CHINA has reported a robust growth of the sharing accommodation sector as market transactions surged by 37.5 percent year on year in 2018, data from the State Information Center (SIC) showed.

Last year, combined turnover of domestic sharing accommodation market stood at 16.5 billion yuan (US$2.4 billion), with the second and third-tier cities witnessing fast expansion, the SIC said in a report.

As China steps up support for its tourism industry and as more people are using their smartphones to book hotels, the public’s acceptance for and willingness to partake in sharing accommodation is rising.

From 2015 to 2018, the sharing accommodation sector contributed 2.1 percentage points to the annual growth of China’s accommodation sector. About 70 percent of those offering sharing accommodation services are those born in the 1980s and 1990s, the report said.

As part of the sharing economy, sharing accommodation not only helped to meet people’s diverse demands for living, but also injected new impetus to the transformation and development of traditional accommodation industry, said Xu Changming, deputy head of the SIC.

Major sharing-accommodation platforms have provided a total of 3.5 million homes in 2018, up 16.7 percent from the previous year, and more than 79 million users enjoyed such services.

The report predicted that the sharing accommodation market would continue to grow at a speed of 50 percent over the coming three years as China’s consumption and demands for medium and high-end services expand steadily. (Xinhua)