Exploring the business of online tourism where are the dead points of the old tourist community?

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Online tourism is the hotspot direction of venture capital in recent years, but it is affected by two aspects. One is the development trend of major tourism industry. Relatively rich people, began to be willing to spend money on tourism, has tens of billions of output value. The proportion of domestic booking of tourism services through the Internet is far below the level of developed countries, online tourism itself has hundreds of billions of market size, annual growth rate of more than 60%. The second is the impact of mobile Internet, mobile applications emphasize its outdoor properties, just can better cut into tourism activities.

I have been doing tourism products for some time. Recently more leisure, just and friends out for a trip back, to pull their own online tourism products entrepreneurial view.

An analysis on the industry chain of online tourism

Tourism according to the autonomy of itinerary arrangement, can be divided into group tours and self-help tours. Of course, in recent years, there have been similar semi-autonomous, travel agencies are only responsible for air tickets and hotels, travel schedule All their own arrangements, this kind of relatively few, can be put into the list of self-help tours. Group tour is the travel agency to manage everything, naturally no online tourism products. The online travel product competes for, is the self-service tour user.

Based on the process of tourism activities, can be divided into line before, in line, after three links. Before the trip is mainly to make travel arrangements, booking travel services, especially air tickets hotel; In the line is the tourism activity itself, the user's entire travel process; After a while, users will share their experiences and stories with their friends, bask in photos and so on.

This can make money, nature is the big head of the air tickets, hotel reservations. This part of the reservation is in the "before line" section of the tour.

So the earliest up online travel giants, are ctrip, art, such as tourism reservation site, referred to as Ota-online Travel Agent. Ota is a big head or business trip users. But this part of the user's business value is not the same, belong to another category, not carefully discussed.

OTA in addition to air tickets, hotel reservations, as well as traditional travel with the travel line services, including air tickets + hotel + itinerary arrangements for the entire service, in the tourism industry is also known as tourism products, or sell lines. In order not to confuse the Internet products we are discussing, I would like to call these products tourism services.

After the coming of the cattle, donkey mother, is to go to this mode, online sales of tourism services (even can be called tourism power). This market is mainly a patchwork of resources and services, mainly the electric business model of competition.

OTA and travel electric business This piece, now already is a fierce competition market, and even as the electric dealer, began to burn money to rob the market.

If you go to a subdivision, do a specific travel booking or service, there is still a chance. For example, a high-end holiday villa reservation, foreign HomeAway, in the domestic already has the network in the home to do; similar Airbnb mode, in the domestic credit environment, it is estimated that it is difficult to do it; luxury routes of tourism, or specific routes of foreign in-depth travel, too beautiful and Ctrip's sub-brand Honghu Yi Tour; There are a number of projects already on the outskirts of a big city on a short trip to the weekend.

From the Internet product point of view, such projects around the conversion rate and operations, small teams rely on product technology entrepreneurship, no offline resources and funds to do support, certainly no.

"In line", Users eat and drink Lazarus, short-distance traffic, local guides, attractions tickets, souvenirs also exist consumption links, this part of the relative air tickets, hotels, prices and profits are much smaller. The traditional travel agency, however, can cut off a lot of profits, the water is very deep and deep, it will not be carried out in depth. Before the advent of the mobile Internet, online services were hard to plug into and make money from. But after the rise of the mobile internet, there is still some room for imagination, which we will discuss later.

"After", the user travel story sharing, there is no doubt, can not directly make money. This part of the good, if not with the industry link up, not to establish a new business model, do a good job is a vertical site, depending on the content of clicks to sell ads. But the information that the user shares travels, can have the influence to the decision product before the row, this part of the message is very valuable, this also will discuss later.

As the saying goes, entrepreneurship is not a dinner, but ultimately to make money. Then to do a business value of the entrepreneurial project, you must start from the most profitable part of the thinking, looking for opportunities. So our eyes are still on the line to see where the possible entry point is--what part of the user's needs have not been met, or that they can be better met.

The decision before the row, in fact, can be subdivided into three stages. The first stage, to go out to travel, has not decided where to go, the second stage, has been fixed where to go, need to book travel services, to make a general arrangement; the third stage, the reservation of tourism services, to do a detailed schedule and preparation.

There is no doubt that in this three stage, Pleaes is the big head, is the key.

Where to go, in the OTA market already has the giant's case, is to rely on the second stage, do a good job to help users make reservations analysis of the engine, occupy a place.

So if you can help users do the first stage or the second stage of the matter, first to help users make decisions before, pick the location of tourism, and then to OTA flow back, or directly sell products, or can be in the industry chain to obtain a place.

As we said earlier, user experience sharing after a row can have a significant impact on the user's decision before the line. Especially the travel experience of a friend, will largely determine our own choice of travel destinations and arrangements, then, using the user's share to build a rich tourism information site to help users make decisions and arrangements before, and then docking with booking services, can be a good way to achieve business value transformation.

Therefore, to do tourism community or tourism social products, in the process of decision-making, not only can play a very good role for users, but also in the entire online tourism industry chain, occupy an important link. Do a good job in the tourism community, to become the user to see tourism information to make decisions of the entrance, to Ota, tourism, the flow of traffic to earn a CPA advertising, can directly sell tickets, hotels receive commission. Especially in the current online tourism market competition is increasingly fierce, if you can grasp the upstream flow, there is no doubt that there is greater commercial value.

In the traditional tourism industry, the tourism media plays the role. The internet industry, also has the vertical travel information website to play this role. Traditional media model profit, or from the tourism business advertising, information impartiality, inevitably affected. Therefore, the network media, even if there is a wealth of tourism information, lack of effective organization, can not form effective information tools and products, can only rely on the search engine entrance, to reach the user. If the tourism community simply becomes another kind of tourism media, it is difficult to improve the value. The tourism community and information must be combined into powerful information tools, like "Where to go", to become a business platform that combines user needs and business needs to become an efficient business model.

So the current online tourism market, to rely on product technology entrepreneurship, the first opportunity, but also in the tourism community and tourism social products this piece. Those who have invested in the travel power of the VC, but also watching the tourism community projects, so that their project through into a complete industrial link, from top to bottom flow, form a complete system to improve the overall value of assets.

The dead points of the old tourist community

The concept of tourism social products has also been put forward by many people. Foreign Gogobot relies on the Facebook platform to interact with millions of users in two years.

It is certainly not tenable to rely on travel to make friends. Because tourism is a relatively short period of activity, the frequency of products, rely on tourism to establish long-term social relations, is not too reliable. However, in turn rely on social relations, to stimulate UGC, do exchange interaction can be. Gogobot's success is here. But Gogobot does not limit the flow of content to friends, they also encourage users to answer strangers ' questions and comment on other people's comments. From this perspective, Gogobot is not a social network, it is a large tourism community that includes acquaintances.

Similar to doing tourism social products, the essence of it is to rely on social relations or real user identity, to provide credible travel information, to do a more authentic content source of the tourism community.

Speaking of the tourism community, many people will think of a hornet's Nest and poor tour. The hornet's nest is indeed the largest tourist community in the country, while the poor tour of the main foreign travel, is also considered second. Both have won a round of investment, then, the tourism community, how can the two pioneer competition?

First of all, the hornet's nest is no more than 2 million users, not a market dominance of the site. Both are relying on the forum to accumulate user's travel notes, established community. Now the main destination Raiders, relying on content to rob users, its product model is relatively old. After the tourism products, including the back of the big company Baidu Travel, from the network, but also to the form of the Forum travel to do the community, and their same model to compete, is sure to do their.

If more than they, it is necessary to change a play, from the user's pain point and dissatisfaction to do a better product to meet demand. The main problem has two points, the content is too heavy, the participation threshold is too high.

1. Content is too heavy

The hornet's Nest and other travel strategies accumulate the community, the problem is that the content is too "heavy", at the same time, the organization is too rigid.

Whether it is travel notes or raiders, are thousands of words of long speeches. If you want to see a destination of travel information, more than a few travel notes, content is too redundant, only to see one or two pieces, information and not comprehensive. For the users to play, look at the content of the time, focus on the core information only to eat, live, travel, swim, part of the purchase of practical information.

The traditional forum posts long speech, many are the user travels many regrets, is not its friend's user, does not care about these content at all. Users care about the practical information is not much, to find more inconvenient.

So the hornet's Nest and poor tour, have made a concise version of the road book. But the introduction of the road book, there will be the same problem. Information is not enough, it is difficult to meet the user for food, housing, travel, tourism, purchase different personalized needs; If there is more content, use their current post form or document form, browsing efficiency is too low, find the key information inconvenience.

But the essence of editing, users can not participate in, can only rely on the content or hire a lot of editors to produce, but the immediacy of information and authenticity is still a problem, also do not have a good extensibility. Lonely Planet website Information and books it has long been a necessary tool for Westerners to travel, relying on the media model of hiring professional editors and journalists, but it's hard to turn into a flexible product model.

2. Low degree of product

As mentioned earlier, if the tourism community has only a wealth of tourism information, it is similar to the traditional tourism media. However, because the content of the traditional tourism community is too heavy, it is difficult to become the data base of the information tool because of its complicated travels. Hornet's Nest and poor tour, only these and destination-related travel notes, grouped together as content for users to spend. These travel communities do not offer the tools to reorganize and become more valuable products for users to use.

So from the perspective of tourism information browsing, if you can put more rich information into a structured form, put on the web site or mobile phone, users can instantly browse, query information tools, will certainly be more valuable. Abroad, a project called Triposo, is to make travel information into iOS applications, and add personalized recommendations, has won millions of of dollars in investment. #p # subtitle #e#

3. The threshold for participation is too high

The traditional tourism community, in the form of travel notes, there is another big problem, is the user's participation threshold is too high. Thousands of words of travel, a large number of beautiful pictures in the hornet's nest such a tourist community will have a market, by the user's attention. But in fact, only a very small proportion of users have the energy to participate in such contributions. The accumulation of content is slow and lacks timeliness. There is no better mode, can make users more easily and easily contribute content, form a complete and rich information strategy, to do a "live" road book?

Some tourism products, provide a lot of guidance and corresponding format, reduce the user's thinking costs, let users to fill in the blanks. The empty space after filling is also convenient for indexing information. But its essence still writes travels, still has the very high organization cost.

To innovate, you have to dare to abandon the original practice. Why do meaningful travel sharing make it necessary for users to write travels? Why can't it be presented and organized in a simpler way to provide a better basic unit of information, better tooling, more product? Therefore, tourism products, there must be a new model to do the space, it is worth the entrepreneurs to try.

Opportunities for new Tourism communities

Chen, Mushroom Street. Three features were presented in the discussion of the three features of the new product model: 1, fragmentation 2, organization 3, and re organization. And put forward his ideas for new tourism products, very incisive.

Let's start with fragmentation. Fragmentation, refers to the site information unit structure, the simpler the better, the more "broken" the better. Weibo can be popular because its basic unit of information is no more than 140 words of Weibo. Beautiful say, Mushroom Street share is a commodity link, show is a product picture.

Today's users are getting lazy, and it's hard to focus on organizing text or arranging photos and sharing complex and in-depth speeches. So now Weibo is far more popular than blogging. The more fragmented things, the easier it is to participate in contributions, the more redundant the sharing spreads out.

For the sharing of tourism, if the basis of sharing is not a complete travel notes, but based on a site or a key information experience reviews, then users can participate in sharing the basis of much better. This mode, do not force users to write a complete travel notes, the user thought of a little write a little bit, you can experience the most surprising part of their share, or the worst part to take out the slot. Then the site and application can be naturally "organized" into his for the destination of a complete or incomplete "travel" and "Raiders", as a personal record to share.

Other users want to go, can refer to this information, "organize" to become their own a travel memo, make their own road books and plans, made a tourist navigation tools for reference in the use of tourism.

Combined with mobile applications, a variety of fragmented information and reviews, so that users can get real-time site recommendations, better meet those who did not make detailed plans, Raiders of the user, for the selection of location needs. In this process, users can also participate in real-time sharing comments, and form a new content for the user to refer to the back, but also to do some interaction, to form a complete circular path.

This pattern of sharing is much like a comment site. Public comments and watercress, are based on such a form of organization, has shown a strong commercial value. Foreign tourism Reviews site TripAdvisor, is to rely on tourism hotel reviews, big to the listing.

Therefore, based on tourism information, eating, living, travel, shopping, classification information, especially based on tourist attractions, restaurants and accommodation and other nodes, can be made a good social sharing comment mode. On the one hand, rely on social platform to share content, access to users, access to influence, on the other hand, rely on their own information organization and accumulation, to become a rich and credible tourism information community, to become users before the line, and even the important information tools to help users decide where to play, where to visit the

This "Living Road book", for the most willing to travel self-help, free process of users, the significance of extraordinary. In particular, the self-help tour abroad, language barriers, such tools are more valuable-only in the absence of network in foreign countries, to combine the GPS function to do off-line mode.

In theory, a hornet's nest or a poor tour can be developed in the direction of such a product. But to abandon the original accumulation of content, may become the resistance of their innovation the biggest burden. At present these two product innovation ability also many have insufficient. Before they turn around, entrepreneurs have the opportunity to go to an earlier position.

Just no matter what form, tourism community is a very difficult to do a short time to do a good product, strong resources are also difficult to quickly ripen the product, even if it is difficult to make money immediately, so there has been no large amount of capital intervention, which instead gave grassroots entrepreneurs can play space.

The challenge of the tourism community

1. Cold start

The biggest challenge for community products is "cold start". In the beginning, the community has no content, no popular, not attract users, natural contribution of the less users. At this time, the value of products can only rely on some users to show themselves, show off the psychological needs, to find this part of the people, as a seed users, to establish a good community atmosphere for exchange and sharing. At this time, to meet the needs of tourism after the link.

Products to do attractive, or enough fun, fun, can partly meet the entertainment needs, conducive to social communication, or enough value to meet just need, can help users save money, have enough word-of-mouth to carry out viral marketing.

If the main to dig tourism experience to show off, show the psychological needs, in fact, is not the user's just need, the product is not attractive. If again as mentioned above, with the old-fashioned forum, post mode of writing travel notes to do, it is certainly not more than the hornet's nest, poor travel, the need for personal achievements in the form of presentation and content of the model to improve the two aspects.

Some products discard the large text patterns of travels, main photo sharing, such as the well-known product manager Sterling Silver just launched the entrepreneurial product "Zen travels", mainly do photo sharing and lightweight site reviews, text recall patterns produced content, and then use similar time scrolls to show the form, there is innovation and promotion.

Mobile applications for travel records and photo sharing have more than 10 similar projects.

2. How to share information into tourist information reference

These emerging products, are to wait until the accumulation of enough content, and then a good organization, to the information value of the product, to meet the needs of users before the line to grab more business value.

But this "after" record-sharing, or the user's travel whereabouts as a clue, and there is no structure, fragmentation to the key attractions, catering, accommodation and other nodes. After the product can rely on the smooth transformation of the content, split organization into the corresponding comments, referral information, connected to the "line before" the information needs of the reference, it is doubtful.

To be a tourist community, no matter what, it takes a lot of patience to be able to share from the line and make decisions before the line. The establishment of the community, the content and the accumulation of Word-of-mouth, will take a long time. Especially want to be satisfied with the user's decision before the information base, the content is not enough, not enough, the structure of time, users might as well go to search, can find the core information more quickly.

Public comments, watercress and TripAdvisor, are not rapidly rising up, have experienced a relatively long period of accumulation.

Tourism Community products, if you want to grow faster, early can not rely entirely on UGC. Need to have editing and operation, from the information just need to start, to some users most need tourism information as seed content implanted products, on this basis to do UGC. UGC also can not let the user completely free, unstructured form to produce, otherwise, like many of the travels of the community today, is very much again to be organized and used. It is best to provide a structured form of fragmentation to allow users to produce UGC, based on tourist information concerns.

In any case, being a tourist community requires enough patience to run slowly. More is a meticulous work. Products to accompany the development of the community, step by step to do personal achievement, user interaction between exchanges, information flow matching, anti-spam mechanism and other functional value.

3. Grasp the iteration cycle and avoid all-inclusive

In front of so many points, back to the point is to emphasize that the product must be simple. Especially in the early days, product function appeal, do not biting. Mentioned a lot of points, first of all, according to the needs of users, put a core point, the most valuable to the user a point, to do the product, do a good job in a circular path to use. In this value has been recognized by users, the cycle path to go through, the user play to turn the case, and then expand the path of the cycle, do a good product iteration.

Some tourism community sites, a certain type of UGC content or products are not done. Blindly increase the category of UGC, expand the function, hoping to increase the content of the site, but counterproductive.

The development of their own products is limited, should be placed in the core product improvement. Moreover, the user's cognitive ability and attention are limited, they should focus on the core UGC production.

Domestic donkey rating nets, early also want to do similar TripAdvisor hotel reviews, has not done well, and added a lot of other UGC categories. The result is that the user was also overwhelmed, was distracted, which kind of UGC all grow up, the overall interaction, user activity is not high. #p # subtitle #e#

Opportunities brought by mobile internet

Mobile applications can help users to share their feelings instantly, save them a lot of travel "in the" feelings and feelings, wait until home, do not forget before the computer. Only this kind of demand, through the use of social networking sites can be better satisfied with the need to travel social applications, to provide more valuable features, in order to attract users to transfer.

Cameras on smartphones have been upgraded to allow users to produce more high-quality photo content. Also starting with the iphone, photos are starting to take on geographic information, bringing more information to travel photos.

The use of mobile applications to do real-time sharing in the row, but also close to the needs of the line after a pattern to achieve content accumulation. There are more than 10 of mobile applications that travel and share records, such as bread travel, on the road, and so on. But these applications are focused on photo-sharing, as the demand seems obvious and the product model is the simplest.

Just mentioned earlier, simple personal travel itinerary and photos, is a more socially-biased tool, information content is not a "line before" reference. This kind of sharing tool, I am afraid also difficult to translate into a better docking user "before" demand, there is commercial value of tools.

The biggest opportunity for a mobile internet to start a business is to allow the product to intervene in the activities of the user in the "in-line" segment.

In the past, users only before the "line" to access the Internet in front of the computer to assist decision-making, "after" the use of the Internet to share experience, "in line" there is no chance to use Internet tools. Users in the past fear in the tourism process because they do not understand the situation, which is in a position of helplessness, it will be in the "line before" do a lot of tourism information collection and introduction reference. If users can make use of mobile apps, they will be able to travel quickly to find the information they want to travel, and help them solve the next step, what to do, and bring a more free travel experience.

In this link, mobile apps can affect the user's "in-line" consumer behavior, combined with the Short-distance traffic ticket purchase, car rental, ticket booking, catering service, shopping or other entertainment items, allowing Internet projects to make money from "the line". But to get through such a business chain, there seems to be no concentrated commercial resources can be used, entrepreneurial projects are difficult to connect like travel agencies to docking local businesses.

Tourism applications such as tourism navigation tools, in urban tourism, it is difficult to avoid and local consumer mobile applications, and street-type lbs application to compete. But the user group, the application scene difference, must still be able to make the bright spot. In the domestic tourism just for a long period of time, the bulk of the consumption of air tickets and hotels and so on, but said earlier, entrepreneurial projects before the profit point, or should be placed in the "line before" the booking service section. Therefore, it is the best policy to cooperate with the manufacturer to avoid competition in their main business.

The opportunity to take advantage of the mobile Internet, but also in the product, to do a good job of the combination. The use of the site "after" and mobile "in line" to share, to help users "in line" of tourism activities, and do a "line before" decision-making, can form a complete value chain, truly solve the user in the most important tourism needs, become a successful product. (Text/Li Xianghao)