download volumes in the past week, Muniao Vacation Rentals has remained stable at around 4000 downloads, while Tujia Vacation Rentals experienced a sharp decline and has rebounded slightly in the past two days, and Meituan Vacation Rentals has seen a small uptick. The effect of Muniao's special campaigns is more enduring.

In essence, summer campaigns are just catalysts, and at the core, it is still a battle of "housing experience competition". Judging purely from the housing resources, each platform has its own competitive advantages and methodologies. Muniao Vacation Rentals, which is known as the platform most similar to Airbnb, has gradually explored its own development model after going through the stage of independent operation.

From initially focusing on developing the two product lines of internet-famous vacation rentals and "Simu" high-quality vacation rentals, to upgrading and prioritizing the creation of unique check-in experiences, Muniao Vacation Rentals has continuously strengthened its reputation in the featured vacation rental sector.

Through building its own organic traffic, Muniao Vacation Rentals has gradually established its own competitive advantages and bargaining chips. As can be seen from the current icon of the Muniao Vacation Rentals APP, "featured vacation rentals" has become the core content that Muniao will focus on building next. Compared with Tujia, which was acquired by Ctrip, and Meituan Vacation Rentals, which was integrated into Meituan's travel division, Muniao has greater potential to develop its brand independently, but at present, Muniao still needs to enhance its brand visibility.

The development direction of Tujia Vacation Rentals leans more on leveraging branded vacation rentals and Ctrip's business travel and vacation resources. Backed by Ctrip, Tujia has long relied on Ctrip's traffic support. After Ctrip integrated its vacation rental business into Tujia in 2016, the two sides formed a deep binding relationship. Tujia not only relies on the Ctrip APP entry, but also obtains traffic through other Ctrip ecosystem platforms such as Qunar, resulting in its heavy dependence on external channel traffic input. Former Tujia CEO Yang Changle once publicly revealed that the transaction volume generated from Tujia's main site is less than the transaction volume brought by the Ctrip Group. This high proportion of dependence puts Tujia under great pressure when traffic costs rise, and its independent customer acquisition capability is relatively weak. After Ctrip encountered operational difficulties, Tujia has also been seeking new development paths through entire-home rentals of large-space properties such as villas.

After Meituan Vacation Rentals was integrated into Meituan's travel division, its independence has been gradually weakened. However, Meituan Vacation Rentals has also formed a competitive advantage through its deep cultivation of cost-effective vacation rentals.

As the latest-established platform among the three, Meituan Vacation Rentals relied on Meituan's local life service advantages in its early stage, launching a large number of daily rental properties around schools and hospitals to expand its housing inventory.

This has laid the foundation for Meituan's absolute strength in the sub-market of vacation rentals priced under 100 yuan. But at the same time, doubts about Meituan Vacation Rentals' low quality and low price have always existed, and the difficulties in brand upgrading are still restricting Meituan Vacation Rentals' further cooperation with high-quality branded vacation rentals.

Overall, each of these vacation rental booking platforms has its own strengths. As primary and secondary school students across the country are about to officially start their summer vacation, the competition among these platforms will become increasingly fierce. The subsequent confrontations will continue and become more intense. Let's wait and watch for the exciting showdown!

This article is from the WeChat public account "Everyone is a Product Manager" (ID: woshipm), the author is Yuhou Yiqing, and 36Kr publishes this article with authorization.