Online tour companies are starting to promote train ticket consignment business

Perhaps it is difficult to abandon the 2 billion-yuan train ticket booking market, in the Spring Festival, online tourism companies began to promote railway ticket sales. However, for online tourism companies, train ticket purchasing business still need to rely on bundled insurance to maintain their livelihoods. Beijing business newspaper reporter yesterday found that the current train ticket sales of online tourism companies, is still cleverly bundling their own insurance business.

Beijing newspaper reporter where to go yesterday to search the railway tickets can be seen, Ctrip, Yi Long Network, Iron road network, catch train network, high-speed rail online, such as 15 of online tourism companies have ticket sales business. In addition, in the app download platform can also be found in more than 30 booking train tickets app. Beijing Commercial News reporter investigation found that Ctrip's network of friends to the "innovation model", that is, if consumers do not buy insurance, they need to queue to buy tickets, usually ranked 1000 after the waiting time at least 2 hours. If consumers choose to buy insurance, it will be upgraded to VIP services, enjoy the speed of priority processing orders, provide artificial refund. In addition, most online travel sites give consumers the freedom to decide whether to buy insurance, but online travel sites such as train networks are still enforcing tying insurance.

In the opinion of the powerhouse information CEO Wei Changren, currently purchasing train ticket business profit model is very single, 12306 of the distribution port has not been open to OTA (online travel service provider), OTA distribution train ticket equivalent to do "volunteer", can not get the railway corporation a penny commission, only rely on tying insurance to make a profit. But with a OTA practitioner's words, a train ticket tying up 20 yuan of insurance, can earn about 10 yuan of profit, but spread to the network construction fee, labor costs and other expenditures, this profit will be compressed.

However, the huge flow of train ticket orders has made OTA unable to give up this attractive market. Wei Changren said the train ticket was just needed in China, and 2012 national railway passenger shipments amounted to 1.893 billion people. Many OTA will be on the train ticket booking page recommend special airfares, hotels, trying to connect their own resources, to achieve cross trade, even if 5% of the conversion will make OTA benefit.

Industry insiders to the Beijing commercial news reporter, compared with the foreign train ticket market, 12306 of the open degree is clearly not enough. Foreign train ticket sales are basically by OTA to withdraw the form of commission, and domestic OTA in the distribution of train tickets can only rely on selling insurance for a living. But with 12306 and Alipay cooperation, took the first step of marketization, domestic OTA for train ticket distribution open still full of anticipation.