The O2O pain point and practice of outbound trip shopping rebate

Wen/Liu Zhaohui (co-founder of the Tourism, billion European network of experts, consultants, starting Baidu Hundred)

A recent report on the eye, the 2013 Chinese tourists overseas shopping 1 billion yuan rebate no one to receive. But this is only the tip of the iceberg.

I. China's tourism trade deficit is serious

In fact, as early as 2010, Chinese tourists in the overseas shopping tax refund amount has become the world's first, since then to maintain rapid growth every year. According to Globle Blue, the world's largest tax rebate company, the 2012 Chinese consumer rebate purchases amounted to 3 billion euros, about 24.4 billion yuan. If the average rate of return of 10% is calculated, the total amount of tax rebate is more than 2.4 billion yuan, but the survey shows that 30% Chinese tourists did not take the tax refund after buying the goods, or took the tax refund, resulting in a tax rebate of 800 million yuan, and 2013, the unclaimed tax refund of more than 1 billion yuan. Chinese people pay high import duty in China to consume foreign luxury ornaments, not very easy to go to the country normal consumption once, enjoy equal shopping treatment, Yang adults and give a discount to the tax rebate, we have to hand it back, to the tyrants for several decades of tax refund does not matter, but we look at the following data will know, More than 100 million visitors to outbound tourists to the country caused much loss.

July 9, 2014, China Tourism Research Institute released the first half of 2014 tourism economic Operation analysis and the second half of the trend forecast report, the report shows that the total number of outbound tourism in 2014, 116 million people, an increase of 18.2%, outbound travel costs 155 billion U.S. dollars, about 930 billion yuan, Growth of 20% per cent, tourism services trade deficit will exceed 100 billion U.S. dollars. As of 2014, the total number of domestic tourism 3.63 billion, an increase of 11.4%, domestic tourism revenue reached 3.1 trillion yuan, an increase of 16.3%. Rough calculation, domestic visitors are outbound travel 31 times times, but travel costs is only 3.3 times times. 100 billion U.S. dollars, 600 billion yuan tourism services trade deficit, more than 1 billion yuan a year tax rebate waste, I think the country can not be so indifferent to it?

Second, outbound travel shopping line under the tax refund pain point

But aside from the emotional factors, from the perspective of the market analysis found that in fact, the waste tax rebate all blame people numbness or waste is not fair. The deep reason is that we are "too stupid" or foreigners "too bad", according to the survey showed that people do not handle the biggest reason for tax rebate is not understand the tax rebate policy, do not understand the relevant tax rebate methods. But another way to look at this problem is that some overseas destination countries are "too bad", deliberately set up extremely complex tax refund procedures and a long tax rebate cycle to prevent tourists tax rebate.

Take Britain, one of the most favoured destinations in Europe, for example. British airports are a big suspect in setting up barriers for people to give up tax rebates. For example, tax rebate room small, usually a, twenty or thirty square meters, a larger airport is only 40 square meters, waiting for the team is often a long line; Secondly, customs tax rebate officials have fewer staff, generally to arrange 1 hours, sometimes 2 hours or longer; Third, the tax refund office or underground, or hidden in the airport somewhere, the ventilation is not good, standing on the 1-2 hours often let tourists exhausted, and some stood for one or 20 minutes to eliminate the idea of tax refund. And the customs staff are mostly expatriate staff, speak English with African, Indian accent, the Chinese are more difficult to understand. Some people worked hard for half a day, returned home and eventually did not receive tax refund, may not communicate clearly. The worse is the departure is not cordon, the people can not be returned after the return.

Of course, such a wonderful destination country is still a minority, in recent years, some Chinese banks, such as ICBC, Pudong Bank and the world's large tax rebate companies, the return of tourists can be in China to handle tax rebates. The premise is that when the tourists depart, need customs in the Customs declaration of the shopping invoice cover "seal chapter", at present, France, Germany and other airports are providing such services, but the line under the operation of the drawback process is extremely cumbersome, the general process is: in the store can be refunded after shopping, fill out the tax refund form, Foreign Customs staff check the tax refund items and documents in the tax refund form stamped, tax refund is divided into cash and credit card refund, if the choice of credit card rebate, the document into the mailbox can leave the normal boarding. But be sure to do a good copy of the document retention, because the input mailbox, there is a mailing risk, does not mean that documents will reach the tax rebate company. If you choose a cash tax rebate, the cash counters at each airport are different and you should ask the Airport advisory office for more details. Refund of cash is usually required to charge a certain fee, each airport refund currency and exchange rate is also different. Fill in the form, line up, language barrier, mailing risk, exchange rate difference, reading basic are dizzy, visible line operation of the drawbacks is very serious.

Whether we are "too stupid" or "too bad" for foreigners, there is no one in the free market to force you to do anything. Whether it is the pain point accumulated by the offline tax rebate or the pain point that is artificially poked, offline operation as long as do not embrace the internet, go shopping under the line, online tax rebate, holding mobile phone, pad in the mobile end of the 35-minute tax refund of the O2O route, the phenomenon of tax refund waste will still exist. But to say the topic, individual countries hundred years ago, the guns, now can only play some of the small tricks of the less than a little money, also really sad. Anyway, complaining is useless, solve the market pain point is the business.

O2O practice of tax refund for outbound travel

From a commercial point of view, the O2O practice of overseas shopping rebate is a good business, according to Setbery, Global Blue, the chief executive, said the data show that the total tax rebate consumption of Chinese tourists in 2013 increased by 20% compared with 2012, Russia, Indonesia, U.S. and Japanese tourists ' purchases of tax rebates are ranked after China. Of course, the business of looking at this market is also there, for example, the state-owned banks mentioned above, as well as the Tax currency of the HNA group, are cooperating with global blue and Korea's largest tax rebate group global, but are still looking to provide a refund business after returning home, although some pain points have been solved However, this kind of cooperation is still focused on the line, but foreign exchange back to the domestic, or tools to the cooperation of tools, O2O practice effect is not obvious, it is difficult to produce complementarity.

The recent poor travel network and the world's largest tax rebate company Global Blue Joint Cooperation in the O2O mode of exploration and practice of imagination space is larger. The Global Blue Alliance and last year launched the global Blue Card, this year with poor tour jointly launched a joint card. Global Blue has cooperated with more than 270,000 retailers and brands in 37 countries worldwide. At present, the global Blue Card consumers can be in most of the world with automatic tax rebate system of the global blue-linked merchants use this card, and the operation of simple steps. For example, tourists holding this card in the Global Blue Card logo of the retail store shopping, show the global Blue Joint Poor tour card and credit card, the completed refund application form is automatically generated and the cardholder signs the automatically generated tax refund application form and carries the Customs seal to the airport; Finally, put the credit card account on the tax refund application form with the Customs stamp on it.   , and put into the global Blue Joint tax refund box. Normally, within 5 working days after receiving the refund application form at the Global Blue Processing Center, the refund will be credited to its designated credit card account. And poor travel as the most aggregated outbound users of the online travel company, in the customer stickiness, shopping frequency, user import and so on in the future can expand space on the global Blue has a greater attraction, on both sides also have greater imagination space.

Of course, different customer base will make different choices, such as the elderly groups tend to banks, counters, processing points such a more traditional model, young people may feel or use the card to operate conveniently. At present, the global blue and poor travel joint card to solve the pain point needs to be deeper, for example, can be associated with the user credit card, and automatically generated in the tax refund application form, so as to avoid the tour guide agent to fill out their own credit card number, people with credit cards do not pay attention to the signature, so the tax refund when this may be a loophole. In addition to the Customs seal link, must I sign, the rest of the links can go farther in the O2O, for their own savings and save the country foreign exchange, is not very good?

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