Dplus, Airbnb and the Guilin Municipal Government Tourism Development Committee successfully held the “Culture, Tourism & Rural Revival” press conference and launch ceremony in the village of Jinjiang, Multinational Autonomous County of Longsheng, Guilin this week.

During the conference, each party shared the results of Airbnb’s Guilin Rural Empowerment Project, which covers more than 100 people from 38 households in the entire village, while announcing that six rural home listings redesigned and revamped through this project have been officially launched on the Airbnb platform. This event was attended by Vice-Chairman of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Guilin Committee Zheng Yi, Director General of Guilin Municipal Government Tourism Development Committee Luo Jianzhang, Airbnb China President Tao Peng, Dplus' partners Jian Zhang and Lan Wu.

Promoting Design-led Revitalization and Empowerment

In October 2017, Dplus, Airbnb and the Guilin Municipal Government Tourism Development Committee reached a partnership to promote rural empowerment. Focused on the rural village of Jinjiang at the national 4A-level Longji Terraced Fields, the one-year project saw dplus' partners, Lan Wu and Jian Zhang come on board to lead a team to redesign local, traditional stilt-style homes to create functional home stays with unique cultural features. This project aims to explore how design can transform villager's houses to small-scale boutique hotels and therefore help local villagers increase their income as a key source of revenue.

Building a Model for Sustainable Tourism

Sustainability is key to the long-term development of rural tourism. One of the goals of the Guilin Rural Empowerment Project is to equip villagers with the skills to continue this practice.

We need to use design methods, building materials, and construction forms that local villagers can understand and master to transform their houses. So we need to constantly change a 'better' design from an architectural point of view to a 'worse' design in order to make the renovation sustainable and understandable to the local villagers. This was a challenge for the project, because we had to give up the way we were used to thinking and working.' said Dplus' partner Lan Wu and Jian Zhang.

Airbnb organized training sessions for young villagers to learn about hotel management. Guilin Tourism University was also brought on board to compile easy-to-understand village home sharing tutorials for villagers.