Author: Pan Yan
Producer: Global Finance
At the end of 2023, Harbin Ice City will "take over" Zibo barbecue and ignite a fire in winter.
At the same time, local cultural and tourism bureaus have made big moves, setting off a national cultural tourism publicity boom. Behind the prosperity is the release of residents' travel demand, which stimulates the strong recovery of the entire tourism market.
Statistics from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism show that in 2023, the number of domestic travelers will reach 489.1 billion person-times, a year-on-year increase of 933%, and the total cost of domestic tourists traveling is 491 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 1403%。
Against this backdrop, Ctrip took the lead in issuing a good start to the year, and recently disclosed its financial results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2023.
In the first year after the opening up of the epidemic, Ctrip achieved a magnificent turnaround, and its annual operating income reached a record high, with a year-on-year increase of 12220% to 4456.2 billion yuan. At the same time, the net profit exceeded the threshold of 10 billion yuan for the first time, a year-on-year increase of 63168% to 1000.2 billion yuan.
Since the disclosure of its earnings report on February 22, Ctrip's Hong Kong stock has risen for three consecutive days, with an increase of more than 13%, and hit a record high of HK$371** on February 26. However, it is still difficult to judge whether the carnival can continue, and as of February 28, Ctrip's stock price has reached 349HK$4.
survived the darkest moment, but the stone that pressed on Liang Jianzhang's heart was difficult to really let go.
Overall, in 2023, Ctrip's four major businesses will all grow by more than 100% year-on-year.
Among them, the accommodation reservation business increased by 133 year-on-year20% to 1725.7 billion yuan, and the transportation ticketing business increased by 123 percent year-on-year47% to 1844.3 billion yuan, an increase of 293 year-on-year in travel and vacation business98% to 314 billion yuan, business travel management business increased by 108 year-on-year90% to 2254 billion yuan.
However, in the context of a low base in 2022, the market is most concerned about whether Ctrip can return to stable growth after coming out of the shadow of the public health incident.
From 2016 to 2019, Ctrip's accommodation booking business grew at a compound annual growth rate of 2274, the compound annual growth rate of transportation ticketing business reached 1649％。
Compared with the performance in 2019, Ctrip's accommodation reservation business in 2023 will increase by 27% year-on-year69%, and the transportation ticketing business increased by 32% year-on-year89%, which has returned to pre-pandemic growth levels.
It is worth noting that in the financial report, Ctrip pointed out that "the overseas hotel and air ticket booking business has only recovered to 80% of the level of the same period before the epidemic in 2019". It can be seen that Ctrip's growth is mainly due to the obvious recovery of the domestic travel industry, and the unprecedented enthusiasm of residents, but the overseas business is still in the recovery period.
However, many voices are worried that the cultural and tourism industry may fall silent after experiencing "revenge consumption", which still needs to be tested by time.
It is worth noting that behind the outstanding performance in 2023 may be the short-term benefits pursued at the expense of the "customer-centric" concept.
At the end of January 2024, during the Spring Festival travel period, a related entry of "12306 sold out, Ctrip has tickets" was on the hot search list.
Some consumers found that the tickets were sold out in 12,306 seconds when they went on sale, but the Ctrip platform showed that there were tickets, but they may need to increase the price to buy them. For example, during the pre-sale period, Ctrip provides users with solutions such as purchasing a full ticket, buying a few more stops, and changing a second-class seat to a first-class seat, indicating that the probability of success in grabbing tickets will be doubled.
At the head of the Spring Festival, a group of consumers who were suffering because they couldn't buy tickets saw Ctrip's behavior like a "scalper", which immediately caused great dissatisfaction, and they left messages on 12306 asking for explanations.
In response, 12306 responded that it confirmed that there was no so-called priority ticket purchase right on any third-party platform, and the railway department had never authorized it. According to Ctrip insiders, this kind of ticket grabbing was achieved through technical means.
Looking back on recent years, Ctrip's "strange operations" have appeared frequently, such as big data killing, booking hotels or air tickets **higher than official reservations**, sales of value-added services, etc., which are often complained by the public about "ugly appearance".
As of February 28, 2024, the cumulative number of complaints related to Ctrip has reached 63,415 on the Black Cat complaint network, of which 2,673 have been filed in the past 30 days, with an average daily complaint volume of about 89.
Black Cat Complaints.
Under the massive number of complaints, not only is it difficult to protect the rights and interests of consumers, but also the right of businesses to operate independently is also not respected. In fact, ** merchants have a long-standing grudge against Ctrip.
According to relevant information, Ctrip's retail cooperation with travel agencies began in 2015, but since 2020, Ctrip has begun to cut the retail sector and close new applications for the retail business of group tours. Until May 2022, Ctrip announced the implementation of the "retail to **" policy, and will successively close the entry cooperation, renewal, operation and maintenance and ** sales of domestic retail models of route (group tours), indicating the complete abandonment of the retail model.
If travel agencies want to continue to cooperate with Ctrip in the future, they must exist in the form of ** merchants, which will inevitably lose a certain degree of autonomy for merchants.
Under the retail model, Ctrip only provides a platform, and merchants face consumers directly, undertake pre-sale, in-sale and after-sales services, and complete the signing of contracts and invoices, etc., and the merchants have a high degree of autonomy. Under the mode, the merchant sells the tourism products to Ctrip, and Ctrip sells them at a certain percentage of the markup, and undertakes the contract and invoice work.
In other words, Ctrip has eliminated the possibility of direct connection between merchants and consumers in the early stage of communication, and the commission for ** merchants has also been continuously increased.
In such a situation, the interests of retailers cannot be guaranteed, and years of advertising investment, word-of-mouth effect, and product accumulation are all in vain. But in the face of the more powerful Ctrip, retailers' complaints are so light that they don't matter enough to be heeded.
It's just that the compromise from retail to ** is exchanged for Ctrip's further "hegemonic exploitation".
Some merchants revealed that after turning into a ** business, Ctrip raised the commission fee, and the commission for multi-day tours rose from 9% to 15%, and the commission for one-day tours increased from 8% to 12%.
Ctrip's commission adjustment, no negotiation, only notice".
At the same time, it will also charge the platform usage fee to the first business, etc., it is reported that the first 10,000 yuan, the specific cost needs to be determined according to different products and cooperation methods.
Not only that, but the "T+7" settlement policy, which Ctrip touted in its early days to attract traditional travel agencies, has also changed, extending the promised settlement period to 45 days.
You must know that in 2022, when the tourism industry is in a downturn, for travel agencies that are constrained by cash flow, the extension of the settlement cycle is nothing more than a straw that breaks the camel's back.
However, in 2019, Ctrip launched a loan program "Chengxin Chain" to solve the financing problems of small and micro enterprises, using Ctrip's unsettled funds as collateral, with loan interest rates ranging from 7% to 18%.
It has been reported that very few people can get the minimum interest, and more likely it is at the level of 14%-15%. Many businesses lamented that for small and micro enterprises in the cold winter of the industry, the interest rate is too high.
Ctrip's long settlement period and disrupting merchants' cash flow, while at the same time having enough funds to take out loans and charge high interest rates, is not a good calculation.
Looking back at Ctrip's development history of more than 20 years, you will find that its "domineering" gene has long been engraved in the blood.
In 2012, Ctrip suffered the biggest crisis since its establishment, and Ctrip was powerless to cope with the continuous encroachment of competitors such as Qunar and eLong.
The status of the rivers and lakes is difficult to protect, and Liang Jianzhang, who retired to study at that time, decided to launch a round of 500 million US dollars ** war, which hit eLong hard.
$500 million, almost equivalent to Ctrip's total revenue in 2011, but the final effect was significant. In 2012, Ctrip's profit was 65.5 billion yuan, down 39% year-on-year, but eLong's profit in the same period was only 500,000 yuan, down 98% year-on-year7%。
Kill 1,000 enemies and injure 800 yourself, but Ctrip's lost share has gradually recovered. In 2011, Ctrip's market share fell from 52% to 41%, and in 2012** it rebounded to 47% after the war.
However, the stone in Liang Jianzhang's heart did not land, and in the face of still strong competitors, Liang Jianzhang built his own OTA empire through capital means.
In April 2014, Ctrip took a US$15 million** stake in Tuniu, and Tuniu appointed Liang Jianzhang, chairman and CEO of Ctrip, as its new director. In the same month, Ctrip invested 200 million yuan in Tongcheng Tourism, becoming the second largest shareholder after Tongcheng's management team. In May 2015, Ctrip became the largest shareholder of eLong.
In October 2015, in the face of repeated proposals to acquire Qunar to no avail, Liang Jianzhang directly bypassed Zhuang Chenchao and obtained 45% of Qunar's total voting rights from Robin Li through equity exchange with 25% of the total voting rights of Ctrip, and finally got his wish.
Gou Zhipeng, the current president of Qunar.com, once recalled that Liang Jianzhang was quite strategic. "At that time, eLong's data was of little use to Ctrip, but I bought eLong in advance to stabilize it and not interfere with Ctrip's deal. ”
Ctrip's official website.
As a result, Ctrip's "domineering" covers almost every corner of the OTA industry from burning money in the early stage to seize the market for financing, merging with competitors to dominate the market in the middle stage, and routines merchants and consumers in the later stage.
The OTA industry has been fighting for decades, but it has finally been condensed into a brief history of the "Ctrip system".
Indeed, when consumers are struggling to shop around, they don't know that Ctrip exists behind Tongcheng, Qunar, and Tuniu.
Netizens joked that even if you can bypass Ctrip, you can't bypass Ctrip.
Liang Jianzhang once said, "You can't see Ctrip's competitors with high-powered telescopes."
However, in recent years, platforms such as Meituan, Douyin, Kuaishou, and Xiaohongshu have gradually extended their tentacles to the OTA industry and used their scale advantages to exert strong influence.
Taking Xiaohongshu as an example, with its strong ability to "grow grass", it has gradually shown strong commercial value in the travel industry, and many travel agencies have chosen to post on Xiaohongshu to conduct their own diversion.
Xiaohongshu naturally wants to hold the money in his hands. In July 2022, Xiaohongshu established a tourism company - Puzhen Xiangli (Shanghai) Tourism Culture***, which is 100% owned by Xiaohongshu Technology***.
Coincidentally, in July 2023, ByteDance established Chengdu Haikuo Sky Travel Agency*** to officially enter the field of hotel tourism.
In the same month, New Oriental, which transformed into an e-commerce company, also announced its entry into the cultural tourism industry, and Beijing New Oriental Cultural Tourism was established with a registered capital of 1 billion yuan, with Yu Minhong as the legal representative and chairman, and its business scope includes tourism business and tourism development.
Some analysts said that the new platform is not large now, but it is developing very rapidly, and it also has advantages that Ctrip does not have.
The biggest feature of Douyin is the algorithm, coupled with the traffic advantage and backed by capital, doing anything can get twice the result with half the effort; The advantage of Xiaohongshu is that it has a unique grass planting model, which allows users to change their roles from audiences to participants.
In the face of these content-based players with huge traffic pools + short ** live broadcast advantages, the OTA platform can only actively change.
In fact, as early as 2019, Ctrip established MCN company "Shanghai Chengmeng Culture" to recruit travel experts and incubation platform KOLs, and from 2022 onwards, it will increase its content efforts to respond to market changes.
In addition, Fliggy has also launched a merchant live broadcast function, Mafengwo has launched a "buzz" function covering short **, and veteran players are also constantly improving the content construction of the site.
With the change of consumption trends, there are often new opportunities, which is also a new topic brought to Ctrip by the market: pay more attention to the investment of cultural tourism content, establish a good ecology with upstream merchants, and bring consumers a better experience.
After all, compared to thousands of routines, sincerity is always nirvana.
Readers are advised that this article is based on public information or relevant content provided by interviewees, and the author of Global Finance and the author of the article do not guarantee the completeness and accuracy of the relevant information. In any event, the content of this article does not constitute investment advice. The market is risky, and investment needs to be cautious! No **, plagiarism without permission!