Three major pain points to realize tourism O2O

Wen/Liu Zhaohui

In the past 2014, the concept of O2O has been unusually hot. Tourism O2O has been brewing and preparing for the past year and will usher in a landmark year in 2015. Over the past year, we have seen Ctrip, where to go, cattle, the same journey, donkey mother, such as online tourism leader, have extended to the line, Wanda, HNA, Cyts to the line climbing, poor tour, MA honeycomb, bread Travel, on the road, such as the active exploration of the mobile end; The United States Regiment like a dark horse, suddenly killed into tourism O2O, And bat has been laid out.

2015 will be the first year of tourism O2O, this trend has become more and more clear, but tourism O2O not only have the concept is enough. It needs to be down-to-earth to implement, each link must consider the consumer value of the pragmatic attitude. Therefore, travel O2O is a real drudgery. Therefore, whether the Giants or startups, are faced with many problems to be solved, the industry still has a lot of pain points.

Pain Point One: The Giants are layout, integration is the key

Online travel giants are flocking to the bottom of the line. Ctrip in order to further solve the offline travel agency resources, in 2013 acquisition of Shanghai Metropolitan International Travel Service, last September, the acquisition of Huayuan Country Brigade. Through acquisitions and cooperation in the form of Lijiang, Guilin and Sichuan set up "Market makers", in the local direct provision of tour guides, car rental, tickets and other business. In addition, the investment cruise ship, hotel, destination and other resources provider; where to go. In the second half of 2014, also from the simple insistence on the line to the line of resources, from the three or four line and the following city hotel crazy Scramble, to the controversial front of the customer, and then to the investment line travel agency chain of travel , the way cattle expand the experience shop under the line, the same process will force the line store and scenic spot service point, as well as the success of the Donkey Mother Tent Guest, are online tourism to the line, to seek O2O layout of the movements and signs, their goal is to control the offline resources and service links.

and offline traditional tourism began to the online layout, Wanda acquisition leisurely travel Network, together with the process, Hainan Airlines to buy Caesar layout of the big tour, determined to become the Chinese version of "American Express." Cyts in October 2013 through the fund-raising, the acquisition of Wu Town Tourism 15% Equity, upgrade the online tourism projects, the construction of Tongxiang Tourist Plaza, and clearly proposed this is mainly to integrate its tourism industry chain, from platform construction, networking construction, mobile construction in three major directions to upgrade. Through a full range of service system construction to achieve a comprehensive "O2O" of the business. September 2014, Baidu launched a "direct number", through with the Mount Emei, Guilin, South Korea Tourism Bureau docking, clearly put forward the strategic direction of tourism O2O; Ali integrated Taobao Travel, resources on the road, heavy launch go AH travel. The layout of the tourist O2O only Tencent's pace is slower, but the O2O of micro-mail WiFi can not be underestimated. If combined with the concept of big tourism, but also to calculate the Tencent drop by taxi, Ali's fast, Baidu investment Uber, are in contention for tourism O2O the strategic position of the field. But tourism O2O line under the integration, closed-loop implementation, integrated services, through such investment and mergers really can be achieved? These lines on the line under the large-scale docking, can only say that has just begun, the integration of the road a long way.

Pain Point two: online travel low penetration rate, slow promotion

Iris statistics show that 2013 China's total tourism income of 2.85 trillion yuan, online tourism penetration rate of 7.7%, the expected 2016 online tourism penetration rate will be more than 10%, average annual growth of less than 1%. As of December 2013, China's Internet network of 620 million people, of which mobile internet users reached 500 million, accounting for the overall netizen 80%, Internet penetration rate of more than 20%, the overall internet penetration has reached 45.8%, but the online travel of the internet penetration rates are far lower than the average growth of internet users.

According to the current mainstream division, the tourism turnover can be divided into four parts according to air tickets, hotels, vacation tours and other. According to the basic statistics of the network: 2013, the total turnover of tickets 362.2 billion yuan, online transactions accounted for 42.64%; Hotel total turnover of 298.6 billion yuan, online turnover accounted for 20.58%; Total travel turnover 317.4 billion yuan, online rate 9.23% The other part of the total turnover of 1.9691 trillion yuan, online rate of 0.35%. From this set of data can be seen, hotels, air tickets and other standardized products online transactions accounted for relatively high, and leisure products and other, will be online travel internet penetration overall Jambila low. If from the individual continue analysis, the leisure vacation product's ticket turnover is the key, among them tickets in the Paradise type scenic spot's online booking proportion occupies 12%-15%, the landscape class only 2%-3%, the ancient town class, the old building category scenic spot even below 2%-3%. As for the other, it is around the tourism catering, comprehensive traffic and scenic area surrounding consumption, involving a deeper level of industrial integration and infiltration.

In contrast, according to emarketer data, if only consider hotel accommodation, air tickets, leisure vacation travel, the 2012-year U.S. online travel penetration rate has reached 74%, of which the ticket reached 76%, the hotel reached 73%, and leisure vacation products also reached 70%. But from the point of view of electricity quotient, China net buys penetration rate surpass us in 2012. At that time China was 6.2% and the United States was 5.2%. China was 7.8% in 2013, and now continues to move towards 10%, continuing to lead the United States. Online shopping penetration led by the United States, but on-line tourism penetration rate is lagging behind the United States several times. From the point of view of the barrel theory, although we are in the hotel, air tickets, leisure and holiday tour of the internet penetration rate of each plate has a gap, but the most obvious short board is also the leisure vacation products in the admission of products low permeability, slow growth.

Pain Point Three: tourism O2O service closed loop difficult to form

With the rapid development of the past decade, the online tourism industry has a large user base. The number of PC-side online travel services reached 130 million in December 2013, with a growth rate of 17.5% per cent, according to the survey. Mobile tourism services in the past two or three years ushered in a burst of growth, December 2013 mobile Tourism users coverage of nearly 100 million, year-on-year growth of more than 100%. Mobile internet and tourism products and services have a natural combination, in the rapid development of mobile Internet background, tourism consumption, booking, service of the Internet will achieve rapid development, tourism O2O real breakthrough, seemingly everything.

But from the existing fixed form of several types of platforms to analyze, tourism O2O to complete the last link is not complete the key link. The tourism o2o to really form, need to complete the resource allocation, the benefit distribution and each link completely unimpeded under the line on-line. From the perspective of tourism industry chain, the whole link can be divided into upstream suppliers, middle-level agent trading platform, downstream network marketing platform and users. The upstream suppliers include: Airlines, hotels, scenic spots, car rental companies, entertainment facilities, concerts, tour guides, insurance companies, etc. while the middle channel agent trading platform includes: Online agents (OTA) and travel agencies; Downstream network media marketing platform includes: Comprehensive search, online video, social media, app mobile applications, Vertical Search and vertical reviews.

One of the online section has long been OTA and electric business platform, to the electronic and internet level of higher air tickets, hotel standardized products. Because the GDS system in the Air ticket field guarantees the transmission of information and the achievement of the transaction, the hotel is the second. However, the hotel's PMS management system also better solve the problem of informatization (except Inn), which rely on a strong channel of domestic low-star hotels and domestic serviced apartments, through OTA better solve the information and Internet penetration problems. Therefore, the air ticket hotel products, whether from the OTA channel sales or official website outlets, have laid the foundation for the realization of tourism O2O. However, the long-term distribution of resources, product customer unit price low, low level of information to make it almost OTA abandoned, want to become a competitive product alone is very difficult, so in the hotel area of the inn and tickets, need more suitable for their PMS products. And these can be on line under the key infrastructure software, must get through the business process, improve the benefit coordination mechanism, and the formation of online O2O closed loop.

In fact, to solve the above three major pain points, it is essential to upgrade the Internet penetration rate. The current operating methods are diverse, the major platforms are also active exploration and practice, such as Baidu Direct number, Tencent micro-letter, ticket field Innovation Factory incubator Project Ticket factory, Hotel Inn field of tomatoes, Ctrip Inn Tong, Art Dragon Cloud dispensers, where the guests are full.

Baidu Direct number facing the overall flow is huge, but the search entrance in the handheld terminal does not have the advantage, this and Baidu traditional search in the mobile end of the advantage is not obvious. Micro-letter at present all users 900 million, active users 450 million, the flow of the entrance value is huge, but the scenic individual or merchant individual can obtain accurate users, greatly depends on their own operational capabilities, coupled with commercial WiFi currently in the area of the coverage still have a way to go, so this space is still difficult to release. Scenic spots and inns are facing similar problems, personalized places need standardized services, which itself is full of contradictions. How to solve this contradiction well is the winning point of business start-up.

There are a lot of problems to be solved for scenic spots, to get rid of the restrictions of travel agencies need to realize the problem of informatization, at least there can be a variety of options, such as the OTA channel to receive, the sales platform or the official website direct marketing; to get rid of the problem of tourism and cold, reverse season marketing, passenger flow forecast management is very important; The settlement, the benefit distribution, needs the reasonable scientific management software, but these need the specialized third party software platform to assist to complete, the ticket factory is a good choice, although the coordination solves these complex problems not to be easy.

The trend of the future tourism is the rapid rise of the leisure vacation tour, the tourism O2O is an important means to realize the tourism experience is also the inevitable direction, the ticket in the leisure vacation tour-this wooden bucket principle short board-must make up in time, because this and realizes the tourism O2O key one step away, but needs the profession to pay the huge effort together. Whether it is the system, the market mechanism, or technical solutions team, we need to overcome the difficulties are not small, after all, this is to open the two channels.