Translation Results Requested Through Conyac Made Public

Roomorama: We focus on B2C type of listings as opposed to Airbnb’s peer-to-peer offerings, and further, most of our properties are in the mid-range to higher end. Wherever there are opportunities and potential for growth, there will be competition, and we think this is healthy for the market and the industry.

travelmob: For us, we’ve always maintained a regional dedication to building Asia Pacific as a destination for global travellers from Day 1. We continue to be committed to the region and to building solutions and services that cater to both travellers visiting APAC destinations as well as for property owners based here. Our mission remains: to lead the social stay market in Asia Pacific. 9flats: As you know we already opened our Singapore office in 2011 with Wei Leen at the helm. At the time we were extremely pleased with Singapore as a location to build our presence in south east Asia. We even contemplated to move part of our development team to Singapore. However we discovered that the burden of intercontinental communication across times zones made this not as feasible. We like to remain focused and nimble. Author’s note:

While short-term rental stay might be illegal in some countries, especially in Singapore where permission to sublet your property to visitors has to be sought from the authority, that did not dampen the growth of the industry. From the various responses by the main players in the short-term rental space, AirBnB is very bullish about Thailand and Indonesia, Roomorama also expects a huge inventory boost in the new year, travelmob has plans to expand beyond Southeast Asia into APAC, while 9flats focuses less on this region due to operational challenges. While short-term rental stay is going to become more popular and common, people would not even realize that it is not legal. It is up to the government to either embrace this new trend, or to give these short-term rental websites or the property hosts a bad time.