How to make money by poor swimming: talking about the present and future of the online tourism community

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Wen/Li Xianghao

An unintentional venture

It is a very fortunate thing to be able to make a career out of one's hobby and become a company with great potential for development. Shao in Germany, just because he wanted to share his travel experience, in 2004 opened a small tourism forum "poor tour of Europe." In a few years, this small tourism forum has become more and more big, and has made its own full-time job. Until 2008 Shao returned to Beijing to officially start a business, made a poor travel network.

The poor travel network is currently one of the largest tourism information sharing communities in China. There are a lot of users on the site to share their travels travels, but also will contain many travel information, provide to the same travel plan for the user to do the reference. Poor travel network in their own forum on the basis of the travel information organized into a destination, poor tour, such as the content of the channel, and provide a poor tour discount, booking and other business information services, become a comprehensive tourism community website.

Currently poor tour has registered users more than 10 million, each month has more than 6 million users visit. Related mobile apps also have nearly 10 million downloads and installations. The poor tour completed the second round of financing in 2013 and became Alibaba's strategic investment target.

Coincidentally, another country can compete with the poor tourism community-the hornet's nest, but also in the two founder Chen Yu, Lu Gang Hobby self-driving tourism to establish a tourism forum. The hornet's Nest was founded in 2006, the two founders began to be amateur maintenance, but in the background of Sohu work to bring them a lot of help. Only after the 2008 Hornet's Nest had a certain number of users to start full-time business.

Poor mode of travel, or rely on users in the forum to share the exchange, resulting in the original tourism information and content of the UGC (user generated content) mode. By accumulating and organizing these content, it attracts more users. Therefore, the earliest user groups, as well as the content accumulated in the community, determines the development of the site.

Poor tour and the founder of the Hornet's nest different backgrounds, it determines the two companies operating development and the user group accumulation of differences. The content of the hornet's nest is mainly in the domestic tourist destinations, while the poor tour is more emphasis on outbound travel information. For this reason, the number of users of the hornet's nest is even greater, the proportion of students with poor travel, especially the foreign students, and higher income groups. In some industries, the quality of the content of poor travel is better than the hornet's nest.

Poor tourism development from overseas travel, outbound travel theme, and in the current Chinese market environment, bring excellent development advantages, grasp the most advantageous market segments.

Upstream of the flow, downstream of the industrial chain

The U.S. tourism market, the proportion of leisure and vacation travel accounted for 80%, while the Chinese market is still the travel occupy travel, occupy the bulk of the tourism market. However, the proportion of China's leisure tourism market is naturally rising, which has been reflected in China's tourism market total growth rate of about 30% per year. In addition to the increasing proportion of self-help tours, most users rely on Internet tools in their choice of travel options and travel plans, because the online travel market is clearly a promising market. China's online travel market was trading at 220.46 billion yuan in 2013, according to data from Eric.

Domestic online tourism is facing a big chess game, they are divided into four categories, the first is the intermediary form of Hotel ticket booking site (OTA), such as Ctrip, Art Dragon, the second is the travel (air tickets, hotels) comparison search, such as where to go to the net, Taobao Travel; third, to provide tourism products, scenic ticketing services, such as passers-by, Le Chin, mother Donkey Travel Network Four is the tourism information sharing community, such as poor travel, MA honeycomb, traveller network;

From the decision-making link of the user Travel plan. The tourism community and Tourism information website is in the obvious upstream position. Users are usually affected by friends and relatives, or all kinds of media, travel information, determine the tourist destinations, and then make travel plans, booking flights and hotels. Typical use of the user path may be: Search engine (Baidu, Google)-> tourism Community Tourism information site (poor tour, Hornet's Nest)-> Travel reservation site (Ctrip, billion dragons, booking, such as OTA). Poor tour Such a site, is in the user planning link, can affect the user's decision consumption. Travel such a spending theme of the site, natural is very close to the money, so in the business model in fact do not worry too much. Poor tour can rely on the flow back to the OTA, providing hotel, ticket booking to earn commission.

But the reality is, although in the upstream flow, but because in the tourism decision-making process, away from the trading link, the ability to direct profitability is not so easy. The user's active on the website does not necessarily bring profit directly.

Close to the trade links to tourism sites, such as Ctrip, billion long, has long become the tourism industry giants, to a certain extent monopolized the air tickets, hotel reservations online tourism resources. including where to go in the decision-making price, but also rely on air tickets, hotel booking commission, to do the listing. In the hands of the OTA, which holds the most important trading links, it is difficult for the tourism information sharing community to get more commercial profits. Ota giants are also wary of the travel community, fearing that the tourist community will intercept too many users and affect their own traffic. Ctrip has invested, and then bought a tourism community Donkey rating Network, became its own travel strategy community.

Fortunately, the poor tour of the development of outbound travel theme, in the formation of the domestic market pattern, but can skillfully evade ctrip, such as OTA formation of monopoly, and booking, Agoda and other foreign OTA form a cooperative relationship. Because of language barriers, users need to make detailed travel plans more strongly before they go abroad. This part of the tourism information is not as rich as domestic tourism information. Therefore, poor users of the user's dependency is stronger, the user's conversion rate is also higher. And because the cost of outbound travel is high, poor travel in the customer unit price, profit compared to other information sharing in the community's competitors, more advantages.

Of course, in addition to the OTA to reverse the flow of commission, and travel agencies to cooperate with the sale of packaged tourism products, for poor travel, is also a profit model. Poor tour of the introduction of poor travel discounts, is to sell those travel agencies to provide tourism products.

Poor tour CEO Shao revealed that the company reached tens of millions of yuan revenue in 2013. After the website moves toward commercialization, whether the poor tour can establish the multiplex business model, whether can do bigger, still is a not small challenge.

The dilemma of model innovation

The success of the poor tour is in the overall consumption of tourism activities, for specific links to provide a good support. However, when the market environment, user behavior began to change slowly, poor travel can change their product service model, it is particularly important.

Poor tour relies on the forum community accumulated UGC started, most of which are users in the travel after sharing the travels, experience. The active and contribution of the core users relies on the meticulous operation of the community and the relationship between the users. In that era, it was an era when tourism information was relatively scarce on the Internet. The accumulation of several years, the Internet information consumption began to 2 directions:

1. Fragmentation

2. Mobile

For a large number of users just looking for tourism decision-making or consumption information, the information redundancy of travel notes is not high efficiency. No amount of travel notes accumulated, the value of users to improve limited. Poor tour of this service model, has a difficult to escape the bottleneck.

Ctrip was purchased by the Donkey Evaluation Network, there are Hornet's nest, Baidu travel, and so on, and poor travel has a homogeneous competitive relationship. Despite the advantages of early quality user accumulation, in the tourism theme transformation, travel information also needs to be updated in the market environment, "Forum-Travel" product model is difficult to produce competition barriers. Poor tour also had to look for a breakthrough in service mode.

The poor tour of the capsule is their attempt to ascend in the UGC mode. Poor tour of the bag will be provided from the user information, a tourist destination for collation, editing, to form a true and reliable travel strategy, road book. This model is more or less influenced by lonely Planet (Lonely Planet). Lonely Planet is the world's largest tourist book publisher--its main model, relying on editorial publishing destinations themed guidebook books. Coo Cai Jinghui, who was a poor swimmer, was a representative of Lonely Planet China before joining the poor tour. Therefore, the service mode of the poor tour is not new, still need a large human resources to contribute to the tourism information processing, and also need to update in a timely manner, in the scale will have obvious obstacles. Product presentation mode in favor of traditional e-books, information is not highly structured, the competitor's Hornet's Nest launched the destination travel strategy, is the same product.

But such products rely on heavy content production, take the traditional media mode, also does not meet the user information consumption fragmentation characteristics, I am afraid it is difficult to become a competitive Internet product model. Poor tour in the information structure also made a lot of efforts, based on the destination launched a comment, in the Community channel launched a question and answer, Micro travels, but the results are not obvious.

The mobility of user information consumption is another challenge for poor tourism. Under the influence of market environment, users begin to get more and more tickets and hotel bookings through mobile phones. Therefore, Ctrip, billion Dragons have announced a massive attack on the mobile application market, the mobile end of the business volume quickly over 30%. Poor tour also introduces a range of mobile-end travel tools, but does not seem to have achieved as well in the mobile application market. Relative to the product model has practical value, is based on the mobile end of the poor travel guide-can be seen on the basis of poor travel, artificial information structured products. But the poor tour guide, which relies on a content-producing model similar to the one in the bag, currently has only 10 versions of overseas cities. As with the Kam sac, depending on the human heavy business model, it may be difficult to quickly expand the scale of product services.

In the pure mobile internet entrepreneurial wave birth of bread tourism, Cicada travels, is trying to create a new based on mobile end or share the image of the tourism community, to challenge the poor tour or Hornet's nest in the traditional site community status. In the fragmented, mobile user behavior pattern, mobile picture sharing occupies a very important position.

Bread travel has also accumulated nearly tens of millions of users in two years, depending on the immediate travel photo-sharing and travel track record. On the basis of the travel picture sharing, the bread travel adds the travel location information, relies on the user to share the picture the explanation, the bread travel accumulates the massive fragmented, the structured data, also slowly gathers the destination as the center rich travel information. Poor tour launched the micro Travels in the bread travel, Cicada travels after the introduction of similar products, but its surface is not as both.

The power that the mobile end can play in the travel process is not only limited to photo sharing. Under the trend that can be seen, rich, real-time travel information recommendation and structured content query--namely the product that conforms to the user to be fragmented, the instantaneous consumption pattern, can help the user to enjoy the mobile application of more comfortable travel, I am afraid is the tool that the future tour lover most expect to see. And all of this is based on a lot of structured data based on destination. At this point, the poor travel forum travel articles accumulated content, in the structured data, does not seem to prevail. Have a large number of travel articles and the accumulation of users, may instead become a poor travel innovation products baggage.

Conclusion

As a community products, poor users of the stickiness and loyalty, should be the biggest advantage. Grasp a large number of high-end outbound travel users, this is the other new competitors, it is difficult through funds, resources quickly accumulate beyond. Shao in the media interview, are constantly emphasizing the poor travel community, the formation of a good atmosphere between users, is a strong guarantee of the development of poor tourism.

Poor tour can from a small forum community, developed into a certain scale of profitability of the company, is cleverly set up a "people-website (product)-people" product service ecology, different from the traditional online tourism business form of "people-products" of a single model. Poor swimming in such an interactive community ecology, combined with tourism products and services, into commercial resources, must have the ability to create greater commercial value. This is also a poor tour as the representative of the online tourism community, and constantly emerging, and the reasons for the favor of venture capital.

In the future, in the interactive community ecology formed by the poor tour, the poor tour can also create, integrate into what new product model, to deal with the new market changes, upgrade their services, will determine whether the future of the poor tour can go farther.