Text|Zinc Finance Lu Shiming.On February 1, according to a number of ** reports, the official website, APP, and small program of Donkey Mother Travel Network can no longer be used normally, and WeChat has been suspended for several months. Zinc Finance found that its official service account was last updated in May 2023, and its official subscription account was last updated in December 2023.Edit|Gale.
In addition, it is reported that most of the employees of Donkey Mother have been disbanded and cannot book products, and only a few employees remain.
As the potential stock of the tourism market and the platform with the largest market share of "peripheral travel", Donkey Mother has continuously strengthened the integration of scenic spot tickets, film and television IP + tourism + Internet around the construction of O2O system and brand building, showing great potential.
Who would have thought that the donkey mother would come to this point?
Although the "fall" of the donkey mother is inseparable from the impact of the epidemic, the real core is that its business model is too monotonous and does not understand how to keep pace with the times. At the same time, in a state of high leverage and tight cash flow, the default of the partner has become a fatal blow.
At a time when the tourism market is recovering, the endangered donkey mother has also sounded the alarm for other OTA platforms.
Failed to seize the opportunity of market recoveryThe past year has seen a strong recovery in the travel market. It can be seen that people's willingness to travel has been significantly enhanced, the major scenic spots have reproduced the scene of crowds, and the "fireworks" of many urban blocks have risen.
Even the cold winter can't stop people's determination to travel, and the rapid growth of ice and snow tourism cities represented by Harbin is the best proof.
According to the China Tourism Academy**, the tourism market will be prosperous, orderly, integrated and innovative in 2023, with outstanding performance in many indicators such as the number of trips and tourism consumption, and the number of domestic tourists will reach 54 throughout the year0.7 billion, domestic tourism revenue will reach 52 trillion yuan, recovering to 90% and 91% of 2019 levels, respectively.
Specific to industry players, many tourism companies will also turn losses into profits in 2023.
For example, according to the latest performance forecast released by Utrust Tourism, Utrust Tourism is expected to achieve a net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies of 23 million yuan to 34.5 million yuan in 2023, turning losses into profits year-on-year.
Similarly, CYTS is also expected to turn around its losses in 2023, with a net profit attributable to owners of the parent company of 1$8.4 billion.
In addition, according to the China Tourism Academy, the number of domestic tourism tourists and income will increase significantly in 2024. By 2024, the number of domestic tourists in China will exceed 6 billion, and tourism-related revenue will exceed 6 trillion yuan.
It's a pity that this booming upward market may not have a chance with the donkey mother.
Being on the same track, the same waist platform, why can others survive the difficult moment, and re-usher in the light and get new growth, while the donkey mother did not seize the opportunity of market recovery and completely collapsed?In the final analysis, there are major defects in its own operation, and its core competitiveness is not strong enough.
Interestingly, Hong Qinghua, the founder of Donkey Mother and chairman of Jingyu Group, has previously expressed some quite positive remarks, such as: "The three-year epidemic has indeed had a great impact on the cultural tourism industry, but we cultural travelers did not lie down, but squatted." The purpose of squatting is to jump higher. ”
He also said: "Everyone should work together and not be eliminated in the spring." ”
Maybe Hong Qinghua didn't expect that after the arrival of spring, the donkey mother not only did not jump up, but fell down, and she became the one who was eliminated.
The so-called OTA, translated as ** travel agency, mainly sells travel-related products and services to customers online. These products and services may include hotels, flights, travel**, activities and car rentals.
Of course, these products and services are not the platform's own capabilities, but only resell these services to users as a third party.
To put it mildly, OTA connects upstream businesses with downstream consumers, and OTA is an online intermediary.
The core competitiveness of an OTA platform lies in the user's basic disk, the ability of the first chain, and the level of products and services.
Compared with the capabilities of the latter parts, the user base is obviously more important for the "intermediary". A good user base ensures the trading volume of the "intermediary" and also ensures that it draws more commissions.
At the beginning of its establishment, Donkey Mother took scenic tickets as the entry point, and took the lead in applying first-class technology to scenic spot ticket business in the country to realize electronic ticket booking and digital customs clearance. Thanks to its accurate positioning, Donkey Mother quickly accumulated a large number of users and stood out in the ** tourism market.
In 2015, Donkey Mother became the first in the OTA industry in the coverage of 5A scenic spots, and it has become a practice to join hands with scenic spots to create festivals, and Donkey Mother's innovative Donkey Mother has created a self-service tour product service system of "hotel + ticket + X" has become the first object of imitation by tourism enterprises.
More than that, driven by the power of capital, in December 2015, Shanghai Jingyu Culture Communication Co., Ltd., the parent company of Donkey Mama Travel Network, was successfully listed and successfully won the title of "China's first self-guided tour O2O share".
By 2016, the transaction scale of China's first tourism and vacation market reached 926900 million yuan, of which the donkey mother platform has grown by leaps and bounds, and the transaction volume has risen to 7.9 billion yuan, accounting for 8 percent of the market share2%, ranking fourth behind Tuniu, Ctrip and Tongcheng.
After the highlight, the donkey mother did not enter the road of advancement, but began to take a sharp turn.
On January 3, 2017, Jingyu Culture, the parent company of Donkey Mama, suddenly announced that it would be delisted, which was only a year after its listing. However, in the past year, Jingyu Culture has completed two private placements, with a total financing of 11800 million.
After the privatization, everything was going on as normal, but there were more and more "problems" of the donkey mother, among which the "arrears" were the most prominent, and they continued to intensify in the following years.
On a large scale, the reasons for the decline of donkey mothers are not complicated. First, compared with the rich services and business methods of Ctrip, Fliggy and other platforms such as "air tickets and hotels + live streaming + N", Donkey Mother still relies heavily on tickets in the later stage, and the service is too monotonous.
Second, Donkey Mother does not have enough high-quality content to attract new users and retain old users, resulting in a shrinkage of the basic market.
Of course, the root cause of the above two problems is "not enough money".
In response, the broken cash flow donkey mother said that its partners and some companies owed more than 2 billion yuan to the parent company of the donkey mother "Feidon Bay", which was difficult to recover for a while, in addition, some banks withdrawed, cut off loans or disguised loans "Feidon Bay" more than 500 million yuan, resulting in the company's cash flow difficulties.
In short, a large number of "triangular debts" are the direct cause of the breakdown of the donkey mother's funds and the suspension of operations.
The triangular debt is not difficult to understand, the partner owes the donkey mother's money, and the donkey mother owes the bank's money, if the partner does not repay the money, then the donkey mother will naturally not pay back the bank's money.
In order to protect their legitimate rights and interests, banks will generally reduce their own risks by withdrawing loans and cutting off loans.
It is difficult to verify whether the partner owes the donkey mother 2 billion, but Zinc Finance found through Tianyan that 10 banks, including Huaxia Bank, Bank of Ningbo, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, and Agricultural Bank of China, have filed a lawsuit against "Shanghai Feidon Bay Cultural Communication Co., Ltd., and applied for property freezing and enforcement.
Among them, the latest legal proceedings are dated January 29, and the plaintiff, Huaxia Bank Co., Ltd. *** Shanghai Branch, sued four companies associated with Donkey Mother, and the execution target is about 19.5 billion yuan.
From this point of view, the closure of Donkey Mother's accounts and domain names on various platforms is most likely the result of the bank's lawsuit.
In modern business, all parties are working together more and more closely, and "online intermediaries" such as Donkey Mama are very dependent on cash flow under high leverage. This common "triangular debt" relationship, in which there is a default in one link, will cause a lot of risks, and transmit to the entire interest chain.
It is worth noting that in this cash flow crisis, it stands to reason that Jingyu Culture, the parent company of Donkey Mother, should stand up and do something, but so far Jingyu Culture has not had a clear attitude.
In fact, there is no "surplus food" in the scenery culture.
Since its delisting in 2017, Jingyu Culture has not only suffered losses, but also invested in a lot of "money-burning" fields in a loss-making state, such as virtual digital humans, digital assets, AR, VR, MR, XR and other cutting-edge technology products and services, and these products and services are difficult to achieve a sharp increase in profits in the short term.
With partners not paying back, banks forcing debts, and parent companies being unable to subsidize, it is foreseeable that if the donkey mother cannot get a blood transfusion from a new investor as soon as possible, "dissolution" will be the only answer.