Ctrip can not bear the "heavy"

Every Monday morning is Ctrip Wireless Division regular meeting, since this February Heavy duty CEO, Liang Jianzhang rarely absent it. Unlike the more than 10 of other business departments he will be attending, he will be very careful to listen to engineers discussing the details of an app page or a small bug in a feature, and he will often come up with ideas.

This attitude of the boss even made the wireless Division general manager Hao some fear. Since April Ctrip announced the "Thumb + cement" strategy, a comprehensive shift to mobile internet began, Liang on many occasions to his "Add Task": "The Future of Ctrip at least half of the income will come from the app." "His demands are proportional, not a specific amount, and other businesses are rising fast, and we can only rise faster." "Hao said.

So, even if Liang Jianzhang does not require, Hao will take the initiative to participate in other business Department of the regular meetings, after all, they have only horizontal to the division of the business, but the specific business increasingly complex, he must be exhaustive. Liang Jianzhang, who had just come back, moved his office from the 6 floor to the 4 floor, and the engineers who were next to the wireless division were hardly a deliberate act.

Liang Jianzhang started working like a crazy entrepreneur, starting at seven or eight in the morning and sending emails in the wee hours. "I'm working harder than I was when I started my business," he said. Liang Jianzhang said he once told the economic Observer that "the company has been inert for the past two years, and this inertia has slowed our innovation in technology, business and marketing strategies." ”

But the real change is the internal morale of Ctrip comes up, not only because of the strong rebound in share prices, but also a more important reason: The boss is a bit tough, even with the old staff he has worked with has not seen such a man.

"50%" wards

In fact, in the 2012 before the CEO, Liang Jianzhang had begun to work. Because Ctrip experienced the biggest decline in 2011 years, it has been in the entire OTA (online travel service) industry accounted for the market share has been above 50%, and that year's decline unexpectedly as high as 10%. A worse signal is that not only the art dragon, where the old opponents in the partition of the market share of Ctrip, tonight Special Hotel, MA Honeycomb, such as the rapid growth of the app looks more like Ctrip "subversive."

At that time Ctrip's positioning is "one-stop tourism service provider." Ctrip has four business departments, in addition to hotel and air tickets relatively mature business, Ctrip is focusing on nurturing tourism and business travel. In the outside world, Ctrip more and more "heavy", is becoming outdated, it intensively investment resources under the line, the acquisition of travel agents, tourism lines ... And the wireless service has been a virtual department, and not equipped with full-time personnel.

Liang Jianzhang is aware of the seriousness of the problem, but he is not unprepared. Since 2011, he has consciously organized a great deal of communication internally. His view was very bold: the mobile end would eventually exceed the PC and call center, which is not consistent with Ctrip's mainstream view. They agree not to move, Ctrip will die, but not all people can foresee what will happen in the next two years.

First they saw the madness of the Hive, and before the app was launched in 2011, the original tourist community accumulated less than 100,000 users in 5 years. And its first app―― travel translator in 3 months, the acquisition of 500,000 of the download, travel raiders and Buzz and other apps download is soon more than 10 million.

The bigger shock comes from Ota's own changes, booking, the US's biggest OTA Priceline, that orders from the mobile end have grown twice times from 2011 to $ more than 3 billion in 2012. Another OTA Expedia, in the third quarter of last year, already has 20% of hotel orders from mobile devices.

In the first half of 2012, Liang Jianzhang advocated the establishment of the Wireless division, the company's future direction of the discussion has been basic stereotypes: Ctrip to move the end of the turn. "It's just not clear how much resources should be invested in doing this," he said. "Hao said.

But not long after, Liang gave him an "incredible" instruction, "one day, he suddenly asked me when I can do 50% (mobile end business ratio), and previously we have been fixed 30%. Since then, the two people meet again, Liang's topic will not open "50%", he is such a vigorous and resolute person. ”

Liang Jianzhang's Abacus is this: "We have done the calculation, 5-10 years later, at least 70% of the booking will be on the PC and mobile end, the call center will account for 1/5." And our chance is to be able to account for 10% to 20% of these 70%. If you can do it, keeping in the first camp should not be too big a problem. ”

And he did not explicitly, "50%" is the mobile end of the wards, if not, Ctrip will still be in a long time by those vertical niche app impact.

Transformation

After the direction of clear, for the transformation of Ctrip began. Their first task is to transfer more business from the call center to the Internet, and the Ctrip executives, including Liang Jianzhang, do not choose to move directly to the mobile end, because the real problem exists, whether technical or market environment is not enough for them to make this decision.

Turning to the Internet will greatly transform Ctrip's user structure, and Internet users must be closer to the mobile end. By the end of 2012, orders under the call center were still more than half, meaning Ctrip's core users were 10 years old!

Starting from the second half of last year, Ctrip began to buy a large number of Baidu keyword, 360 web site navigation, the purpose is self-evident. Liang Jianzhang directly behind the scenes in the July famous "price war": Ctrip prepared to invest 500 million of dollars, launched a year-long promotion.

He attaches great importance to this action, many times in the internal communication, he said that if not involved in the price war, certainly can not guarantee enough market share, "Ctrip has been kept in the growth rate of 30%, far higher than the industry's 8%, why don't we go to fight?" ”

But before the attitude of Ctrip is diametrically opposed, it has not initiated the price war, and in the face of where and art dragon offensive, it also appears too conservative.

So, Ctrip began strict requirements parity, in some stars higher hotels and hot lines, it and where to basically maintain the same price, and for the temporary can not be the same price products, the relevant responsible person is also required to control the difference within 5%. The price war was quick, and in the fourth quarter of that year, profits were impaired, but market share rebounded sharply.

A more significant gain is that by the beginning of 2013, the proportion of orders from call centres has fallen to 1/3. The various business units of Ctrip began to be required to be redesigned with input-output ratios, which included call centers. "It has so much business contribution, we can't abolish it." Only in the future, it will reduce the number of employees, the absolute number will not change, because our other business will have more people to join. "Liang Jianzhang said.

Under such logic, the offline push team is gradually abolished, although they are still contributing to income and profit, but Ctrip's judgment is that the offline user penetration rate has reached saturation, the growth of space is very small.

This does not mean that Ctrip is abandoning the "heavy business", it is also crazy to accumulate tourism resources. For example, the newly established destination marketing department, they zoned a line, the National 4 A-level scenic spot and some relatively popular tourist city tourism bureau, the results found more than 1000. The task of this department is to visit each other to facilitate cooperation with attractions tickets and local tourism resources.

In a way, Liang Jianzhang has been stocked with ammunition for the mobile business, waiting for a suitable node.

The timing of the counterattack

And Hao this side also gradually found the feeling. When he took over the wireless division, Liang Jianzhang's request was to put all the business "on the whole". "It's a huge challenge," Liang said, "It's hard to put our massive information on the wireless side, the process is going to be very streamlined and the most important information to be presented in the best possible way." ”

"It's not like on the Internet, I just have to make a channel or a page is enough, it has a lot of technical problems in the background, we will pick the mobile scene before the strong business first." According to Hao, Liang Jianzhang will even ask him to have a clear online schedule for each business, "How long after the PC is online, we will move the end." ”

This has kept him busy for 2012 years, even in a project called "Hotel short name", which costs a lot of resources. Some of the hotel's name is very long, can not be well displayed on the phone, and Ctrip's contract hotel has 40,000, many families have this problem.

In fact, it also affected the strategy of Ctrip to some extent. Last September, Ctrip released a "app group", including Ctrip Wireless, Ctrip Special hotel and other 5 app. Hao The concept was: "Wireless products can not be too complex, must be more professional and subdivision the better, each product to solve a specific problem." Fan on stage to explain the use of the corresponding app, which is the first time Ctrip officially announced its mobile strategy. "We analyzed all the popular apps on the market and came to the conclusion that they were dividing the user community. "Hao said. But soon they were aware of the shift in trend, and the cost of promoting an app had risen to tens of millions of dollars, and the app group was clearly creating a distraction for marketing resources.

After a period of time, Liang Jianzhang many times and he met to discuss countermeasures, until the Spring festival in 2013, they decided to abandon the "app group", to a single client strategy.

followed by a non-stop research and development and testing, April 25, Liang Jianzhang personally released the spring version Ctrip wireless client, this is his first time for a product platform. "We were all stunned and didn't think he would do that," he said. "Hao said.

In Liang Jianzhang's view, he was waiting for the counterattack time. The mobile business was not involved in the price war last September. And after the new app on the line, once lunch, Liang Jianzhang and Hao to discuss the app order promotion program. "Originally we set is more than the PC end of 2 yuan to 5 yuan, the result of James (Liang Jianzhang English name) Big hand wave, ' directly on 5 Yuan '." "Some business leaders jokingly asked Hao for the fee," the result was James in the front, and he was pushing it very aggressively. ”

June, Ctrip changed its name to Ctrip tourism, August, Ctrip announced that its mobile client download installation has broken through 50 million; September, Ctrip online A new version of the app "Ctrip Travel 5.0". The Hao department has updated 7 iterations in total throughout 2012, and has reached last year's level in the first half of the year.

Ctrip reported the second quarter of this year, the mobile end of the transaction volume reached 3 times times the same period last year, the rate of contribution to hotel bookings over 20%, the peak value of more than 50 million yuan per day turnover. In the just released third quarter earnings, the peak value of a single day turnover was refreshed to 100 million yuan. "In fact, James doesn't have to give me any resources right now because the business unit is forcing us to do it, and they all want to have a chance to show up on the app," he said. "Hao said.

Although the result is bright eye, but the inside of Ctrip thinks just smell the breath of war. Where are you going? At the beginning of September, the external High-profile announced its domestic direct sales of the number of hotels reached 50,000, more than Ctrip 40,000. It then launched a return ticket search products, and most of the products are directly contracted with the airlines. Where to go is "alienated" into a Ota, and in their prospectus, also clearly put forward to move to the goal of the transition.

Ctrip has just released a scale of 800 million U.S. dollars of convertible bonds, in Liang Jianzhang view, the mobile end needs more solid rear resources to support, and compared to air tickets and hotels, the scale of the larger tourism market, the degree of Internet is very low, but this will be mobile end of the main battlefield business. "In some areas that are not so backward, the hotel front desk is full of manual processing orders," he said. According to Ctrip insiders revealed.

So, on the surface of Ctrip look more and more light, and the back of the Ctrip should be more and more heavy, to some extent, Ctrip's "transgenic project" has just begun.