Hotel Travel O2O: Analysis of Hotel online marketing model

Intermediary transaction SEO diagnosis Taobao guest Cloud host technology Hall

(i) Online marketing service classification

Before exploring the hotel's network marketing model, it is necessary to clarify the online tour service providers active in the network. Overall, online tour providers are divided into the following five categories:

The first category is Ctrip, Art Dragon as the representative of OTA (onlinetravelagency), they provide "air ticket + hotel" These two travelers the core needs of the product started to grow and develop. Although they provide products from different tourism enterprises, but they themselves as a unified trading platform, with tourists to settle;

The second category is to go where the network as the representative of the tourism vertical search engine, they search the accommodation products from different OTA or tourism enterprises, itself also has the transaction settlement function, but more is the consumer guide to the Product provider's page for settlement;

The third category is the traditional hotel set up online platform for product sales, such as the three major travel agencies in China, Hong Kong and Cyts Travel online tourism sales platform National Travel Network, mango and surf net. Small and medium-sized Hotel construction online sales channels are more and more;

The fourth category is the traditional E-commerce site to join the tourism product sales, such as Taobao Travel, professional group purchase site;

The fifth category is the portal Travel Channel or professional services. That is, the use of Baidu, Google and other search engines, providing information platform for hotels, travel agencies and other related enterprises to carry out online business, such as spring and autumn tourism network.

(b) Online Marketing mode classification

According to the classification of the above service providers, the hotel online marketing can also be categorized, of which, the first and fourth categories are intermediary agents, the second category (of which the search results are directly linked to the hotel official website of that part of the business), the third category and the fifth category belong to the hotel's direct marketing

1. Intermediary agency

Definition: Intermediary agent refers to the hotel to professional agencies (such as Ctrip, Art dragon, etc.) to pay commissions, intermediary agents will be published to the hotel information to the website, by the intermediary agencies responsible for the development of sales channels, is the hotel network Marketing channel outsourcing.

Take Ctrip as an example, Ctrip mainly take consumers to its network platform, its own as a unified trading platform, and tourists to settle, so as to reach a deal. Generally, consumers click on the name of the hotel to stay in the hyperlink, not directly into the hotel interface, but into the display Ctrip price Ctrip interface, to pay visitors.

Advantage: The network identification of this intermediary agent is high, and the order quantity produced is larger.

Insufficient: One intermediary agent is not only a hotel, many of its hotels in the set location, the region and other conditions of the same search page there is fierce competition, especially the price of competition; second, consumers through intermediary agents to choose hotels, they are more willing to select a number of intermediary agencies in their trust, This is only conducive to the development of consumer loyalty to the intermediary, rather than the hotel loyalty, easy to form the hotel's dependence on the intermediary; third, it is necessary to pay the cost of sales, that is, commission. When the hotel has formed the dependence of intermediary agents, intermediary agents occupy a strong position, the hotel will lose the bargaining power of the "voice".

2. Direct Sales Model

Direct marketing refers to the Independent hotel or hotel group through its own network to achieve online booking. Through the official website direct sales and in the search engine ranking is currently the main model of China's Hotel network.

Advantages: Direct marketing model can fully display their own image and strength, and can be timely according to the need to change prices, lasting direct sales will form their own solid source market.

Insufficient: In search results of search engines if the hotel rankings are not in front, the actual effect will be greatly reduced. At present our country hotel and bank's guarantee system is not perfect, the no-show rate is high also is the hotel direct sale to face one problem.

For large scale, high standard of service hotels, more suitable for direct sales, that is, to establish their own web site, fully display the image of the hotel, through the hotel website business negotiations, room reservations and other activities. Long-lasting direct sales will form the hotel's solid source market.

However, the survey data show that 30% of the single hotels in China do not have sites and web pages, even if there are independent sites and Web pages, also can not reach the results of search engine optimization rankings.

(iii) new online marketing model

1. Mobile Client

The popularity of smartphones and tablet computers has changed the way people get information. The proportion of hotels booking via mobile phone is also growing, and many large hotel reservation sites have launched mobile subscriptions for the market.

In operation, the significance of mobile internet to hotel is:

(1) Establishing an effective direct marketing model

With the help of mobile Internet, the distance between hotel and end customer is closer than before. Smart phone clients have "internet" and "call" dual functions. The mobile internet has enabled the hotel to have an effective direct marketing channel.

(2) Eliminate the amount of inventory

In the United States, HotelTonight, a smartphone client, is helping the hotel drive short-term bookings for the day. There are a lot of "last minute" business travelers can search the nearest hotel for availability and make a reservation through the software. In the traditional booking site to achieve such a reservation is very time-consuming and laborious things, and through the smartphone client can help the hotel to eliminate the last day inventory volume. The hotel is fully able to push the last-minute rates of the day through smartphone clients to member customers who download the hotel's mobile apps.

(3) Enhance the customer's active degree and participation

In traditional Internet mode, the interaction between hotel and customer is not easy to achieve, because the customer is not always online. Many hotels that have implemented frequent guest programs fret about how to boost customer activity. Mobile terminals through mobile phones, hotels can interact with customers through a variety of applications, such as the 7-day "dot-line community" to encourage customers to "sign in" to obtain "point currency" This function can be a good upgrade and the interaction of members.

(4) Improve customer satisfaction

The hotel can use mobile intelligent terminals to establish direct contact with customers, and according to the mobile internet "social characteristics" to obtain customer preferences and consumption habits, take a more targeted, more personalized way, which will help improve customer satisfaction.

The Chinese market is in the forefront of the world in the field of mobile Internet. Among hotel customers, smartphone users have a higher proportion and spend more time on their phones. Therefore, the hotel's future market competition will focus on mobile Internet service competition.

2. Social media

The emergence of Weibo to the hotel brought a new direct sales model, many hotels have opened micro-blog, the development of potential customers, inspire old users. Weibo has become a link between hotel and user communication, to help the hotel's publicity and promotion.

Sina Weibo is a product launched by Sina to provide micro-blogging services. Users can post messages or upload images via web pages, WAP pages, cell phone messages/MMS. Consumers can read, hear, think of things to write a sentence, or send a picture, through the computer or mobile phone anytime and anywhere to share to friends.

Renren, a SNS social network that provides services to internet users across China, to the different identity of the people to provide an interactive platform to improve the efficiency of communication between users, through the provision of publishing journals, save albums, music and video and other stations and other resources to share the functions of a rich and efficient user interaction platform.

Tencent's micro-letter development Momentum is fierce, for hotels, more conducive to the attention of their own micro-credit public account of the existing and potential customers to carry out point-to-point direct marketing. Future customers through the micro-letter booking, ordering meal will have a huge development space, is worth the hotel enterprises to seriously study a direct marketing field.

3. Group Buying Mode

In order to avoid the ups and downs of the hotel, especially such as conference and Resort hotel, it is a feasible solution to develop the special mode sales model which is suitable for itself in the normal sales mode. These patterns include the most popular group buys in recent years, as well as translucent bookings that have just sprung up in the domestic market.

The comparison between Ota mode and direct selling mode

From the current marketing model of the hotel industry, direct, distribution channel sales accounted for the balance.

Further analysis, the hotel sales channel presents the following three characteristics: Direct sales channels to the main agreement customers, distribution channel sales to OTA; different types of hotel sales channels are significantly differentiated; The new model is only supplementary channel, the hotel attitude is cautious.

The pressure of competition makes more and more hotels through a variety of promotions, price to improve their sales channels, which makes the hotel and OTA and other intermediary agents of the game increasingly fierce.

Ctrip's business model is the development of a large membership card client groups, the other side to the hotel and airlines to obtain a lower discount, trading completed after earning commission. But the sadness of Ctrip is that, from the technical point of view, the online business entry threshold is very low, so the catch-up situation is more and more rapid. Ctrip can not do in the online business absolute monopoly, so ctrip in addition to desperately defend the traditional business of hotels and air tickets, but also to pioneer business and holiday businesses.

And with some hotel brand group and large-scale development, brand hotel group's independent booking channels are increasingly strengthened. More and more hotel allies cannot suppress the impulse of "direct marketing". The hotel tries to reduce the reliance on Ctrip as a "hotel agent" by expanding its share of direct sales. This is tantamount to Ctrip to the survival of the model posed a challenge.

In the hotel partners view, Ctrip for many of the initial stage of the middle and low-end hotels to provide a fruitful promotion, this to improve the popularity of the hotel and the number of tourists greatly beneficial. Especially for many scattered small and medium sized hotels, since the establishment of a network of direct sales channels, the need to spend a large amount of money, is obviously not economic. and to join Ctrip, art, such as online intermediary portal, not only can reduce marketing costs, but also can be greatly efficient and the number of houses sold. Even if the brand value of high, member customers a large number of hotels, its own online booking portal, can only be mainly for their own customer service.

For a wider range of customers, the more willing to have more than one hotel to choose the comparison of online intermediary portal consumption, in this sense, Ctrip in the next few years still have an unshakable advantage.

In the future, the concentration of China's hospitality industry will gradually increase. and the enlarged hotel group will be able to build its own online booking system, and reduce to Ctrip and other OTA dependence. In fact, the rapid development in recent years, such as Home and Jinjiang Inn chain hotel companies have their own booking center. However, in the era of network economy, some single hotels have to rely on OTA.

(iv) Possible solutions

No hotel or market can rely entirely on direct marketing or reliance on distribution, direct sales and distribution should be better balanced and optimized, distribution and direct sales are irreplaceable, but how to balance each other. Channel use should be distributed reasonably and cannot be relied upon in any way.

1. Website upgrade

Hotel group or single hotel can perfect the information retrieval function, offer more preferential activities, strengthen the online communication function, guarantee the security and convenience of online payment, especially can let guest realize by using mobile client.

2. The establishment of Hotel Alliance, Hotel Union Network can realize the hotel's data information sharing, such as Travelweb, Star Moon Alliance.

3. To go to the domestic

The d-hotelier of Derby, the hubs of Jinjiang de Seoul, the hims of the compass and the Tinsia and chinaonline of the world are all connected. Hotel group or single hotel can use these Internet software platforms, as well as microblogging, micro-credit, Renren and other social media to make a useful attempt. (Source: "China travel daily")