Outbound travel how to break the siege

Text / Chen Min

In China, there are such dialects of children: vacation in front of them, they want to take the opportunity to go abroad to relax, open their eyes, but there is no clear destination, I thought as long as round-trip airfare cheap enough, where to play can actually.

"In the past, when I was in Ctrip, I often had friends come to me for help, and they hoped to find the cheapest international ticket in the system - where it is not important or cheaper to go." In the co-founder Sheng Di seems, this is the business opportunity, is proficient in ticket booking business Ctrip, to where are not involved in the market segments.

As a result, Sheng Di and his two colleagues in 2012 has left the effectiveness of Ctrip for many years, three people scrape together 500,000 yuan start-up capital, started a business life.

At present, micro-donkey product form is a travel APP, the core function is for those who "do not know where to play" people to provide foreign travel routes recommended. Specifically, the user first determines a starting point, micro donkey children will sort out this place and the surrounding cities departure from the international flights round-trip information to form a line, including "point-to-point round-trip" and "multi-point splicing back and forth" After a good route, you can link to the appropriate airline or OTA agents to book tickets.

Up till now, micro-donkey, who has been born for a year and a half, is still a small start-up company with no revenue and no real promotion of its products. Most of the nearly 500,000 users are naturally growing, Not on the market share. But Shengdi said that micro-donkey goal is to become the next "where to go."

"We will also launch a website search after we have enough flight information and tourist routes to cover the globe from Southeast Asia, Japan and South Korea now." At that time, if you have a clear tourist destination, Travel time, you can continue through Ctrip, where to search for bookings, but if you do not have a clear destination, but the price priority, you may be able to try to use micro-donkey search.

Ctrip jump out of business

Prior to the return of Liang Jianzhang Ctrip, Ctrip's internal and external environment are not as good as before, many people think of departure, Sheng Di and his colleagues is one part. "The idea of ​​starting a business started in July and August 2012. If Liang Jianzhang had returned to Ctrip at the time, we might not choose to leave for business," recalls Sheng Di.

Shengdi and his colleagues in the business direction, from the past in Ctrip doing business - Ctrip is still working time, Sheng Di's friends often find him to help see if there is no future cheaper outbound tickets, Sheng Di will find colleagues doing international airline tickets search in Ctrip, in the system, "a hand in hand," caught the cheapest ticket in the system.

"Tickets are the bulk of outbound travel spending, and low-cost airline ticket data is a natural occurrence, except that tumbling down low-cost air tickets in the system is only understood by insiders and is not known to anyone outside. Sheng Di feel that this matter is quite valuable, so just a few colleagues decided to come out to do it, through technical means to cut into this market segment.

"Outbound travel is a very potential market, and for us, there is no technical threshold for international airline search because we know the technical rules." Sindy said three people started out as entrepreneurs and one was Ctrip did the original international airline ticket search engine boss, the other one is to do the international airline ticket algorithm, and Sheng Di Ctrip has done sales, air tickets, Beijing operations, human resources, "Miscellaneous", three people scrape together 50 Ten thousand yuan to start the capital, start a business.

In July 2012, Siddi started to build its own venue in Shanghai to plan and recruit people. In October, Micro Donkey set up a core team of seven people - in addition to Sheng Di, the other six core members of Micro Donkey Are from Ctrip International ticket team out.

In the few months after the micro-donkey team was established, none of the three founders took any salary, while the other four had only a few thousand dollars per month for living expenses, plus a few interns and a dozen in a dwelling Start a tough entrepreneurial life.

Until June 2013, when the donkey 500,000 yuan micro-start-up capital is about to spend, things turned a corner - Gobi find micro donkey children, voted 5000000 yuan. "It was very difficult for me to fall asleep every day before this investment was put in place, and in fact we were almost exhausted by the end of May 2013," recalled Singh.

After getting the angel investment, Micro-donkey relocated his office in July 2013 and started to formally recruit people in a slightly larger office building from more than a dozen to more than 20. Sheng Di said that in addition to some office expenses, the main cost of micro donkey child labor costs are paid, a month to spend more than 200,000.

"We are now talking to some investors about Round A financing and we expect to start round A financing after the site is launched in the second half of the year," said Sindy. "It is estimated that the money will be in place by the end of the year."

Reverse search mode

After the team was officially established in October 2012, Micro Donkey began to try "International Multi-Segment Line Ticket Search" to provide the cheapest outbound routes to users through technical means and to go through the corresponding routes.

"And Ctrip, where different, micro-donkey through the technical means to provide a new way of travel search, so that we can find a more suitable for their own travel routes." Sheng Di said, regardless of whether the user search for the country or the city, Micro Donkey children will find the location associated with the search out of the way, such as search Bangkok, not only out of Bangkok, there will be Medan, Kuala Lumpur and so on some other places, Bangkok is only one stop on the trip.

Why do you want to add other places? This is related to the target user group of Micro-donkey, who are not sure where to travel, so they can offer more choices to them. "And we'll tell you that if you go to Medan again, you spend more than a hundred bucks more than going to Bangkok alone." For example, "from Shanghai to Bangkok to Medan, then again Back to Shanghai, round-trip airfares as long as 1800 yuan.

However, the lowest ticket prices are often provided by the budget airline, do not like the cheap airlines users, you can also choose non-budget airlines, and select the cheapest air tickets. "Tickets this is certainly not very profitable, so in the future will join the hotel search." Sheng Di said.

In the business model, Micro-donkey is a free-to-play chain if it is a low-cost airline docking, and Micro-donkey can charge a portion of the commission if the search results are linked to the OTA. Singh said airfare commissions and hotel commissions will all be sources of income, but there is a large user base to support its business model.

So, there is a series of questions in front of micro-donkey children - Why should users choose to vote here? Why can attract large-scale users? How to compete with the same parity mode? Where do you go from where you are in a niche market and how likely are you to succeed?

Sheng Di explained that for the target user base, micro-donkey most direct attraction is the "low price" is difficult to find in other channels of international ticket prices.

Singh said the reason Micro-donkeys are cheaper than Ctrip is and where to go for low-cost airfares because of the difference in mode - people have a general sense of where to go if they have a clear departure point, destination, and determined travel time , Or Ctrip; However, micro-donkey children's model is the reverse, it will tell you that in this season there are such low-cost travel routes, you go or not?

This mode of difference, determines the micro donkey and Ctrip, where to provide the ticket price will be different. Because when the user has a clear demand, Ctrip and where to go to provide the corresponding products, and will not tell the user: "You choose not the lowest price of the line, you need to change one?

"Simply put, we cut into the crowd who do not know where to travel, through technology to do the algorithm, and then spell out the travel routes, according to the order of the price, or the order of the month of travel, provided to the user." Sheng "It's our threshold to do international airfares," says Di, "to get the best out of all airlines and airlines, before they can do the rules and search for the lowest airfares."

Why Ctrip, where have not done this looks very valuable market segments? Sheng Di believes Ctrip, where to go, is still keeping a close eye on the markets where there is a bigger profit. If both companies offer cheaper tickets instead of the ones specified by the users, the profit will be affected. Willing to do it at a loss, is to use this approach to attract more outbound tourists, the layout of the future may be the growth of outbound tourism market.

Do not hold thighs

Micro-donkey in June 2013 the first product on the line is the mobile APP, is still closed beta site for search. For these two products, micro-donkey children have not been large-scale promotion.

Mobile Internet era emphasis on "fast", why micro-donkey children do not promote faster? "Our understanding is that if the product is relatively perfect, the user can retain, but if the product is not mature, it is difficult to form a user word of mouth, there will be risks in the market." According to Sheng Di introduction until early next year , Micro-donkey children will begin large-scale promotion.

Before large-scale promotion, the establishment of competitive barriers is the main job of micro-donkey and it is also a necessary step for them to plan their outbound travel market.

In Shengdi's view, the current market for "overseas free exercise" is not big enough. However, in the next two to three years, more and more Chinese will be willing to travel overseas. By then, the market will break out. And when the groups that practice freedom abroad are larger than the groups that practice freedom in the country, the capital markets will frantically invest in the products they travel abroad.

"By that time, being a startup company or a relatively mature company, the valuation is totally different." At this time, if there is a support for a large-flow platform or a big consortium, You can beat one in the market, but in the current market has not really time, micro donkey needs to focus on doing technology, as a platform to do barriers, let others come in not so easy.

"Before the outbound travel market really broke out, the first thing we need to do is build a barrier that competitors will not be able to catch up with in three to five years once this barrier is built," explains Siddi. "The barrier is not the product itself Instead, it is able to grab data from all airlines and establish rules by technical means to make each recommended route cost-effective. "

"For example, if a user searches for a destination, Micro-donkey recommends two or three destinations that can be stitched together, this is a barrier, and it takes about three to five months to add one if you want to do this Associated destination, so we will add a third destination. "Sheng Di said," adding a splicing destination, the background system changes is very large.To add another two or three destinations, competitors are Difficult to follow, our barrier is formed. "

Catch data, organize data is little donkey children in these two years, the main thing to do. It seems the micro-donkey management team, in the amount of data is not enough, only suitable for APP, because APP is a push mode, when the amount of data is large enough, you can launch the site search.

It is understood that the current micro-donkey mainly covering Southeast Asia, Japan and South Korea and other places outbound routes, by the end of this year, Micro-donkey will be a more shaped products, travel routes will also be covered to the world.

For a few donkey children founder, no matter the company's future is the independent development, or cooperation with the giants, all need to make big users.

"If we do go to this scale where Ctrip is willing to buy, then we do not exclude.After all, Ctrip's position in the domestic online travel industry, now no one shake, and many other gradually stronger companies, may eventually be facing Ctrip acquisition, or direct competition with Ctrip. "Sheng Di said," Most of the traffic we want, do not rule out the cooperation with such giants seek diversion .If the giant company to become our minority shareholder, is a good thing, but we Do not want to be controlled by them. "

For micro-donkey there is a way for children, is holding a thigh from the beginning, such as being raised by Tencent. However, if there is an independent consortium to support it, it will be better for the micro-donkey to grow bigger and bigger independently.

【Comments from investors】

National Section Ka and investment company investment manager Yu Xiang:

Tourism entrepreneurship represented by outbound tourism in the past two years has been very active and has been very much touted by the capital market. Outbound travel market blowout situation, mainly for several reasons: the residents income growth brought about by consumer spending, outbound travel both increased frequency and frequency; RMB appreciation, the continuous rise in domestic prices and RMB appreciation of the outbound consumption boom . With the support of the national policy, China needs a lot of foreign exchange reserves to be digested. At the same time, China maintains a good diplomatic image in diplomacy. The number of countries that signed visa-free and land-based signatures in 2014 increased sharply. In the coming years, the outbound travel market will maintain a sustained and rapid growth, and the accompanying entrepreneurial opportunities will emerge as the times require.

Outbound travel involves several aspects: air tickets, hotels, Raiders, visa services, there are extended out of travel sharing, travel social networking, overseas shopping, travel insurance and other segments. Entrepreneurship is also the mainstream direction of these major needs, entrepreneurs according to their own resources and advantages, you can choose one of the segments into the market, choose to extend to other segments.

However, entrepreneurs such as micro-donkey exist both opportunities and challenges, which are also related to the mobile terminal's traffic characteristics - on the one hand, decentralized mobile terminal, which gives the entrepreneur based on segmentation leave a chance, as long as you On the other hand, the cost of acquiring and retaining users on the mobile terminal is increasing. The cost of deleting an APP on a mobile phone is only one second. Not satisfied with the place can be deleted at any time, there are too many spare tire can choose, which also requires entrepreneurs to do more to maximize the product and retain customers for a long time.

In addition, outbound APP applications, but also the issue of user activity. Outbound travel for most users is not high-frequency consumption, once or twice a year, also more than three or five times, so how to improve the user's viscosity and activity, and promote the conversion of transactions, is very important for entrepreneurs The challenge