Research on the rural homestay inn development under the view of rural revi-talization: A case of "Ten Thousand Hostels" in Zengcheng District, Guangzhou City

The vigorous development of rural homestay inn industry has become an important way to boost the rural revitalization in China in recent years, however, there are inadequate researches on this subject. Through the implementation of a homestay inn project, "Ten Thousand Hostels" since 2014, the rapid development of rural homestay inn industry has been realized in Zengcheng District of Guangzhou City. It's of a practical requirement and demonstration value to clarify the operating characteristics and difficulties in development of this model. The research methods of field investigation and in-depth interview were performed to investigate and study the business patterns of rural homestay inns in three representative sites of Zengcheng District in March 16 to 18, March 28 and May 23 to 24 of 2018. 27 operators of the rural homestay inns were investigated, of them 18 were from farmer-operated homestay inn, and 9 from enterprise-operated homestay inns. Results revealed that farmer-operated homestay inns accounted for the majority of Ten Thousand Hostels, and their operations were closely geared to the development level and pattern of local tourism industry. However, there were some difficulties needed to be resolved, such as the serious product homogeneity, less of market segmentation, fierce competition, etc. Simultaneously, enterprise-operated homestay inns were in a period of rapid development and made up of diversified business patterns, but their boundary of the industry was relatively vague. The success experiences and existing problems of Ten Thousand Hostels reflected the characteristics of the rural homestay inns in China. Around the need of rural revitalization strategy, the government and industry association should adopt the following countermeasures to promote the development of rural homestay inns:1) perfecting the relevant law and policy and developing holistic tourism to inspire the homestay inn's evolution for the sake of the rural industrial blossom; 2) building characteristic homestay inns with more elements of native area to help rural cultural construction; 3) building ecological homestay inns and promoting surrounding environment and facilities for giving impetus to the rural ecological civilization practice; 4) improving the quality of industry personnel and encouraging rural makers to get involved for the sake of the rural human resources development.