“Without an extreme pursuit of product excellence, Shangkeyou would not be where it is today.” When introducing Shangkeyou’s success story to reporters, Ma Yingyao, Chairman and President of Shangkeyou Group, emphasized this point in particular.
The outside world has labeled this entrepreneur with many titles: “CEO of the post-80s generation,” “youngest president,” and even the slightly teasing “most handsome male god in the hotel industry.” But when asked how he sees himself, he said he is just a “product enthusiast” who admires Steve Jobs and wants to be the Steve Jobs of the traditional hotel industry.
He enjoys collecting watches, a sign of an entrepreneur with a deep fascination for mechanics. He told reporters that he only wears Patek Philippe and that his favorite thing is to use an expensive magnifying glass to observe the inner mechanical workings of a watch. He loves precision, intricacy, and accuracy, and believes that running a business or creating a product cannot be done without this spirit.
Shangkeyou has internalized this pursuit from its positioning to its products and future plans. At the beginning, in order to find the right positioning, he drove across more than 200 counties nationwide to research the market because at the time, the giants of the hotel industry “looked down on” this market, believing it had no potential for commercialization.
But Ma Yingyao carefully examined and explored. On platforms like eLong, he found that it was very difficult to book hotels in county-level cities, and even when bookings were made, the reviews were poor. To further assess the situation, he personally went to these counties to experience the level of service firsthand. He stayed in local guesthouses and found them to be “shabby, dirty, and terrible”—simply unbearable. He decided he had to change that.
At the time, the hotel industry in first- and second-tier cities was relatively saturated, but there was huge demand in third- and fourth-tier cities, and because major brands had not yet entered, this demand had not been met. So he decided that Shangkeyou’s target market would be here.
The facts have proven that Shangkeyou quickly grew into a “rising star,” achieving a thousand stores within five years and earning recognition from both consumers and franchisees.
In terms of products, Shangkeyou has gone through four generations, while other major brands in the industry have relatively slow upgrade cycles, only reaching two or three generations despite having a longer development history. From the beds, TVs, and bath towels in hotel rooms, to bathroom design and the overall room style, Ma Yingyao has meticulously arranged everything, wanting his customers to feel as comfortable as possible and enjoy the best value for their money.
Shangkeyou’s target consumers do not have strong spending power, which poses a challenge: how to provide the highest quality service at the lowest cost? This high-level operation intrigued Ma Yingyao, and he wanted to take on this challenge. He found the most suitable suppliers, created a purely franchised model, and continuously upgraded the products.
Shangkeyou also launched Holiday Meadow SPA Hotels, offering a solution for franchisees struggling to find suitable buildings to open hotels in first-tier cities like Shanghai. This brand targets small properties with 10–20 rooms, effectively controlling costs while adding SPA services as an additional revenue stream, thus creating a niche market. Ma Yingyao always manages to find the optimal point among many options, like solving a math problem with multiple variables—he can identify the underlying unchanging rule, and his answer is the most precise.
He believes the current hotel industry is not yet mature—from one-star to four-star hotels, there are no truly outstanding major brands, and consumer choices are often blind. Many times, people simply choose the nearest hotel based on location, knowing little about the service level. He believes that in the future, various segments of the hotel industry will see ample development. Shangkeyou is also planning to invest in and acquire some small hotel service providers to delve deeper into niche markets and seize future opportunities.
Loves technology and is optimistic about internet-based hotels
Ma Yingyao loves cars, especially luxury ones. The cars he drives always have engines with eight cylinders or more. He told reporters that he is currently learning to fly a plane and needs to master many flight principles, but he is willing to challenge himself.
He is a technology enthusiast and was among the first entrepreneurs to pay attention to the O2O business model and apply it to the hotel industry during the rise of the O2O trend. Quoting Shen Nanpeng, founding and managing partner of Sequoia Capital China, who said that China will have two trillion-dollar markets in the future—O2O and internet finance—Ma Yingyao wants to create internet-based hotels, using O2O thinking to “pioneer new territory.”
Shangkeyou’s subsidiary, Chengke Distributed Hotel Apartments, aims to utilize idle family apartment resources, develop them through standardized management and internet technology, and provide them to consumers. This also aligns with the highly popular sharing economy model in the internet industry.
Chengke Distributed Hotel Apartments adopts a fresh approach—entirely online transactions and room selection, “eliminating” the front desk, making it extremely convenient and fast, catering to tech-savvy younger consumers born in the 1980s and 1990s. This group loves new things and cannot live without their phones. They enjoy using their mobile devices to arrange their lives. And this group is precisely the most important mainstream consumer base for the hotel industry in the future. Shangkeyou has locked in business opportunities by laying out this strategy early.
When free becomes a hallmark of the internet, the hotel industry is not to be left behind. Ma Yingyao put forward the slogan of creating internet-based hotels and launched a “stay at a hotel without paying” service. At Shangkeyou Select Hotels, any item in the room that a consumer likes can be scanned and purchased. There is also a “shop for free stay” policy—if consumers purchase goods worth a certain amount, their room fee is waived. For consumers, they can buy home goods while staying at the hotel, saving both the time of visiting furniture malls and the cost of the room.
Slightly avant-garde and fashionable, with high demands for life and an extreme pursuit of product excellence, the “Steve Jobs of the hotel industry” comes vividly to life. Ma Yingyao’s status as the youngest CEO of the post-80s generation is certainly no accident. However, when asked if he would follow in Jack Ma’s footsteps as a “entrepreneur mentor,” he modestly said he has no such plans for now. But he does have his own ideal: “to make it easy for everyone to open a store,” just as Alibaba aims to “make it easy for everyone to do business.” Shangkeyou hopes to help traditional offline businesses such as hotels, restaurants, and KTVs overcome operational challenges and find the best possible future.