Hornet's Nest: making travel social

In the context of the depressed world economy, almost all industries have been hit more or less. In China's case, in addition to health care, education and real estate, the three "printing machine" status can not be shaken, the tourism industry is a rare contrarian high growth market, in 2010 alone, tourism accounted for 9.2% of gross domestic product. In the last 10 years, China's tourism market has maintained double-digit growth. Although China has such a large tourism market, but the traditional travel agency model seems to have been criticized by all walks of life, Cyts chief executive Jianning once said a word, the state of the current domestic travel agencies: "Our travel agency industry is not big no small, no black white, no good not bad." As of the end of 2009, I state-owned travel agency 21,649, practitioners 340,000, seemingly a lot, but if the horizontal comparison, a Foxconn in Shenzhen has 420,000 employees, an industry practitioners do not have a business staff more, can be seen in China's travel agencies have been in a Buthen embarrassing position, And the great prospect of tourism industry has not been developed by the travel agency at all. Thus, in this internet age, it is natural to think of the combination of tourism and the Internet. Ota's bottleneck will be the combination of tourism and the Internet, has long been not a new concept. The most popular mode of online tourism in China is the so-called OTA (online travel agent) model, Expedia is the world's most successful OTA. And most of China's tourism sites belong to this. Whether it is the successful listing of Ctrip, or the travel network with Cyts as its patron, or the Art dragon, which is controlled by Expedia, the world's largest online travel company, is the model for providing hotel, air tickets, and holiday booking services to collect commissions. In addition, it is the tourism vertical search pattern represented by Travelzoo and travelfusion. Its commercial essence is through the vertical search, let the user through its downstream website, carries on the hotel, the ticket, the vacation and so on the reservation service, the domestic representative website has to go where, the cool news and so on. But the essence of both models is the e-business model of commission based on trade. It can be said that most of the domestic tourism sites are such a transaction-oriented online tourism model. and its development to today, the whole market has become the Red Sea, fierce competition will inevitably lead to a bad price war, Ctrip and Yi Long Network on Weibo on the abuse of the people have long been accustomed to, and from last June spread to the 2013 price war is to let everyone numb. The price war comes with a very low profit margin, in April of this year, Citi gave Ctrip a "sell" rating, and its analyst Li Muzhi pointed out three aspects of Ctrip's business: Low profit margins for fast-growing leisure travel, a shock to call centres by network bookings, and increased competition. The real situation is that Ctrip faces the situation, is all OTA face problems. Also because of various problems, many people to the online tourism market to make a new attempt. of which, TripAdvisor in 2011The successful listing at the end of the year gives people a good view of the future of the online tourism community, and for the domestic, it is the representative of the model. Ma Honeycomb closed product chain 2010 years before the establishment of the Leech Honeycomb is now the largest tourism community, its website has more than 4 million real registered users. In the second half of 2012, the fund was financed by $15 million trillion, and the company was valued at $80 million trillion, which is rare for a start-up company that has just been established for two years. The key to this model is to bring together travel enthusiasts and establish a tourist community. Its solution for the user is not a simple booking hotel and buy air tickets, MA Honeycomb CEO Chen Yu told reporters: "If the purpose of OTA is to help users more convenient, cheaper to buy tickets, reservations to hotels, then the purpose of the MA Honeycomb is to help users find the travel decision." "Booking hotels and tickets is only the most basic part of the travel itinerary, but not the most important one." A traveler bought a ticket, booked the hotel, only completed the first step of its entire journey, and the real focus of the trip is that it is the plane, after staying in the hotel, itself is the senior donkey friend of the Chen Yu to this most have a say, "What is the local delicious restaurant?" Where is the best spot? Where do you buy souvenirs that are cost-effective and not cheated? These are the key to determining whether a trip is successful ", as Chen Yu said:" The nature of tourism is a large number of information is not right, it must be to go to unfamiliar places experience, if people go to unfamiliar places, the demand for information is rigid. Therefore, the essence of the MA Honeycomb product is to give the user enough information during the first, middle and last three periods of the travel process. First of all, the core products of the MA Honeycomb Travel strategy to solve the problem before travelers. Any visitor to a strange place to travel, need not only air tickets and hotels, users will be in the destination before going to do homework, understand the local food and clothing and other matters, before they will be assured to go out. Travel strategy This product relies on the user contribution information, using UGC (user generated content users to generate contents) mode, the true to the user's comments, recommendations, tips and so on the effective information summarized, for other users to recommend the best hotel, quality, the best restaurant, the greatest attractions. These Raiders cover the world's 95% popular tourist destinations, as of September 2012, the cumulative download volume of more than 40 million, a day download more than 160,000. Second, the MA Honeycomb launched a series of mobile products to meet the needs of users travel. "Our core product is the travel strategy, but tourism is a very complex behavior," Chen Yu told reporters, a travel strategy can not solve all the problems in the process of tourism, if the travel strategy is to solve the problem before the user travel, then "Buzz", "Tourism translation officer" And so on mobile internet products is to solve user travel problems. For example, people are social animals, whether they travel alone or not, and encounter like-mindedTravelers, not necessarily have to go together, a few simple exchanges, have a foreign encounter prajna joy. and "Buzz" the travel agent to the software, you can help users find the same destination traveler, convenient travel companion. Besides, the language problem is also a problem that Chinese people encounter when they travel abroad. "Chinese exit, opening mouth is a very common problem, so we have a tourism translation officer this product," Chen Yu said, with more than 30 countries of the language pack and Chinese dialects of various regions, can help poor English users to solve the transfer, ask the way, ordering and other problems. These mobile products, though inconspicuous, actually solve many practical problems for users. At present, the 5 mobile core products of the MA Honeycomb installation volume has exceeded 10 million. After the trip, users still share the demand. When it's over, the camera is loaded with photos, and of course I want to share it with others. The travel function of the MA Honeycomb Web site provides users and others to share travel information, according to statistics, thousands of new travels are published every day, these travels are returned tens of thousands of times daily, the new original data more than 40G. Finally, the MA honeycomb will be the essence of these travels, to other users want to travel useful parts extracted, made into a core product travel strategy for other planned travel user services. As a result, these travel products before, during and after the trip form a self-contained closed loop. Based on the business model of the product the model of tourism community with Ctrip, art and other sites compared to have a greater user stickiness, but with the transaction-oriented model, its profitability has attracted much attention. "The profit model is based on the product, so we don't make a deal." As Chen Yu says, the biggest advantage of the leech is that it gathers users through SNS, user-generated content (UGC), and then derivative services. Based on such a model, its business model is bound to and Ctrip and other sites are not the same, not E-commerce mode, but brand advertising and effect ads. Users also need more authentic, practical destination information, therefore, the MA honeycomb to establish a bridge, in the service of users at the same time, by understanding the needs of users, for users to recommend suitable routes, accommodation, catering and other information, and earn advertising fees. According to Chen Yu revealed: "The second half of 2012, MA Honeycomb began to do commercial attempts, by the end of the year has been more than 10 million of income." "In short, the online travel market is not just to buy tickets and hotels, the tourism market this big cake does not have to rely on OTA mode to succeed, the social trial of the MA Honeycomb may give everyone a new idea."