Meituan’s Rental Service Expands to Over 40 Cities in China, Aiming for Nationwide Coverage by Year’s End

On August 20, Jiemian News reported that Meituan‘s home rental service is now available in over 40 cities in China and is expected to cover the entire country by the end of the year.

Unlike traditional rental platforms, Meituan‘s service does not limit rentals to an entire month. Users can flexibly choose their rental period by the day, such as 45 or 70 days. During their stay, some orders can enjoy a free cleaning service once a week. When checking out, users can receive a full refund of the deposit collected online if the property is undamaged and all related property fees are paid.

Currently, Meituan‘s “Rental Section” mainly targets users’ “medium and short-term + move-in with luggage” rental needs. As long as the merchant is willing to open and meets the relevant qualifications for renting, it applies to all listings on Meituan‘s platform. Now, landlords have already uploaded rental information for non-homestay properties on the rental section.

According to insiders, Meituan‘s rental service is part of Meituan‘s homestay business, mainly catering to various medium and short-term rental needs such as tourism, postgraduate entrance examination, business travel projects, and health tourism.

Traditional rental platforms like Ziroom mainly focus on long-term rentals. If users check out early, they face problems such as non-refundable breach of contract deposits. There is a large demand in the medium and short-term rental market, but these needs have not been well met. This is because the listings on long-term rental platforms like Ziroom are owned by the platform itself. From the perspective of cost and income, the platform prefers long-term rentals to reduce vacancy rates and operating costs. In contrast, Meituan Homestay is a C2C and B2C model. The platform provides information matching, advertising promotion, and service guarantees for both landlords (including individuals and institutions) and tenants. The transition from a daily rental model to a medium and short-term rental is not difficult.

Meituan Homestay was launched in April 2017. As of June 2024, Meituan Homestay has 500,000 active landlords, nearly 2 million online listings, and covers more than 3,000 counties and cities nationwide. Currently, the listings for Meituan‘s rental service are mainly operated by individuals and institutions that rent daily. Jiemian News learned from Meituan‘s rental service customer service that individuals who post listings need to provide personal identification information and proof of property ownership for verification. Units or individuals who sublet more than 10 sets (rooms) of housing need to register as a market entity with a business scope that includes “housing leasing”.

Looking at Meituan‘s overall business layout, rental is a business that can be advanced or retreated. It can exist as a supplementary service to daily rental homestays, or it can grow into a new business with a high GTV (total transaction volume). After all, in the field of local life services, medium and long-term rentals are a consumption with a relatively large transaction volume.

In the view of an industry insider, if Meituan continues to expand its rental business, the platform may need to introduce listings from various institutions such as housing rental companies and real estate brokerage companies. In this way, the platform will face challenges in identifying the authenticity of listings and distinguishing between brokers and landlords.

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