A Cost Saving Guide of Dwellworks Living Resources in China
With all pandemic travel restrictions now in the rearview mirror, China is open again for international business. As multinational corporations re-enter China from a workforce relocation and business travel perspective, they are looking at new needs and new services for their mobile professionals.
For close to 20 years, Dwellworks and its legacy brands have delivered market-leading services in over 20 distinct locations in China, including secondary and tertiary cities, through an established, on-the-ground real estate services network and a tailored customer service model. With the launch of our Dwellworks Living corporate housing solutions business in 2020, we expanded our capabilities across China and offer support to clients interested in growing their business throughout the Asia-Pacific region. With our unique services and operational assets, we can offer both excellence and expertise in local markets and potential cost and tax savings for corporate clients.
Providing for All Customer Needs
Our research has confirmed that for many of our clients, China is a growing, coveted, and complex market. China is the world’s second-largest economy — but the serviced apartment market is still in its early days compared to other regional hotspots. As China refocuses on growth, with an expected 5% GDP rate in 2023, the serviced apartment/temporary housing market will expand accordingly. It is also important to note that while international travel into China was severely restricted during the covid period, domestic mobility and business travel continued, allowing many suppliers and vendors to fine tune their offerings in anticipation of the post-pandemic demand from both domestic and international travelers.
Our business is focused on supporting the housing and related support services needs of the globally mobile workforce. Historically, in China, Hong Kong, and elsewhere, these services have been offered to executives and senior professionals, who would experience temporary stays in superior quality accommodations, before transitioning to long-term rentals, typically with families who joined them on assignment. Along the way, much has changed.
Instead of executive moves, long-term assignments, and ‘expat lifestyles,’ global business is now increasingly built around frequent business travel and shorter-term assignments. Families may choose not to move at all, and thus the global traveler is working more on a project-focused, temporary basis but still with the need for safe, secure, comfortable, and affordable housing. This changing dynamic in global workforce mobility pivoted us more towards corporate housing solutions that leverage our destination services heritage.
Typically, a corporate client searching for a hotel alternative in China will default to internationally branded serviced apartments or aparthotels. Historically, the choices have been predictable and limited, even in markets as big as Beijing and Shanghai, much less in lower-volume second and third-tier locations. Housing solutions operators who do not have feet on the ground in China are typically not able to source alternative solutions and if they are, they are faced with complex booking processes, including landlords often not able, or willing, to accept payments from outside of China.
Smart Money: The Importance of Special Rent Fapiaos
An essential part of Dwellworks’ unique temporary housing solution in China was the establishment of a new legal entity. With multiple years of business experience on the ground, we were able to work our way patiently and compliantly through administrative and documentation requirements, resulting in the approval of a full real estate and property management license as a Wholly Foreign Owned Enterprise (WFOE) in 2019. Amongst the advantages of the WFOE license, we gained the ability to bill in international and local currencies along with the capability to issue Special Fapiaos.
Fapiao is the Mandarin word for an invoice, and they are produced by a regulated invoice-issuing system. A Regular Fapiao can deduct an expense against revenue while a Special Fapiao can post expenses against revenue and the Value-Added Tax (VAT). Without a fapiao in a transaction, the expense does not exist from a taxing perspective and therefore, the expense cannot be recognized as an expense against a Chinese entity’s revenue.
Having the ability to issue a Special Rental Fapiao means our Corporate Housing partners can place their bookings through us and invoice companies in China directly, to receive sought-after tax break benefits. Altogether, this model has been proven to allow some companies to achieve total tax savings of up to 30-percent of their Corporate Housing costs, making the product extremely appealing to firms operating in China.
Furthermore, our business in China is now also enrolled in the new e-fapiao system and can issue VAT invoices electronically, making the billing process on the ground even more efficient.
Local and Reliable: What Sets our Service Apart
Dwellworks Living is a global provider of accommodations solutions, matching client needs with superior supplier offerings on a global scale. We also recognize that clients may have a need for bespoke or matched-lease solutions if supplier inventory does not have the exact offering the client is looking for.
Where Our Real Estate Experience Makes the Difference
Leveraging years of market research and landlord negotiation experience for long-term rentals, Dwellworks Living sources private landlord solutions, in China and Hong Kong, to supplement the core offerings of our high-performance supply chain partners.
We have an offering with a wide range of local serviced apartments on a matched-lease basis in over 25 cities in China and Hong Kong. These serviced properties are locally owned and managed by professional hospitality operators, offering great value and outstanding service for our clients. These much-sought-after properties are not marketed internationally and are often only accessible through trusted relationships developed between local owners and their local-language speaking Dwellworks agents and destination services consultants.
Currently, over 50 percent of our property mix is made up of these local brands offering clients convenient access to properties previously unknown and inaccessible to them.
Combining this superior local real estate knowledge with the financial value of our fapiao administration creates a truly differentiated advantage for employers with temporary accommodations needs in China.
An epic™ Investment
Dwellworks Living sources and manages 3,500 select global supplier partners and 50,000+ individual units on our epic™ platform. This industry-leading application enables us to streamline and simplify temporary housing program management on a global scale. Clients needing housing in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Singapore, and hundreds of other locations worldwide, can coordinate all those searches with us through the epic™ platform, with Dwellworks Living as their global partner.
As in China, so too around the world. Our local real estate experts can source unique private landlord listings based on years of market experience, and they can enrich even a short-term assignment with expert local orientation and cultural adaptation services. All Dwellworks Living guests also receive free access to our local ‘best of’ app, Xplore, which contains insights for must see shopping, restaurants, sightseeing, and ‘live like a local’ tips, all curated by our on-the-ground experts.
As we learned in pairing a WFOE and fapiao capability, with our core real estate related services, there is ample opportunity in the growing China relocation and business travel services market to innovate and differentiate with creative solutions. Creating a differentiated solution requires investments on the scale Dwellworks Living has committed to in funding, research, compliance, systems, and people. Contact to learn more about our China corporate housing solutions.
Moving your talent to China, Hong Kong or elsewhere in APAC?
Contact us to create a customized corporate housing solutions for your business needs.
Dwellworks Living: Global Solutions for Corporate Accommodations
Dwellworks Living is committed to providing our clients and their employees with the best possible corporate housing and serviced accommodations experience. With a global network of property partners, a tri-regional team of customer experience and supply chain professionals, and a wide range of services for global mobility and travel customers, Dwellworks Living can provide the perfect corporate housing solution for any need or budget.
Dwellworks Living is the global corporate housing solution of Dwellworks, an award-winning, business-to-business provider of global mobility and business travel services. As a global leader in corporate housing and serviced accommodations solutions, Dwellworks Living is uniquely positioned to meet the temporary living needs of businesses and their employees who are relocating or traveling on short-, medium- or extended-stays. With 60,000 high-quality professionally managed properties in over 125 countries worldwide, Dwellworks Living is the preferred housing solutions partner of many Fortune 1000 and leading relocation management companies.
Dwellworks Living's corporate housing and serviced accommodations solutions are designed to help businesses attract and retain top talent, support employee productivity, and ensure a smooth and successful relocation or business travel experience. In addition to our core global accommodations management services, Dwellworks Living, through our worldwide network of local experts, is uniquely capable of offering our clients expanded and related services, such as area orientations, group move assistance, destination services and intercultural training.
Whether you have corporate housing needs for an individual employee or a large team, Dwellworks Living can provide the serviced accommodations solutions you need anywhere in the world to ensure a safe and successful stay. Please contact us to learn more or visit our Properties page to begin your search for global corporate housing accommodations.