Manpower cost becomes bottleneck of development, traditional OTA encounters growth dilemma

Not long ago, the Beijing-Soviet war, Liu emboldened, shareholders, employees and consumers seem to stand on his side, the essence of the reason is that he is doing a trend and significance of the cause: Revolution. The life of the traditional stores, replaced by the Internet.

Avoid E-commerce, go back to the online tourism industry, in fact, also encounter the same contradictions. This contradiction lies in the dispute between Labor and technology, in the debate between cost and income.

Ota human cost is high

What is OTA? OTA, online Travel agent, that is, "travel agent On-line", Ctrip, art Dragon are all adopted this model. The model is characterized by a large agent system, the establishment of intensive call centers, relying on hotel and Air Fares commission to obtain revenue.

Ota just appeared at the time, also counted is a revolutionary product (imitate the United States Expedia.com), with Internet technology assembled offline fragmented tourism business, but also set up a standardized service, opened a new era of online tourism.
Compared with the Internet, the traditional OTA mode, which combines the artificial call mode, has unique advantages, its service mode is more flexible, and the communication with the user in time has individuality characteristic, also can embody the humanity concern.
However, OTA relies on the survival of the call center, is a huge accumulation of human costs. With the expansion of business volume, call center inevitably needs to increase the number of staff and expansion. The increase of turnover is accompanied by huge cost investment, and the profit space is not as good as imagined. According to Ctrip in the second quarter of 2012, net operating income grew 17% in the second quarter of 2012, but net profit fell 55% Year-on-year, although the decline in profits could not be blamed entirely on call centers, but the impact is still evident.
Also have to mention is that this June, carrying Cheng online tourism industry price war, profit margins further narrowing. At the same time, low price competition blurs the price advantage of each online website, service level becomes the winning weapon of Ota battle. Based on this, it is almost impossible to reduce costs by compressing call center size or input.
Another group of reports from the media revealed that 12 years ago, Ctrip brought the business volume accounted for 90%, is still up to 50%. In other words, Ctrip relies on the amount of work that is piled up by the labor force, and does not give play to the Internet's high speed, efficiency, low-cost advantage.

Light online travel companies emphasize technological advantages

has been emphasizing its position as "Internet technology company" vertical tourism search engine where to go, seems to be deliberately and Ctrip to draw a line.
Ctrip currently employs more than 12,000 people, of which the call center staff of more than 7000 people, accounted for nearly 60%, and where to go net employees more than 1200 people, including technical and product personnel accounted for more than 50%.
Where to? The network also has a call center, but its call center is mainly used for customer service, such as handling complaints, 60 of people call center plus efficient IT systems can complete the work, equivalent to the traditional OTA 6000 people processing capacity.
In the recent price war in full swing, where to? The price war manifesto of the net is "invests 30 million dollars to build the traveling intelligence service platform", this intellectualized service platform, may provide the traveling supplier the infrastructure service free of charge, achieves the traveling supplier to the consumer service ability overall promotion, forms the high efficiency and the unified Service standard. Through this platform, travel suppliers can drastically reduce their service costs and concentrate on the price competitiveness of products. It is not difficult to see where to go to the network to technology as the starting point, is intended to change the upstream agent's business ideas, and to Ctrip, Art Dragon as the representative of the traditional OTA still stay in a simple promotion, let on, its operating mode and the concept of the essential difference.

Traditional OTA difficult to play technical cards

Through the improvement of technology and innovation, can easily achieve cost reduction, greatly improve operational efficiency. So, OTA does not play technology card, why?
China Ota produced earlier, at that time the degree of Internet development is still relatively primary, pure network mode by the information technology and ideological dual constraints. The model of the call center conforms to the Economic and technological development of the time, and it is very successful in the background of the huge market space of air ticket and hotel business.
Ctrip was established as the starting point, the traditional OTA 13 years of development is a quiet, artificial call center business model without essential breakthroughs. 2010, Ctrip announced the new Nantong call center into use, with 12,000 seats, claiming to be the world's largest tourism service contact center. Behind the halo is hidden OTA unspeakable embarrassment, the huge input of the call center becomes a heavy burden, in this speed, technology and innovation of the Internet environment, relying on human cost of the call center seems to be out of place, but also because of the huge displacement difficult to turn. OTA does not want to innovate from the technical, but because the call center accounted for the proportion of investment is too large, and the business of its reliance on too high (accounted for more than 50%), only around the call center, a short time business model is difficult to break through. During this period, to go to where, Taobao travel representative of the competition is rising, the adoption of new technologies, and continuously reduce costs, by virtue of the light system on the market rapid response to win the market share.

It can be seen from the early business model constraints, traditional OTA in the competition with the modern light Internet companies lack of technical advantages. The human cost has become the bottleneck of its development and innovation, and the traditional OTA without technological advantage will inevitably encounter the development dilemma in the modern service era of highlighting technology.