It's never easy for American businesses to make it in China. Cultural differences, government interference and the sheer cost of competing in a market that dwarfs the US have frustrated companies ranging from Wal-Mart to Uber.

Those stumbles aren't dissuading Airbnb, however. This week the home-sharing pioneer announced that it's changing its local brand name in China and doubling its investment there.

By any measure, the opportunity is immense. In 2015, Chinese travellers spent nearly $US500 billion, and the government expects that number to more than double by 2020 as the country's middle class expands. But capturing a major piece of that market will require Airbnb to navigate a far more tangled thicket of cultural issues than what confronted Uber and other tech companies in China. And judging by its efforts so far, it probably won't be up to the task.

In theory, China should be one of the world's biggest and best markets for home-sharing. Chinese travellers took 2.2 billion domestic trips in just the first half of 2016, up nearly 10.5 per cent year-on-year. Yet China has only 4 hotel rooms for every 1,000 people, compared to 20 in the US And thanks to China's housing boom, about 50 million empty homes are scattered across the country just waiting (in theory) for paying visitors.