Skift Forum Asia: China Is on Track to Be Airbnb's Top Origin Market by 2020

Siew Kum Hong, Airbnb's regional director for Asia Pacific, was one of the company's first employees in the region in 2012, and he has seen the focus in China transition from promoting homesharing to Chinese traveling abroad to supplementing that with substantial investments inside the country. In fact, China, Kum Hong said in the interview below, is the only country outside of North America to host an Airbnb dedicated product and engineering team. And he predicted that China will be Airbnb's top origin market by 2020. Kum Hong will appear at the inaugural Skift Forum Asia on May 27 in Singapore. There he will discuss Airbnb's varied approach to widely diverse APAC markets, as well as the synergies and differences he sees with Oyo hotels, which recently picked up an Airbnb investment. We did an email interview with Siew Kum Hong as a warmup for Skift Forum Asia. See the Skift questions and his answers below. Get Tickets Now Skift: What’s Airbnb’s plan for the Asia-Pacific region overall? Siew Kum Hong: Global tourism is growing rapidly. The UN World Tourism Organization reports that international tourist arrivals increased 6 percent in 2018 to 1.4 billion arrivals worldwide — two years ahead of projections. The same report shows that much of this growth has been driven by rising demand for travel destinations in emerging markets, and many countries in APAC are leading the way. These emerging markets are als