Selling products or prostitution the way of the tourist community

Intermediary transaction SEO diagnosis Taobao guest Cloud host technology Hall

Text/Sohu It Zhangrui

The online tourism industry this year, investment, listing, maneuvers, fast-changing, today you are my little partner, tomorrow you become someone else's bride. I think now may as well not go to see those contending for the OTA, to see the silent growth of the tourist community. The tourism community, which has users and UGC travels, needs to find a way to break through the industry chain, figure out its own business model, or become part of a large company, perhaps a good choice.

1. The only way: from content production to product sales

In addition to the earlier this year was Ctrip bought travel notes app Cicada travels, now basically has no simple tourism community, whether the PC end or mobile phone, the tourism community has more or less started to dabble in product sales, no doubt, this is a commercial only way.

Ma Honeycomb and poor travel network of these two from the PC era of the tourism introduction website, the product line has been gradually improved in the last two years, they provide hotels, air tickets booking, as well as free line discount products booking, and so on. They cooperated with many Ota, Ota to obtain orders, MA Honeycomb and poor travel network to obtain commission.

How does this work? Ma Honeycomb CEO Chen Yu said, the MA Honeycomb hotel reservations to Ota to take the flow of traffic than OTA itself 300%, poor Travel network COO Cai Jinghui said, poor travel to booking with the conversion rate can reach 8% to 10%.

However, the two themselves are not yet profitable, Chen gang expected to achieve a break-even this year, and Alibaba investment in the poor network is not anxious to profit.

The mobile end of the more representative two-"on the Road" and "bread travel" this year commercialization of the movement is also very fast.

On the road also has Alibaba's investment, originally intended for Taobao travel product resources to do some selection and diversion work, but later adjusted for their direct docking suppliers. On the way COO Puminghui said they still wanted to make a deal, so the app, "on the Road", which sells local products, is actually an OTA on a mobile phone.

Bread Travel in April this year announced a wholly-owned acquisition of Beijing Shanshui Holiday Travel Service, and then launched its own brand of free and semi-free line products, the model is also a way to try.

Chen Yu that the 2014 tourism market commodity circulation, supply and demand relations have changed, users need personalized products, the need for a one-stop service, tourism community to change into a consumer entrance, the completion of consumer decision-making.

2. The advantage of structured data is a beautiful desire

The biggest advantage of the tourism community is the UGC content, but it is not easy to use these content effectively. In interviews, they all said they had structured data, that is, the ability to extract poi (point of acquires) from massive, rambling travels, such as what places users like to visit, how they evaluate a hotel, and the refined poi not only help others who travel here. , it also allows the community to provide more accurate products for these needs.

But a travel-circle person interviewed with a blunt assessment that no real structured data has been done.

From the PC era of poor tourism and the UGC content more, Chen Yu that structured data first requires a huge amount of UGC content, the second requires a strong semantic analysis technology, search technology. But their pain is that early UGC content is unstructured, and investing in time and manpower is not a small project.

Instead of the mobile Internet grew up on the road and bread travel, thanks to the mobile phone nature has the location, time and other attributes, more easily obtained a lot of structured data, but their shortcomings lie in the picture of the main travel is not detailed enough, effective comments less.

That is to say, the travel community wants to use the structured data, the original travel strategy content and the current product transaction combination, out of a road different from Ota, but this path is not so easy.

3. Attention to the giant's coveted mouth

Finally look at another possibility-to be invested or acquired by a large company. This was not a figment of the imagination, the Cicada travels has become a member of Ctrip, MA Honeycomb has not long been rumored or was the acquisition of Ctrip, although the message was Chen Yu denied, but Ctrip to travel introduction community expectations is very high but the fact that the acquisition of a home is not possible.

The first quarter of this year with Cheng newspaper meeting, travel Raiders community is as one of the new business is Ctrip CEO Liang Jianzhang mentioned. Feng Weihua leadership of the Community Business Department is in accordance with Ctrip internal "two pioneering" idea set up the first independent division, it is Feng Weihua recently said that still interested in acquiring other travel Raiders website.

In addition to Ctrip, Baidu, where to go and other companies are also doing their own travel strategy community. An unnamed OTA practitioners believe that the tourism community can not only bring traffic and orders, but more importantly can use large data in turn to do products, tourism information and products, one-stop service, as well as the user's comments on the interaction, are OTA attention.

Puminghui Blunt, big companies do travel Raiders community biggest deficiencies, one is that the project in the internal may not get attention, the second is to give users a sense of brand identity is not enough, so the acquisition is a good way, the giant in the search for opportunities, the tourism community is the possibility of investment mergers and acquisitions.

The OTA practitioners believe that the independent tourism community of the commercialization of the transformation will be increasingly to OTA direction, may lose the nature of the original community, and will inevitably face the competition of giants, so "early hug thigh is good."

In the end who will hold whose hand, who will be with whom? Chen Yu at the end of the interview that 2014 is the watershed of online tourism, more personalized tourism products will appear, investment drama has just begun.