The 10-year change of tourism internet

Absrtact: In the past 10 years, the tourism industry has completed a major transformation from the weakest link to the Internet. Ge Xin in the recent March 2013, the overburdened BBC has finally announced the sale of Lonely Planet (hereinafter referred to as LP) to NC2 Media. Transactions

In the 10, the tourism industry completed a major transformation from the weakest link to the Internet.

Ge Xin

In the recent March 2013, the overburdened BBC has finally announced the sale of the Lonely Planet (LP) to NC2 Media. The transaction price is 77.8 million U.S. dollars, only 35% of the purchase price.

And just before 10, Ctrip landed in the U.S. capital market, "LP" into China, positioning for overseas tour of the poor network began to start a business.

At that time, tourism may still be a luxury for the Chinese. "Donkey Friends" and "backpackers" are still fresh words for the Chinese. and the "LP" advocated by the tourism approach, for the vast majority of Chinese tourists are very remote. For them, whether domestic or foreign travel, can only choose to follow the group, then let others decide their own travel routes and content.

Before 10, the tourism industry, still belonging to the "traditional industry", can be called as "the traditional industry wrapped in internet clothing" (that is, mouse + cement).

In the 10 years, the Chinese tourism concept has undergone great changes-"LP" advocated by the concept has been deeply rooted. However, at the same time, the concept of "tourism" has undergone a qualitative change, and this concept is being dragged into more and more things-whether it is related to tourism information tools, or the needs of basic necessities, or the tourism industry itself, the business model has changed dramatically.

So, standing in the 2013 mobile internet tide on the sidelines, the "LP" was the sale of the incident has become the tourism industry in 10 years the best footnote.

The tourism industry, which has already been in demand, has in fact become one of the most tightly connected industries in the past 10 years by a traditional industry.

This transformation process, is the Internet to transform the traditional industry, a perfect case, but also the internet affects the human society in miniature.

Individuation and the change of tourism concept

In the 2003, in Germany on the side of the school to work for Yahoo Shaw, found that the mainland people know little about the knowledge of overseas travel. At that time, the mainlanders he met in the square were almost all commercial tours of suit Gelv. The students who are like him are always mistaken by Westerners to be Japanese or Taiwanese.

Subsequently, Ctrip landed in 2003, the Nasdaq greatly encouraged Shaw, so he founded in February 2004 poor travel Network. He believes that the Chinese people can access to the overseas travel information is very single, and this is the poor network can fill the gap.

Almost at the same time, Cai Jinghui, a graduate of a university business school in Australia, sent a business proposal to the founder of LP, a resident of Australia, to introduce "LP" to China, which has just become popular among young people.

Unlike most of the people at the time, for Shao and Cai Jinghui, who had been accustomed to breaking into the world alone, it was a real tour with a free road.

They coincide with the two founders of Chen Yu and Lu Gang. The two of them in the Sohu network as colleagues, is already known in the circle of backpackers. But they found that they strongly share the desire to experience the journey, at that time it is difficult to find a suitable platform to achieve-blog too complex and find inconvenience, watercress good but poor picture support, photography forum is too focused on photography, tourism forum is filled with a large number of advertising stickers-so, Chen, Lu two people simply in 2006 founded the MA Honeycomb community, intends to do a pure Traveller sharing website.

In fact, the 3 groups of entrepreneurs mentioned above in the world are catching up with the era of great change in the tourism industry. And this kind of big change, one of the main embodiment is the demand of the tourism product individuation. The process took place between 2004-2010 and a half years.

Before this time period, basically only in these three groups of "money, leisure with" the people above the conditions of the entrepreneurs (this is the reason for the early popularization of overseas holiday travel), can choose personalized Travel mode. And the general population can only go with the regiment travel, buy "Get on the bed, get off to take photos" of standardized tourism products, and occasionally encounter forced shopping disputes.

In this primary concept of tourism, "see" is the most important content, the traveler can grasp the link is very few. But with the rising income level of Chinese urban people, more and more Chinese urban white-collar people are throwing away the travel agency, embark on the free journey advocated by LP, not only "see", but communication, experience, and "Life on the Road".

Apart from economic factors, the gradual patency of tourism information is another driving force for personalized tourism, which further reduces the cost of tourism. This is mainly reflected in the introduction of tourism books began to appear in a large number of bookstores ("LP" that is at this time to China), as well as kayak and where to appear.

"The emergence of kayak and where to go is the first stage of personalized tourism." "Chen Yu to Business value". In his view, Ctrip and the Art Dragon (Expedia model) have for a long time only moved offline tourism to the line, is "the traditional industry wrapped in internet clothing." But kayak and where to go the parity engine, to a large extent, broke the information barriers to help people choose more suitable for their own tourism products.

"This is a milestone for the Internet to transform the tourism industry. Chen Yu said: "From this point on, the traveler can master more and more links." ”

"It's easier and cheaper to go to Thailand now than to go to Hainan," he said. Cai Jinghui said: "Tourism is becoming a high frequency use of the necessities of life." ”

Digitalization and the rise of PGC community

The 10 tourism industry, the embodiment of the big change is the tourism content-mainly travels and Raiders-digital.

10 years ago, tourism content existed in two ways: books and web-vertical communities. Among them, the audience of books is far more than the vertical community audience, this situation lasted to 2010 years.

The emergence of vertical tourist communities in China is not too early. As early as the turn of the century, the portal site on the line of the tourism channel, Ctrip in the early days also known as the "destination" of the tourism community plate. Especially the green net of Beijing and the mill net of Shenzhen, become the spiritual home of Chinese backpackers.

But these tourism communities, which exist in the form of UGC (user-generated content), have obvious defects: on the one hand, the overseas travel content is less, cannot satisfy the overseas visitor's demand; On the other hand, the author of the quality travel content cannot guarantee the renewal efficiency of the works, the UGC content is uneven There are even more offline activities than online updates-the latter are still the short boards of the old, vertical communities.

So, in the days before 2011, the quality of tourism content and Raiders, more appear in the paper books. Cai Jinghui in 2004 to introduce China's "LP" as an example, before the arrival of the annual tourist season, light Zhongguancun book building a sales point, the monthly sales will exceed 4,000 volumes. In addition, Chinese professional traveller groups are starting to earn money to feed themselves and earn their next adventures by taking travel travels that contain fresh content and premium pictures.

In this process, although the early 2004 birth of the poor tour and the birth of the 2006, the PGC (the expert-made content) community, which distinguishes itself from the general UGC tourism community, is still slow to accumulate users, and the impact of these communities cannot be countered with books such as LP.

However, with the advent of smart terminals in the 2010 and the outbreak of mobile internet, free meals and fragmented reading of tourism content began to rise-a great deal of quality tourism content began to be digitized into free apps, and the influence of the paper books and the PGC community on travellers was reversed.

For example, in the case of Ma Honeycomb, in 2011, before the launch of the app product, the community had accumulated 100,000 users in 5 years. The first app―― travel translator, after 3 months, received a 500,000 download volume. As of September 2012, the travel raiders and buzzing apps downloaded more than 10 million, and this April broke 20 million!

The bad days of the LP came when the days of the hive and the poor swam. "LP" has long been a "backpacker's Bible", with its reliable guide to fewer characters, and its refusal to embed advertising in its purely posturing and humanistic travels. It has so far launched 500 volumes of fine travel guides from different destinations around the world. Its sales accounted for 1/4 of all English travel guides.

However, the "LP" of these advantages, are in the surge of travel app before the fragile. Gradually, travelers around the world chose to place heavy, slow-moving "LP" in the bookcase to do collectibles, and packed with one or more mobile devices on a new journey.

So, we can see the beginning of this article of the scene: Strong as the BBC media platform can not restore the "LP" of the past glory. "LP" advocated by the kind of complete release of personality tourism, including China, after the popularity of the World, "LP" itself has become a thing, this has to say is the power of the Internet to transform the world.

In fact, 2011 years after the BBC bought all of LP's shares from the Wheeler, the BBC first acquired a 75% stake in LP in 2007, the year of the big mobile internet outbreak. Before being sold, the LP already had 1/4 of its revenue from digital channels, including apps.

It is not just the LP that goes into decline. Professional travellers, who had been wearing the aura of freedom, had to start to rethink their livelihoods. Former GE employees, renowned professional traveller Hu Yue recently made his new travels "all the way to the South". But the new book's royalties did not bring him much joy, he said in front of reporters not to say: "I do not know the book published, how can I survive next?" ”

It is in advance of this trend, in order to "LP" After 7 years of work, Cai Jinghui farewell to the "LP", joined the poor travel network.

Shao to the Economist, the location for the PGC community of the poor, in addition to the quality of the edited high-quality tourism content, now every month will organize online and offline netizens activities, together with the community in the relationship between users network, it can form a high user stickiness. These are the things that "LP" can't do.

"The future of tourism information must be electronic and personalized." This is difficult for paper media to achieve. "Cai Jinghui to business value" said: "By the PGC community produced by the poor tour of the capsule, is a mobile version of the LP." ”

Mobile Interconnection reshaping tourism content

The continued eruption of the mobile internet, which began in 2011, has changed many traditional industries and is no exception for the tourism industry.

It is noteworthy that the mobile Internet has changed the tourism industry, not only the aforementioned "Tourism content digitization." More important than that, it will be the travel-related clothing, food, housing, tourism, social and other areas, are packaged in the "travel" concept.

The result of this is that the "tourism" before the internet has nothing to do with the relationship between the tourism link, has become the most closely linked with the Internet tourism link.

Before the advent of smartphones, relationships with the Internet were only information inquiries before travel, OTA bookings and content sharing after travel. But when the smartphone emerged, the journey of sharing, translation tools, guide tools, Food and lodging reviews and map tools, all with the help of mobile internet appeared in the hands of people. Especially when the service based on lbs appears, the barrier of information is minimized, it seems that everything in the journey is possible.

Best-selling travel books "I just want to stop to see the world," the author of Chen Yuxin is a senior overseas play, she and Shao and Cai Jinghui on the internet, now she is a poor travel network marketing Department of an employee, but also the PGC tourism community, a content provider. She told The Economist that her book was published in 2010, and it was clear from the book that there had been a lot of moving or tense stories in the previous trips, but it was largely irrelevant to the Internet.

But now it's completely different, taking her trip to Malaysia as an example, and after her backpack came out of the house, she used a tick-tock taxi, Sina Weibo, Google Maps, the public comments, the poor tour kit, path and Evernote, and a series of mobile applications. She particularly regrets that micro-letter in Southeast Asia has become a star application, she used micro-letter to achieve remote meetings, trouble-answering, looking for Chinese donkey, and using the micro-credit lbs function to live in the same hotel compatriots borrowed hair dryer!

In addition to connecting the journey to the Internet, UGC (or PGC) community and Ota docking, began to become the Donkey friend Community standard business model. The commercial complementarity between the two is obvious, but before the advent of smartphones, the list of mobile phones was not yet available, and mobile advertising was limited to text links. At that time, the advertising and insurance business of outdoor products displayed on the PC side was often the only source of revenue for travel agencies.

This new business opportunity, so that the poor network and Ma Honeycomb became the tourism industry in a small but heavy weight of the "small but Beautiful" company.

In short, since 2010, the popularity of smartphones and the subsequent outbreak of the mobile Internet tide, greatly changed the concept of tourism. It is clear that the tourism industry, which formerly belonged to the traditional industry, has become one of the most closely connected industries in the Internet.

Looking back 10 years, every step of the way in the tourism industry--a huge change in the typical traditional industry--is inextricably linked to the Internet. Along the timeline, we can divide the process of tourism and the Internet into 3 phases:

The first stage, is Ctrip and art dragon (that is, Expedia mode) "Mouse + cement". In this stage, the connotation of tourism concept has not changed much, and there are few personalized products for travellers to choose.

The second stage, where to go and the presence of the PGC community, made tourism information a step towards transparency. The choice of tourism products personalized combination began to increase.

The third stage, is the mobile internet to the reconstruction of tourism, and the accompanying PGC content outbreak. In this stage, not only the total amount of information and flow rate has undergone a qualitative change, and the concept of "tourism" has a new connotation and extension, accompanied by the emergence of unprecedented tourism products and tools.

In the combination of the first two phases, Price is always the biggest variable that affects the traveler's decision. But after the third stage, the reference weight of the price in the traveller decision is greatly reduced, and the other information obtained from the mobile and the fragmented reading occupies more and more important position in the decision-making.

"In the new sense of tourism, ' poor tour ' is actually ' smart Tour '. "Shao to" business value "concluded:" It represents the new tourism concept and information optimization methods. ”

And Ctrip Senior vice President Mr. In an interview also said to The Economist, as the tourism industry, "big Force", Ctrip team in the past few years also want to clear a few issues. Ctrip since 2012 has been farewell and competitors in the price of the spat, began to travel as a whole product to operate, and launched the "Honghu Yi Tour" such as the travel custom brand.

"Finger + cement" is the strategy below Ctrip. "Mr. To this newspaper:" The user's needs have changed, we must make changes. ”