Why giants scramble for online travel

Tourism is the appearance, the big data behind the tourism is more worthy of attention. Tourism involves the widest range of life services, including food and clothing to live with the line, although online travel because of fierce competition by some people think "do not earn money", but tourism behind the life service consumption will be a huge market. Whether Tencent, Ali or Baidu, the giants of the electric quotient of the ecological can not be lack of tourism.

Baidu: 2011 Baidu and where to announce, the two sides reached a deep strategic cooperation agreement, to where net to get Baidu strategic investment of 306 million U.S. dollars, Baidu became the first major institutional shareholder.

Alibaba: Since May 2010 launched Taobao travel platform, Alibaba on the online tourism began to continue exerting force, especially in 2013, the most Outstanding performance: January, Ali Group integrated tourism business Set up Aviation Brigade Division; May, announce strategic investment travel records and share applications "on the road"; July, Amoy a high-profile foray into the tourism vertical search field, the same month later, Alibaba Group announced a stake in the poor travel network.

Tencent: January 2011 Tencent shares 30% stake in the same process net, the same year in May, Tencent spent about 84.4 million U.S. dollars to buy online tourism website Art Dragon about 16% of the circulation shares, become the second largest art dragon shareholders.

In recent years online tourism market has been the Red Sea, the major OTA enterprises increasingly fierce competition. BAT three as the Internet platform providers, in fact, tourism such a biased line of the industry is not their strong points, but know that the Red Sea is hard to break through the internet giant behind what kind of common logic? The author tries to do the following reading on this question:

Tourism is the appearance, the big data behind the tourism is more worthy of attention. Travel involves the widest range of living services, including food and clothing and living with the line included. Although online travel is highly competitive by some people that "do not earn money", but tourism behind the consumption of life services will be a huge market. To Ali investment in the poor travel network for example, when users in poor search destination information, buy, map, hotels, ticketing, holiday products, raiders and other services can be displayed at the same time. If the poor network and Alibaba other products such as Alipay, gold map, poly cost-effective, Taobao, a Amoy search and other effective integration to produce synergies, which in the tourism reservation generated by the consumer information on the large data will be very considerable.

The giant's electric quotient can not be short of tourism. Both Ali and Tencent are struggling to build their own electric-business ecosystems, from platforms to payments, covering almost all industries (Baidu, though relatively weak, has begun to make its own payment system, including successful applications for payment licences). The surrounding industry of tourism is the widest, the food and clothing that involves the service of life can be a complete chain of consumption because of tourism. Such a linkage effect of the industry if not as a giant electric quotient of the components of the ecology, will be the giant can not be loaded with major defects. As a platform based on the three major internet giants, regardless of the formation of tourism services products or tourism equipment and tourism production characteristics of the sale of goods, can be caused by tourism drainage to their respective platforms, as a result of tourism to further enhance the platform's user stickiness.

Big market space drives giants to sit on the sidelines. Public data show that China's online tourism market Size in 2010, 2011, 2012, respectively, 103.74 billion yuan, 167.3 billion yuan and 253 billion yuan. There is clearly more room for this data to rise. CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center) reported that by the end of December 2012, China's online tourism internet users about 112 million, accounting for only 19.8% of the total number of users. The potential for huge business opportunities has prompted online tourism to be the focus of competition among internet giants, especially in 2011.

The mature industrial chain can play the platform value of the giant more. Tourism industry chain development compared to other industries are more mature, from the hotel to air tickets, lines, attractions have a corresponding service providers, each subdivision of the field has a more complete supporting services. The advantage of the Internet platform lies in the integration of these decentralized services to optimize, to provide users with more convenient and targeted system services, any single form of business can not complete such a systematic service. The enormous amount of traffic that the Internet platform itself has also made it easier to translate this system service into an effective way of rapid realization.