Poor travel network: definition of poor tour, the establishment of profit

Intermediary transaction SEO diagnosis Taobao guest Cloud host technology Hall

After the creation of a poor network of Chinese students in Europe in the February 2004, the term "poor travel" became popular. From BBS to community, from UGC to PGC, from paper content to electronic reading, poor travel has experienced the gradual prosperity of China's tourism era, but also for their own existence made a good definition.

Beijing Lang Yuan Vintage20 building is a poor Beijing headquarters, it is difficult to imagine today, the company has more than 100 employees, together with COO Cai Jinghui in 2011 only 4 employees, although it was founded 7 years ago.

"Do Chinese self-help, relying on the user contribution content", is the poor tour since 2004 founded the positioning, and in fact until 2011, its shape is always forum BBS.

How to locate a poor tour

BBS Electronic bulletin Board system, it can provide users with the release of information, chat, discussion and other functions. Poor tour initially for the user group is overseas Chinese, post content, the theme of the discussion and outbound travel related.

Before 2011, this form was more due to the convergence of the user's personal preferences, and did not generate a real business model. At that time, the outbound market is small, but not related to the social network, so the poor tour this very small site relies on word of mouth.

After 2011 years, the product form of the poor tour began to change. Cai Jinghui The Forum on the original information through a more structured way to show, initially positioned in the Chinese outbound free travel guide of the "Poor Tour" is also launched in the same period, but at this time the contents of the Kam sac by the Web site Editor to collect and make, and the user relationship is not.

"Poor Tour" after the launch of the poor tour to enhance the promotion of SNS, in the following two years, traffic growth of about 4 times times, registered users also rose to more than 3 million, active users are over 10 million.

Why not do a domestic tour? Cai Jinghui explained that the poor tour is from overseas, and the most original part of the production of the population needs are concentrated in outbound travel. "The Poor tour is a Chinese founder of the company, serving the Chinese." "Cai Jinghui said.

In fact, before 2011, some of the domestic Chinese travel website information released did not very good, which led to a large number of Chinese outbound play, take is not the domestic raiders, but some overseas products, such as the Chinese version of the "Lonely Planet" (hereinafter referred to as LP). There are many problems, because it is the Chinese version of the travel guide, is viewed from the perspective of foreigners, Americans have the American play, the Chinese people have the game, so the Chinese people take the LP to visit, it is difficult to find their most needed things.

The biggest problem of tourism is information asymmetry, information asymmetry brings about insecurity. Users do need to travel out of the market, the relevant content, and the poor overseas travel, and 20% of the users are still resident overseas Chinese, then it can provide users with the necessary information, strategy, to solve their needs, is the biggest advantage.

In recent years, the fastest growth in tourism market is outbound travel, the domestic share of the actual decline in the trend, the worst is the foreign tourists to domestic tourism this piece. In form, the group size of self-help tour has begun to expand, similar to poor travel, MA Honeycomb, travel as the representative of the tourism TripAdvisor model popular.

In short, the poor tour is the Chinese overseas Self-Help travel information access platform, now the information on the site is structured into destinations, forums, questions and answers, travel assistants and related mobile applications.

This layout is actually interesting and implies the order in which the user needs to travel. Users with travel plans can find where they want to go in the destination section, and if they have set a destination, they can search the forum for other travellers to share. When a user decides to travel, he may have a lot of clear questions to ask, and searching in a mass of information forum is complicated, so you can get it in the form of questions and answers. The travel assistant and the mobile end of the application are the traveler to develop the travel route, as well as the use of some of the tools needed in the tour.

When Ctrip landed in the capital Market, LP was introduced to China, the domestic tourism market is also very traditional, the majority of travelers are with the regiment travel. Until where to go this kind of tourism vertical market Search service provider, users really start to choose more personalized tourism products. Then the outbreak of mobile internet, forcing the complete transformation of the form of tourism, user demand-oriented products have attracted much attention.

With LP being sold out to define the decline of a heavy book-guide, the best days of poor travel have come.

The Digital bible of Backpackers

LP was introduced by Cai Jinghui in China, after 2004 years of a long period of time, boutique travel strategy and content are mostly in the form of paper books, LP is also known as the "Backpacker's Bible."

For this reason, the long and lengthy travels and strategies of the users in the tourism community are seen as the UGC of this form. Because users must read the full part to get a portion of the information they want, the messy content is not practical enough for those who want to travel.

This is also why the poor tour and the later birth of the leeches is more known as the cause of PGC. They all have carefully edited content products.

Cai Jinghui mentioned that a book might cover all the content, including food, accommodation, transportation, and landscape, while traveling, and today is the age of information maximization, where everyone plays differently. So relatively speaking, personalized users of the 20% long tail demand, is no way to fully meet.

So the content of the poor tourism products are divided into two pieces, a piece is to meet the user 20% of the long tail personalized demand, a piece is to meet the user's common 80% travel needs. Now the content is very complex, poor tour through the product to the structure of these complex content, such as through the destination, through the question and answer, through the forum to deal with, so structured and data processing after the information, users find it easier.

There are more than 7 million posts on the poor website, nearly 300,000 travel problems, and travellers spend a lot of time understanding them. In fact, there are clear outbound travel program users have a certain similarity in demand, such as local traffic, how to get to the airport, or how to withdraw money, how to communicate, this positioning of 80% of the 80% demand, is the original intention of the introduction of the poor tour. To allow users to spend less time probably to understand the destination, is the usefulness of the Kam sac.

Before August 2011, the Poor tour was made by editors. At that time there are a lot of outbound travel strategy, the common practice is to see some raiders, editing the contents of the practical content to edit, annotated from which author, this is very convenient, also not responsible.

But one of the greatest uses of a guide is to give the user the confidence to take this guide to travel. This requires that the contents of the guide must be authentic. After August 2011, the poor tour began to be written by the author, the editor to carry out the content maintenance.

Cai Jinghui revealed that, because the poor tour itself is the German students abroad to do, so so far, in the poor tour of the author team, 20% or live overseas people. These more than 100 authors live in five different countries.

Now there are 200 of poor travel, but the Kam sac is not based on the country to distinguish, and basically according to the city or line division. And not an author to complete a Kam bag, but the author of each capsule may be responsible for a particular city of certain content, and in specific details, more than the local netizens to supplement the editor to find the author to check, then added. This makes the contents of the Kam-sac very high credibility.

In the recruitment of the author of the Poor tour, Cai Jinghui They know which users are familiar with the local, experience is rich, they will find this user, ask him if he has time to write. If meet the requirements, then the poor tour will give him a test, if the level of words can be written out of the things are credible, then he can be the author of the Poor tour.

This preference for PGC products, because the content of high-quality, poor travel is paid to the author.

As an ordinary travel agency area, trust is a particularly important thing, the introduction of poor tour, not simply to meet the general needs of users, in the face of new users, how to make them to a brand does not know a sense of trust, the need to use this content brand to generate the confidence of the poor tour.

Poor tour is PGC products, the forum 90% content is still UGC form. In the poor travel community, the editor is Poor tour staff, the moderator is basically netizens. Poor tour in product design, will set point praise, replies, Essence and other functions, a good post will have a large number of people to point Zane reply, then will become a hot post, with practical content will be moderator added as the essence. This is a poor tour through the product design to find the essence of the settings. It is also a way to manually filter and sort the long content into practical information.

Because editors and moderators for the community information editing and updating, exchange of information will produce human interaction, user stickiness will not be reduced.

How the poor tour is profitable

UGC or PGC communities and OTA docking are standard business models for traditional travel service areas.

The poor tour has been profitable since the first day of birth. This is the Forum BBS stand not fall. Actually go to see the poor tour now, its profit model is a closed loop.

From the beginning to access overseas OTA is to ensure that the site does not fail, to the current large-scale access OTA but more because of user needs.

Cai Jinghui An interesting example to describe the reasons for poor access to OTA and other commercial products: the first is the traveller in the poor community found a fun information, and then triggered his travel impulse, he will ask the poor tour, how this place, how to book tickets, where to live and so on, when poor tour did not have this service, So the user complains.

There was a OTA website called Agoda, one day, when Agoda phoned to call to visit a poor tour, they took a check and said it was a commission for a poor tour site. Cai Jinghui They are strange because the poor tour has not signed any agreement with Agoda, and there is no entry on the poor website to guide Agoda.

Then Agoda said that the number of orders from the poor Web site was large and focused on a few 23451.html ">" products, and they looked up and found that many of the visitors ' sources were from the poor travel forum posts, which referred to their products, resulting in direct orders. So they feel that the poor tour is a very good partner.

Later Cai Jinghui They found that many users may decide quickly whether they want to take a trip when they are using a poor tour, and if there is a tool for immediate help, then a deal can be generated directly. In contrast, if the user has a travel impulse, there is no relevant tools to complete this impulse, he may read the information is gone, the next time to think about travel, you have to look again, more laborious.

So the poor tour later opened a number of small windows, used to help users to more simple booking behavior. This booking window is directly forwarded to the partner's booking page. And when the poor travel is completely standing in a when users find information, how to implant some commercial products to help users into the mouth.

This and today's C2B actually have a small difference, C2B is generally recommended, what the site may recommend what users are forced to accept what the situation, and poor travel is more inclined to induction. Ultimately, it's all about data. If the data is well done, then the site itself will have a certain accumulation of awareness, through the statistics of various aspects of data, recommend to the user a most likely to happen transactions information. This is mostly a message that is not enough to hurt the user experience.

Transaction Commission and advertising revenue is poor travel profit of the two models, the transaction Commission accounted for more than 80% of the income, the actual advertising this piece, poor swim few.

In marketing operations director Zhang Zhejie, poor tour of advertising this attitude is more inclined to cooperation, part of the content of cooperation, such as the Asian airlines to promote information, this information is the needs of users, regardless of charge, this is poor travel as a Web site must be given. One kind is the brand cooperation, the poor tour chooses the temperament to match the brand business, for example Coca-Cola, like the shell to carry on the cooperation, then does the interesting matter together.

This still has to go to the user, because the poor quality of the user is actually very high, so the product level is more picky, poor travel to provide information, including advertising, if not feel useful, it must be interesting.

For a long time in the poor travel active users, 90% are clear outbound travel plan. Travel, there must be consumption. Simple to compare the traditional form of advertising, from UV, PV these factors to measure, poor travel is not in line with the traditional advertising flow requirements, but it is a single UV quality is very high, 1 UV volume generated by the transaction is unthinkable.

Cai Jinghui revealed that to partner booking, users from its own web site under a single conversion rate in 2%~3%, and from poor users to import a single rate in 8%~10%.

Speaking of the profit model, we have to mention the cost. The biggest cost of poor travel in manpower, employees in the welfare and incentive policies, there are 10 days a year travel holiday. Usually look at a website's profitability, will be very concerned about its ability to cash flow, which is divided into its own flow and procurement flow. Poor travel only own flow, no procurement flow, because do UGC, product characteristics lead to spend money to do promotion, the quality of the flow is not necessarily high. You motivate users, the quality of the user's production is often not proportional to the incentive.

Products in the age of fragmentation

The tourism market is 2010 years old, and the development is very different. First Ctrip after the listing, with the regiment product is very hot, along with where to wait for vertical service providers on-line, online tourism began to become a business. Today's popularity of smartphones has shifted travel information from heavy space to fragmented reading.

The transition is now linked to the Internet, but only the information before the tour, air tickets and hotel reservations, and after the trip to share. Now it is more in the swim, including sharing applications, guide tools, translation applications and even food and lodging reviews.

A traveler out to play, may be used on the way to Google Maps, Sina Weibo, the public comments, poor tour of the capsule, micro-letter, humming, on the road and other mobile applications. This location-based service makes the barrier of information disappear, and the story of travel is linked to the Internet.

The poor tour has developed very quickly at the mobile end, and this product based on practical travel information is very suitable as a travel guide for users before and in the line. And poor travel in the mobile end also has its own products, users can view the forum, questions and answers through the mobile end of a series of content.

But outbound travel compared to the domestic tour, app this end appears to be slower. Poor tour products are also more biased in line before and after the line, although the poor tour is the product of the line, but is a one-way display of information to the user, rather than the line can be recorded and anywhere to share products, such as the hum of the leech honeycomb. This is closely related to the overseas WiFi situation, so it is very important that the mobile phone application can operate off-line.

One of the most recently introduced tools for a planned travel route is the travel assistant, through the itinerary helper users can create their own travel routes, this is not entirely their own creation, but the user can be in other people's travel routes based on personalized changes, because the destination for the same traveler, the travel route at least 60% Similarity.

and trip Assistant is poor swim in the row of this piece of content introduced the first product, this is through the line before and in the line, the user can be created on the PC side directly synchronized to the phone end.

How to define a poor tour

Literally, the concept of poor travel seems to guide the idea of how to travel with the least amount of money. In fact, after ten years, Price is not the only travel decision factor.

Most people talk about travel, and the need for information is far greater than the single dimension of price, and there are actually many different options on the same price basis. The main thing is, what kind of choice fits your needs.

Poor tourism has a history of 10 years, from 10 years ago to the current users, their consumption capacity is not low, but this does not mean that they are not sensitive to price. The same trip, spend 200 yuan if you can live in a castle-like room, then the user may be inclined to increase, because the experience is completely different.

Therefore, poor travel is not rich and poor. Poor tour from the birth of the first day, then value may be the price, but now the ultimate value is the experience. Whether from the angle of information, from the human point of view, or from a security perspective, simple to see prices, is relatively narrow.

Once the poor tour in the face of commercialization of the biggest temptation, various investors have advised them to change their names, Cai Jinghui they had a deep thinking, they think, poor tour is doing travel, this is just a platform. What they want to preach is a sense of value, the content of which is that the road to success is more than one, a person living happiness or not, the actual and external things are not related.

How to define a poor tour? Cai Jinghui said: "On the trip, you will find a lot of memorable memories and local scenery and not much relationship, but in the exchange with the locals." After communication you will find that some people do not live well, but they have their own obsession, and they chat, you will feel the light in their eyes. ”

"What we have been trying to convey is that there are many, many different possibilities of life in this world, and you go on a trip, and every time you open a door, you will find these possibilities changing." I'm not saying that everyone has to resign to travel, but at least they have a chance to think about what they want to do when they are young. ”