With the sharing economy booming in China, people are enjoying the convenience and economic benefit of sharing almost everything ranging from a bike to an umbrella. But would you dare to share a hotel room with a complete stranger when you visit an unfamiliar city?
A Chinese app Shuishui, which brands itself as a hotel room-sharing service went offline on Thursday amid questions about the purity of its motives.
According to Shuishui's official website which remains accessible online, the app offers young travelers a chance to "share an upgraded hotel room with interesting people," as well as "making friends while saving travel cost."
Official website of the hotel room-sharing app Shuishui. /Screenshot via Shuishui's official website
But some users said they were taken aback when they downloaded and opened the app. "Sleep with that unknown him or her, and you can relive your twenties!" the app greeted its users on a pop-up page. "What's wrong with that?"
Below a picture of a young, female traveler, the app introduces itself as "offering vacant hotel beds or couches to over 100,000 backpacker beauties."
Screenshot from Shuishui's app.
Once registered as a member, a user could either offer or seek a vacant bed at a designated hotel. To find a match, users were given the opportunity to choose whether they would stay with a guest of same or different sex.
To stay with a female user, however, a male user had to become a platinum member paying for an extra fee, China News reports.
"Girls only. You know what I mean," a male user stated in his introduction. "We can talk about price first."
"Girls only. You know what I mean," a male user stated in his profile. /Screenshot from Shuishui
"Free if you are a girl," another male guest claimed.
It was not the first time the service was taken down. Previously it disguised itself with different names and appeared several times as a mini app built in WeChat, China's major social media platform, China News reports. WeChat took down the app given the service involved in providing "vulgar, sexually suggestive and erotic information."
Netizens responded to Shuishui's recurring appearance with criticism on China's major social media platform Weibo.
"It's easy to tell the service targeted male users and materialized women as products," @guanmushangdewuzhe commented.
"Obscenity is not the single problem. This kind of service allowing two strangers to share the same room is not safe. It definitely should be banned forever," another Weibo user commented.