300 yuan per night, check in on Monday and check out on Friday: Is it really cost-effective not to rent an apartment?

On one side of the entry hall is a shower room with glass partition and a washing machine embedded under the countertop, while on the other side stands an open wardrobe; the room is paved with light-colored wooden floors, with a sofa and a desk placed by the window, and the semi-raised platform sleeping area is covered with bedding — this is a long-term rental room that the reporter from *Legal Daily* saw in a hotel apartment near Jiashan Subway Station in Chaoyang District, Beijing on October 22 this year.

Recently, a number of hotels have entered the long-term rental track one after another, and "staying in a hotel instead of renting an apartment" has become an emerging residence pattern.

However, this new business form has also exposed a series of problems: how to determine the nature of the agreement signed by consumers and how to divide the rights and responsibilities; how should hotels solve the safety, privacy and other problems derived from the launch of long-term rental business; how to protect the legitimate rights and interests of occupants, and how to regulate the long-term rental business form of hotels?

Hotels Step Into the Apartment Rental Business

In Zhuzhou, Hunan Province, a store named Chengshi Shangjie Hotel recently launched monthly rental products. According to different room types, the monthly rent ranges from 1180 yuan to 1580 yuan, and the room area is between 20 and 45 square meters.

The Lvshou Hotel, a five-star hotel located in Shanghai, has also launched long-term rental apartments, with the monthly rent starting from 11888 yuan for the 70-square-meter unit. This price includes washing and drying services, daily cleaning, two sets of self-service breakfast every day, free access to the constant temperature swimming pool and fitness center, and free parking for occupants.

From urban hotels with monthly rent at the thousand-yuan level to five-star hotels with monthly rent at the ten-thousand-yuan level, hotels of all grades have set their sights on the "apartment rental" business. If the layout of a single hotel is a "test of the waters" behavior, the entry of industry giants such as Huazhu and Jin Jiang means the trend of the entire industry.

Huazhu launched its travel residence channel at the end of July, launching weekly rental products with a minimum stay of 5 nights and monthly rental products with a minimum stay of 30 days. More than 100 hotels were launched in the first batch, covering more than 50 cities across the country, extending from mainstream first- and second-tier cities to popular destinations such as Zhoushan, Quanzhou, Dali and Garze.

Under the travel residence channel of Huazhu, the monthly rental products are mainly represented by Citigate Apartments and Rezen Suites, targeting customer groups such as long-term business travelers and graduates looking for rental housing. The minimum monthly rent for some housing sources in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou ranges from 1500 yuan to 2000 yuan. The weekly rental products cover high-end hotel brands such as Blossom Hill and Steigenberger Icons, with a daily price of about 1000 yuan, and there is an exclusive 15% discount for travel residence for consecutive stays of 5 nights or more.

Jin Jiang has launched two apartment brands. Tuling Apartment is positioned as accommodation for corporate employees, cutting into the employee communities of labor-intensive enterprises with the "one bed" concept, and the total number of beds across the country has exceeded 4496; Lingju Apartment targets young urban white-collar workers, and its Shekou store in Shenzhen was fully occupied immediately after opening relying on the existing customer resources of Jin Jiang.

Stay in a Hotel at 300 Yuan Per Night

At present, the long-term hotel rental business is mainly divided into three modes.

The first is the group standardized long-term rental mode for individual customers. Some hotel groups officially launch long-term rental housing sources, and publicly sell monthly and weekly rental products to consumers.

The second is the group rental mode for enterprises. Some hotels directly connect with enterprises, sign contracts with them, and provide one-stop collective accommodation solutions for corporate employees.

The third is the long-term rental mode carried out by individual hotel stores. According to their own vacancy rate, hotel stores separately negotiate the monthly rent price and service rights with consumers. Under this mode, occupants generally communicate and negotiate prices with the hotel through private messages; different stores implement "one policy for one store", and there are differences in the rules. The reporter's search found that on some platforms, many hotels "voluntarily recommend" their long-stay services.

Ms. Fang, a citizen of Shanghai, has experienced the third mode.

In May this year, Ms. Fang decided to terminate the lease of her rented apartment in the urban area and try to stay in a hotel on workdays. She owns her own house in the outer suburbs of Shanghai, but works in the urban area, so the daily commute is quite troublesome, and she used to rent an apartment near her workplace in Hongkou District, Shanghai. If she rents an old apartment with an area of about 20 square meters, the monthly rent will cost more than 4700 yuan, plus utilities, parking fees and other expenses, the total monthly cost is about 5500 yuan.

After terminating the lease, Ms. Fang contacted several hotels, and finally one hotel agreed to let her stay for a long time at the price of 300 yuan per night. She checks in basically every Monday and checks out every Friday, costing about 3600 yuan per month, with a maximum of no more than 4800 yuan, including parking, two breakfasts every day and other hotel services. According to the screenshots provided by Ms. Fang, the price of hotels of the same grade in the same area ranges from 400 yuan to 700 yuan per night.

All Modes Have Compliance Risks

Yang Qinfa, executive dean of the Institute of Investment and Construction Law of East China University of Political Science and Law, commented that hotels entering the long-term rental market is the result of the accommodation industry expanding its business scenarios, revitalizing existing housing resources and combining with the demand of the housing rental market.

From the perspective of market demand, converting part of the hotel room resources into long-term rental products helps to provide choices for groups with phased residence needs. At the policy level, the *Regulations on Housing Rental* clearly stipulates that the state supports enterprises to revitalize and renovate old factories, commercial office buildings, self-owned commercial housing and other properties for rental use, and increase the supply of rental housing through multiple channels, which provides a policy basis for hotels to lay out the long-term rental track.

When consumers stay in a hotel for a long time, what kind of legal relationship is formed between them and the hotel, a hotel service contract relationship or a housing lease contract relationship?

Chen Si, a lawyer at Beijing Dacheng (Shanghai) Law Firm who has long focused on the real estate sector, told the reporter that according to Article 15 of the *Interpretation of the Supreme People's Court on Several Issues Concerning the Application of the General Provisions of the Contract Part of the Civil Code of the People's Republic of China*, the key to the determination of the legal relationship depends on the content of the contract and the actual performance, and it cannot be determined as a lease relationship just because the stay lasts for a full month.

Chen Si introduced that there are obvious differences in the allocation of rights and obligations under the two legal relationships. In the accommodation service relationship, the hotel shall provide the agreed rooms and services and perform the safety guarantee obligation, while the guests shall pay the fees and abide by the legitimate management rules; in the lease relationship, the lessor shall deliver the house and keep it in conformity with the agreed purpose, and bear the maintenance obligation in principle, while the lessee shall pay the rent on time, use the house reasonably and return it after the lease expires.

In addition to the determination of legal nature, the interviewed experts pointed out that several long-term rental modes in the current industry have certain compliance risks in practice.

Yang Qinfa analyzed that the main risk of the group standardized long-term rental mode is that it may appear the situation of carrying out the real nature of housing lease in the name of accommodation service agreement; the enterprise signed collective rental mode needs to focus on the compliance risks of contract subject, centralized residence and housing use; the compliance risk of the "one policy for one store" long-term rental mode of individual hotel stores is the most prominent. If a hotel store carries out long-term rental business only with oral agreement and does not clarify the specific rights and obligations, it is very likely to cause disputes over contract performance. (This article is integrated by National Daily Real Estate from *Legal Daily* and Lan Jing News)

This article comes from the WeChat official account "National Daily Real Estate", author: National Daily Real Estate, published with authorization from 36Kr.