Platform opportunities for air travel

Absrtact: A type of app that was born inside a state-owned enterprise may inadvertently grow into an open platform that has a huge impact on the industry. The mobile app, which helps users check flight dynamics, launches only 1 years ago, with users just over million, in China's fiery shift

A new type of app, which was born inside the state-owned enterprise, may inadvertently grow into an open platform that has a huge impact on the industry.

The mobile app, which helps users check flight dynamics, is only 1 years old, and has barely been seen in China's red-hot mobile internet market. But what is striking is not the amount of users, but the industry giants interested in it.

As early as 2012 years, Tencent to find on the air travel team, open the conditions of almost hard to refuse: the overall acquisition can, do content resources docking can also, as long as both sides can cooperate, Tencent will actively support. This sounds a little weird, because in January 2012, the iOS version of the app is just on the line, that version of the product is not mature, even appear to be some amateur. From the perspective of the industry, in 2012, the team just found some sense in the product. As for the number of users, in the early 2013, large-scale users showed interest in this product. According to the industry contacts with the air travel, said that today's users of the product is only 1.2 million.

Tencent's investment sector this time is a sense of smell sensitive, from the inside of Tencent News revealed that the real value of air travel is behind its data, lies in its "production side" is China Civil Aviation Information Network Co., Ltd. (referred to as "Avic letter").

AVIC Letter under the management of SASAC, the company described as "is a professional engaged in air transport tourism information services of large state-owned High-tech Enterprises," in February 2001 in the Hong Kong Stock Exchange motherboard listing.

Tencent values the data from the flight information to the passenger record, and the air travel in the Air Brigade, the most comprehensive data in the civil aviation industry. The depth of data mining means that air travel may be able to personalized services to attract a large number of users, and then naturally expand to travel and business trip related to all the consumption links. This is a rather tempting prospect of imagination.

In fact, air travel is not the only type of app in the market, nor is it the most famous one. In April 2009, the Flight Butler, to September 2012 the number of users have been tens of millions of million, has received a total of 20 million of dollars in venture capital, and October 2011 on the line of flying often quasi, 1 years after the user has reached 2 million, there was a rumor that Ctrip 20 million yuan into the capital fly. But as soon as the cruise brigade appeared, it was declared "victorious", and one investor even asserted: "This makes it hard for the other two to refinance." ”

This user is still so small, even obscure app, behind why can bear so much influence?

The "Wonderful Flower" in the state-owned enterprises

Because the cruise is not a real mobile internet start-up company, but also has a special background, in the "Business value" interview process with other mobile applications in a completely different situation.

The first is in the industry, the peer to it is not willing to talk more. For example, the Flight Butler CEO Wang in the media interview, a reporter asked him how to see the Aviation brigade in the field of the competition in the app, whether the background of the letter will cause data monopoly problem. The King's answer is: "It is not true who has the absolute advantage of having the exclusive data, it is a ridiculous thing to monopolize the data in this industry." In fact, the reporter interview process, similar to some contradictions of the argument is very common, competition and its investment people are not willing to talk about the air travel, even when it comes to, will mostly dilute its advantages in the data, but often revealed to its advantages of the brooding.

But at the same time, according to the business value, although the air travel in China is an internal incubation project, it is not clear that it is a strategic layout product, and how it works inside the letter is very few people know. Reporter learned that the birth process of this product is very "grassroots"-"the team started less than 5 people, the first version of the product demo outside the help of the completion." Now a lot of team members are graduating students, there is no experience of rich people. "From inside the letter Insider insider description, combined with the outside of the product's optimistic, more people have a strong interest in this product."

In fact, the biggest problem is that no one can answer the purpose of the air travel in China.

In the list of clients of AVIC, including airlines, airports, air ticket sales agents, tourism enterprises and civil aviation related institutions and international organizations, the business includes aviation tourism electronic distribution, air cargo data processing, international and domestic passenger and freight revenue management System application and clearing agent settlement. It can be understood that it is a large number of enterprises and institutions of information distributing center, by providing them with information release, management of products and business services, to achieve the integration of various channels of information, so that information to achieve relatively transparent flow.

According to AVIC 2012 interim results briefing, revenue from aviation information technology services, clearing and clearing services accounted for 76% of total revenue, paid customers are mainly airlines, the income appears to be too concentrated. At present, the development trend of global airlines is integration and mergers and acquisitions, this is not difficult to understand, some analysts explain: the global aviation industry capacity dispersion pattern is not enough to enable airlines to enjoy pricing power, the only way to improve profitability is through mergers and acquisitions continue to expand. In China, Eastern Airlines and Shanghai Airlines completed joint restructuring in 2010, which is an example of this trend. As the number of airlines decreases, the value of AVIC as an information platform will continue to weaken.

On the other hand, booming e-commerce also poses a threat to AVIC. All along, the domestic air ticket distributor is not directly with the airline settlement, but by the letter as a settlement intermediary, the letter of the carrier as a distributor of unified management role. Controlling a large number of decentralized distribution channels is one of the core competencies of AVIC letter. But things are changing, a simple data is, 2012 Q1 in the online ticket booking market, Ctrip to 35.2% of the list in the top, Eastern direct sales to 6% of the second, and cool News travel CEO Haijun even predicted that in the next 2-3 years, the proportion of online ticket booking will exceed the line ticket. With Ctrip, art and other brands OTA development, as well as airlines more and more strong direct ticket sales will, the ticket distribution channels inevitably towards concentration, the channel advantage of the navigation is also losing.

Capital markets are always the most sensitive. In 2007, there was no news on the market that was bad for AVIC, its revenues and profits were growing, and its share price began to fall. The reason is that this year, the major airlines began in the business of direct sales of passenger tickets, the channel began to recycle, the capital market may consider themselves to see the future growth of the ceiling of the business.

If the AVIC is to acquire a large number of individual users through the cruise, this may be its new core advantage: to seize the most essential resource in the channel-consumers, and then, regardless of how the distribution channels are integrated, it can still control its own channel advantages. This may be the only logical way to start a consumer-oriented mobile app that is starting to breed.

The reporter to find the air Brigade project leader thin full brightness, he low-key rebuffed the interview. But on the back of the air travel is not the biggest advantage of the cruise, he stressed that "air travel is not everyone's imagination of the data monopoly, but in very hard to do the integration of data work." ”

Thin Manhui said: "This is not a simple take over the data on the free will, the civil aviation data is very dispersed, distributed in airlines, airports, the Air Control Bureau, they have never been hit through, we are trying to do other people did not do things." These data are dynamic, real-time, and difficult to gather and logically comb. However, he admits that the full integration of the debris information of various channels to provide passengers with more accurate information on the voyage is based on the special identity of the AVIC, which is the only possible model for "in-house hatching" products.

In a state-owned enterprise that has never had a business-to-business business, there is no clear strategy and huge investment in the "exotic products", the past year has not only aroused the attention of industry forces. In fact, in recent months the word of mouth has soared, and the number of users has started to soar rapidly, and an unintended opportunity seems to be really emerging.

Platform Opportunities

At the beginning of the air travel, the steward and flight manager only did the flight dynamics this point. If you say the biggest difference between the two and the pioneers, that is, it has a deep integration of the data from the 180 airports in the country in the past, and has launched a "pre-order Flight" feature that allows users to see the departure and navigation of the flight at the previous departure, as well as the early determination of whether the aircraft is late. This critical and other application can not follow the demand point, and suddenly set the unique value of this product. From the product evolution, later, mobile phone value machine, flight selection and other functions to join, and further strengthen its user experience with the opponent differences, but the integration of data flow capabilities, this is the product behind the most valuable place.

The value of the cruise is the opportunity to build a big platform for integration in the air travel industry in China, according to one investor who is bullish on the cruise.

And in his view, the whole business area of China has always been a "multi-latitude" structure--once a traveler buys a ticket, it receives information from agents, airlines, airports, etc., but the information is only a fragment of a certain time, there is no integration, the passengers do not know who should prevail. Air travel relies on the aviation letter in the information collection, integration and release of natural advantages, can become a passenger cruise travel a unified platform.

The answer the reporter gets from the thin Manhui in this question is: "We do this thing's original intention, in fact, the air travel data is too much, a brain to the user he fainted, he was in a certain time the need for information is fixed, we hope to create intelligent travel, information display and travel scene completely combined. Through the excavation of passenger data, we should provide him with personalized service. I think it's exciting that our data integration capabilities coupled with the ability of mobile terminals to interact with data. ”

Although he did not talk too much about the platform, but along with his words, the Air Brigade seems to be aiming at the continuous flow of data as a link, one end docking passengers, the other end of the docking service for the passengers of enterprises or institutions, such as airlines, Ctrip and other Ota, hotels and even resorts. It will be an exciting business vision for China Airlines, and it may break the information "Partition" that has been in the civil aviation industry for a long time and provide an integrated service experience that extends beyond the flight of passengers.

Of course, the biggest significance of the platform is obviously not the direct business of the AVIC letter extending to the company of the company, but provides an open platform for other agencies in the air travel chain. Because only with the constant opening of these data will there be some new business models that are now unimaginable. Solve this industry logic, but also the next step in the development of air travel must want to understand, but also to speak clearly to the outside world.

This is actually the only way to maximize the value of the air travel. People familiar with the matter said that the original, the letter decided to do air travel, the first to come out against the airlines. A domestic airline has questioned: You do direct mobile applications contact users, why do we go?

These customers of Avic believe that if they have a big opinion about the air travel, it will obviously affect their next development or even survival. At that time, the opinion was said to have been so persuaded by the senior executives of China Airlines: "As a neutral platform, we cannot and do not have the talent to do the sales business, the civil aviation industry is now competing not with the airlines, nor the airlines, but between the aircraft and the high-speed rail." High-speed rail is robbing customers, the civil aviation industry is concerned, it should be more and more people choose to travel, so the industry can flourish. In order to optimize the passengers ' experience and enhance the competitiveness of the civil aviation industry, AVIC believes that it is to improve the air travel. ”

According to this logic, the air travel passenger's consumption demand, must be directed to the specific vendors and corresponding industry chain, so the pattern of an open platform is actually an inevitable trend.

But as a small team of only more than 10 people, how do we go in the next step if we want to achieve such a grand idea? China Airlines also does not seem to think clearly.

The label of "AVIC" is its advantage and its disadvantage. Its development in the future, not all look at the performance of products, but also to see the aviation letter on its positioning and policy changes. Within the state-owned enterprises, it may still face the constraints of unclear positioning and resource constraints. The simplest example is: In the 1 years since the launch, there has been little publicity on the aspect of the cruise, and their explanation is that there was no such thing as consumer-oriented, advertising-promoting products, and therefore no precedent for market input.

This is a lot of people are optimistic about the product is not really organic will grow into a meaningful business platform, more market-oriented and transparent operation, I am afraid it will have to cross the threshold.