The wealth brought by the tourism fever continues to be transmitted.
Zibo, the "barbecue capital" of the 2023 fire, was the biggest beneficiary, and small barbecues were popular all summer. Recently, Harbin has become a new "Internet celebrity tourism city" with its ice, snow and exotic characteristics, and the number of tourists and total tourism revenue during the New Year's Day holiday both reached historical peaks.
The "Internet celebrity cities" have followed, proving once again the power of traffic. On social networking, especially the spread of short platforms, it has directly driven the ice and snow tourism boom.
Obviously, the fermentation of content and social platforms has brought new increments and content forms to the tourism industry.
After three years of baptism, the tourism market has drawn a curve of ups and downs. Nowadays, under the strong recovery, content platforms have increased the tourism market with the play of "content + traffic", and grabbed the market cake of old OTA platforms such as Ctrip, Tongcheng, and Fliggy.
For example, Douyin has enhanced the strategic position of the hotel and tourism business; Kuaishou vigorously attracts first-class chain partners to support the creation of tourism content; There is also a live broadcast like Dongfang Selection, which brings goods to the top official announcement.
Liang Jianzhang, the founder of Ctrip, once proudly said that "you can't see Ctrip's competitors with high-powered telescopes", but now he is embattled in his field of vision.
Tourism, such a traditional industry, has now been a clash between the old and the new, and the undercurrent is surging.
Grab the new increments
Confidence is more important than **", the strong recovery of the tourism industry has brought sufficient confidence to the market.
According to data from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, in the first three quarters of 2023, the number of domestic tourists reached 36700 million, to achieve tourism income of 37 trillion yuan, an increase of 75% and 114% year-on-year respectively. During the three-day New Year's Day holiday just past, the number of domestic tourists and income exceeded the data of 2019.
The momentum of recovery can be seen from the mainstream tourism players Ctrip and Tongcheng, and more intuitive signs can be seen. In the first three quarters of 2023, Ctrip's domestic hotel bookings increased by more than 70% compared to the same period in 2019, and revenue increased by 127% year-on-year. Tongcheng Travel also achieved a full harvest, with revenue reaching 87 in the same period5.1 billion yuan, an increase of 72% year-on-year.
The content platform accelerates the layout of the tourism industry precisely because it sees more opportunities in it:
New increments.
According to Kurun's survey data, the travel budget of young people can reach **1,000 yuan. In addition, the younger generation has distinct personalities, pays special attention to consumer experience, and receives more fragmented information, and social platforms are an important consumption reference position.
As a result, the traffic is concentrated on the short-** platform and the Xiaohongshu grass planting platform, and consumers' travel decisions are no longer overly dependent on the OTA platform. Since last year, all kinds of tourism trends have become more and more popular, and topics such as "Zibo barbecue", "special forces tourism" and "citywalk" have become hot one after another.
iResearch's report reveals this trend, saying that users' travel methods are diversified.600% of users integrate into the local area with experiential tourism and explore the destination in depth; 48.0% of users are keen to explore off-the-beaten-path destinations; Generation Z is more dynamic in tourism, and "special forces tourism" is significant.
This kind of popularity has caused a wave of imitation on the short ** platform, and people have more and more choices to travel with weekend fragmented time, and more flexible and cost-effective travel methods are welcomed, and the sinking market can be developed faster, further tapping the potential of tourism consumption.
According to statistics from the Tongcheng Research Institute, due to the impact of local tourism policies and consumption potential, as well as the promotion of consumers in lower-tier cities, the growth rate of hotel bookings in second-tier and below cities in China during May Day in 2023 is much higher than that in first-tier and new first-tier cities.
It is not difficult to find that short ** and live broadcast have become one of the most popular ways to express content, and the impact of content and social platforms on the tourism industry is becoming more and more obvious.
The honey of A, the arsenic of B. This is good news for Douyin and Kuaishou, but it is a status quo worth being wary of for OTA platforms with more tool attributes such as Ctrip, Tongcheng, and Meituan.
According to Fastdata data, in 2021, Ctrip accounted for 363%, plus its Qunar, the overall share reaches about 50%. Meituan Travel, Tongcheng Travel and Fliggy accounted for respectively. 3%, belonging to the second echelon of the industry.
Whether this pattern will change depends on how the offensive and defensive momentum of the two sides develops.
"Good brothers" become "strong opponents".
There are no eternal friends, only eternal interests", *The tourism market is interpreting this "truth".
The participation of short content platforms in the cultural tourism industry is a gradual process. In the past, content platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou and OTA platforms were still close "good brothers".
Content platforms such as Douyin were in a period of rapid growth at the time, and it was a smooth business path to accumulate traffic and then find ways to monetize. Douyin is responsible for content dissemination, attracting users, and playing a role of "diversion", while OTA platforms such as Ctrip have built-in mini programs in Douyin to be responsible for subsequent transactions.
One side has traffic, one side has products, and the two sides hit it off and cooperate wholeheartedly.
In the past two years, content platforms have lengthened the layout chain and have become a strong opponent of OTA platforms. When Douyin and Kuaishou have grown into national APPs and hold a traffic pool that is close to saturation, they are naturally no longer willing to play the role of "drainage tools", but to build a closed loop of transactions, complete the monetization channels, and begin to "invade" the base camp of OTA.
In March 2023, Douyin Life Service launched a support policy for wine and tourism merchants; In May, Douyin Life Service announced the launch of the "Calendar Room" function, which supports users to make timely reservations; In July, the hotel tourism was further upgraded to a first-level department under life services, parallel to the in-store business. These measures are strengthening the OTA attribute of Douyin and narrowing the distance between it and the best businessmen.
Not to be outdone, Kuaishou has also begun to introduce OTA partners to access the related hospitality products under these platforms. In May 2023, Kuaishou launched the "Every City Has a Hand" 100-city linkage cultural tourism project to support cultural tourism content with tens of billions of traffic.
Accelerating the pace of competition has advantages and disadvantages.
The content platform gives full play to its influence on a large number of users, and attracts the attention of a large number of users and stimulates their willingness to travel in the form of short, live broadcast and other content, as well as accurate recommendation technology. At the same time, the platform will also launch a series of supportive actions, such as Douyin providing tickets and hotel booking functions on the personal homepages of wine and tourism merchants, and making Douyin's own play lists and other products.
In contrast, the content social platform is mainly in the form of short ** and live content, which is more immersive than the traditional **, and at the same time, it uses a more accurate recommendation mechanism to change the previous "people looking for goods" into "goods looking for people", in the process of users brushing short ** and watching live broadcasts, it attracts and stimulates potential user demand, which to a certain extent belongs to "making something out of nothing" and creating increments.
Although this process can also form a closed-loop link of "planting-consumption-fulfillment", the sales are mainly third-party products, and the whole model focuses on cutting into the sales link, making product recommendations and bringing goods, and its logic of "finding people for goods" complements each other with the search mode of the OTA platform.
On the supply side, the supply of the upstream of the hospitality market is still in the hands of established OTAs such as Ctrip and Tongcheng, while Douyin and Kuaishou are still lacking in product richness. At the same time, the fulfillment link of wine and tourism products is long, focusing on service and experience, and short platforms such as Douyin mainly make efforts, and will face problems such as imperfect verification links and low write-off rates in the follow-up performance links.
Returning to the essence of user experience, cultural tourism products as "non-standard products", highly coordinated hotels, scenic spots, local agencies and other links, if you can't control the "back link" service, it will hurt the actual experience of consumers, only to grasp the traffic, is far from enough.
Obviously, content platforms still have a long way to go to shake up the landscape of an industry.
Moat Defense
In 1993, Warren Buffett first proposed the concept of "moat" and gradually extended its connotation - based on the ability of the "moat" to widen and the invulnerability as the main criterion for judging a great enterprise. In this way, the moat of an enterprise is its most important, stable and lasting competitive advantage, that is, the industry barrier.
In the face of the new situation, how to regain attention and consolidate the moat at the same time is the main task of the OTA platform.
Ctrip, Tongcheng, and Fliggy naturally don't want to become "ticket-buying tools", and in the face of a group of enemies, there are two main counterattacks:On the one hand, make up for the shortcomings and strengthen the content drainage, and on the other hand, strengthen the long board and consolidate the supply side.
In the era of grass planting, content has become an important medium that closely connects both sides of supply and demand, planting grass**, short** and AIGC, the form of content continues to evolve, from Zibo barbecue to Harbin explosion, you can strongly feel the strong role of these content for the tourism industry.
In 2019, Ctrip began to focus on content, recruiting travel experts, and incubating platform KOLs. Later, he tasted the sweetness of the explosive content, Liang Jianzhang personally went into battle, and appeared in the live broadcast room with goods in a variety of disguises, and the unique "boss live broadcast" swiped the whole network.
In 2023, Ctrip will launch the travel vertical model "Ctrip Ask" to provide users with more comprehensive travel decisions. Now open the Ctrip app, and you can see the entrance to the live broadcast, word-of-mouth list, and hot list in the **location**. The information flow below, there is no shortage of interesting short ** works, and the content can also be recommended according to the address, as well as close to the current hot spots.
After Meituan also increased its live broadcast, the official live broadcast room and some wine and tourism businesses have started to normalize live broadcasts and sell wine and tourism
Ctrip, Tongcheng, Fliggy information flow page".
This is the logic of "planting grass", according to the user's information flow and search, recommend products that may be of interest to the user, which can allow users to quickly find the service they want and reduce the cost of decision-making.
In addition, tourism is a low-profit, high-cost industry in the final analysis, mainly through the high-frequency consumption of stable tourists, only relying on the huge industrial chain to form business access barriers, in order to ensure service quality and achieve long-term operation.
A more complete closed-loop chain is still in the hands of old OTA platforms such as Ctrip and Fliggy, which has always been an inherent advantage.
For example, Ctrip has been strengthening its self-operation and integrating first-class business resources to enhance its own voice power, and launched its self-operated service SOP, industry standards and service digitalization system last year.
This will undoubtedly help improve the efficiency and quality of the service:On the one hand, it can rely on its own data precipitation to purchase differentiated product portfolios from leading companies; On the other hand, it can effectively simplify management costs, improve gross profit margins, and standardize service content to maximize service quality.
Tongcheng and Fliggy also have their own actions, just like Cheng, they are expanding the membership system, strengthening offline store customer acquisition, and vigorously exploring the sinking market. Fliggy consolidates its platform model, ensuring the richness of high-end products with the same rights and prices as brand owners, and vigorously recruiting small and medium-sized merchants to expand the ** pool.
It is far more important to be strong than to suppress your opponents. In the past ten years of development, OTA platforms are now overcoming obstacles in the fierce competition, deeply cultivating their own fundamentals, bringing a better user experience, and can consolidate their moats and temporarily remain invincible.
Conclusion
Judging from the current situation, "platform content" has become a new competitive trend, but content and traffic are not the only answer, and products and services must eventually return to user experience.
On various social platforms, users share memorable travel journeys, but there is also a variety of "stepping on pits" experience, which is due to the lack of high-quality fulfillment service capabilities. In order to transform the traffic advantage, the content platform needs to break out of the logical framework of pure traffic and participate in the deeper performance services of the industry.
The long-term dynamic changes in market demand, and the competitive landscape will not always remain the same.