This original article is from WeChat***dt Business Observation, ID: DTCAIJING; Text: Zhang Chenyang Data: Zhang Chenyang, Design: Qi Tonghui Operation: Su Hongrui, Producer: Li Jingyu.
This winter, tourism continues to be hot, Xiaomei of the DT editorial department has plans to travel during the Spring Festival, she compared several platforms and unexpectedly found that booking a hotel on Douyin, the price is cheaper than other platforms.
After that, she decided to make Douyin one of the platforms for booking hotels for her travel.
Judging from the data, it is true that more and more people are using Douyin to buy tickets for hotels and attractions.
According to the "2023 Douyin Life Service Wine and Tourism Hotel Industry Report" released by Giant Engine, compared with January 2023, the number of hotel merchants' ** group coupons increased by 92%, and the number of orders brought by hotel live broadcast increased by 9581%.
In fact, since 2023, Douyin Local Life has spent more money and traffic on the hospitality business through platform subsidies, marketing activities and other means (mainly referring to tourism projects such as hotel accommodation and attraction tickets, hereinafter referred to as hospitality and tourism).
LatePost reported a set of data: "Douyin Local Life's real turnover target in 2023 is close to 400 billion yuan." Among them, the target of in-store and hospitality business is 290 billion yuan, which is close to the level of Meituan's related business in 2021. ”
According to Meituan's financial report, the transaction value of Meituan's catering takeaway in 2021 was 7020600 million yuan, the revenue ratio of food delivery and in-store, hotel and wine tourism is roughly 3:1, so it can be estimated that the transaction value of Meituan's in-store, hotel and wine tourism is roughly close to Douyin's business target for local life in 2023. ）
Although Douyin has never officially released a clear figure, judging from the information of different calibers, Douyin is focusing on wine tourism, trying to grab the cake from the mouths of OTA platforms such as Ctrip and Meituan.
OTA stands for Online TR**el Agency, which is the collective name of **hotel travel ticketing and other reservation system platforms).
So, how is Douyin Wine Tourism doing?
Let's start with the product side: What kind of products does Douyin Wine Tourism provide? **How is it?
At present, there are two booking modes on the Douyin platform, one is "hotel reservation", which is basically the same as the page of other OTA platforms, and you can directly select the check-in time and the corresponding room type, and it is the same as the ** of the OTA platform.
The other is **route, that is, "discount**", the user first buys ** coupons through the live broadcast room, short**, etc., and then privately messages the merchant to make an appointment for a specific check-in time after placing an order.
Douyin Offers** and Hotel Booking Page Home Inn - Shanghai Nanjing Road Pedestrian Street Huanghe Road Branch) "DT Business Observer" checked the top 10 hotels with sales on Douyin in December last year**, and found that except for Hilton, which is relatively expensive, the others are all economy hotels: Hanting, Homeinns, All Seasons, and Orange.
Because most** are x consecutive nights, it is more affordable to spread it out evenly according to the number of days. For example, Hanting Hotel**, which has the highest monthly sales, costs 498 yuan for 3 nights, which is equivalent to only 166 yuan for one night.
Luxury hotels also have ***
Taking Atlantis Sanya, which has good sales on Douyin, as an example, comparing **products and non** products with the same time period and the same room type, we found that——
If the non-** price is used as the official price reference, Douyin is actually similar to Meituan's strategy:Cheaper options** are available in addition to the normal hotel booking service, but these are limited in length of stay, length of stay, and room type.
For example, the supreme sea view room provided by Meituan is only 3188 yuan per night, which is 800 yuan cheaper than non-** products. The "sea view room + double park play" provided by Douyin is more than 500 yuan cheaper than non-** products.
The essence of "preferential **" is to buy coupons, people first place an order to buy coupons, and then find the merchant to make an appointment for the check-in time, which can be refunded at any time before the determined time, and will be automatically refunded when it expires.
Douyin's style of play in the wine brigade is similar to its initial entry into catering:
First use the subsidy policy to attract service providers and hospitality merchants to settle in, and then use a large number of low-price ** drainage to attract people, so that people can gradually form the cognition of "eating, drinking, and having fun on Douyin", and then gradually raise prices to achieve a virtuous circle.
If you only look at GMV, Douyin Wine Tourism has developed rapidly in the past two years.
According to BOCOM International's **, Douyin's market share in wine and tourism will reach 4% in 2024, which is not a large number, but it is about to catch up with Fliggy, which has been cultivated for a long time.
However, the wine tourism is different from other industries, in addition to GMV, the main assessment index to measure the wine tourism business is GTV, and the write-off flow GTV = turnover GMV * write-off rate.
In other words, as long as someone buys ** coupons, even if they are not used and refunded later, the GMV will increase, but after the purchase, go to the corresponding hotel attractions for verification, and GTV will be generated, and the latter is the real effective conversion.
This is also one of the important challenges that Douyin Wine Tourism is currently facing.
According to the data of Jiuqian Zhongtai, Meituan's write-off rate is more than 85%, and the overall write-off rate of Douyin life services (on-site catering + on-site comprehensive + wine tourism) is only about 60%, according to industry practice, the actual write-off rate of on-site catering and in-store comprehensive is generally higher than that of wine tourism, that is, the actual write-off rate of Douyin wine tourism is lower than 60%.
In-store integration refers to the in-store business based on service experience, such as bathing, massage, KTV, nail art, etc.).
The survey data of Yibang Power in July last year was even lower: wine and tourism are the lowest write-off rate among the three main businesses of Douyin life services, and the write-off rate of orders from wine and tourism merchants at this stage is below 30%.
Why is the actual write-off rate of Douyin so low compared to Meituan, which is also low price**? One possible reason is:
Whether it's Ctrip, Tongcheng or Meituan, it's all search logic, people only open the app when they have a clear demand for tourism accommodation, and directly search for the target place and check-in time; And many orders on Douyin are short, and people are stimulated to be interested and complete orders at the moment of swiping, which is essentially impulsive consumption.
And because the consumption decision of tourism products is relatively complex, it is a scenario that requires a high degree of offline fulfillment, and there is a great uncertainty in the middle from brushing short ** - being planted - placing an order to buy coupons - going offline for verification, and the order order order brought by the "search" mode with clear demand and straight to the theme is more likely to be written off.
The report of "City Boundary" also mentioned: "What really troubles Meituan is that Douyin's 'search' is the threat of Douyin's 'search' to Meituan's shelf marketing position." ”
Judging from the distribution of accommodation orders** released by the Giant Engine Research Institute, in the first 9 months of 2023, the number of bookings generated by short**+ live broadcasts and searches is about the same, or even higher.
In fact, in the face of Douyin's strong entry, traditional OTA platforms such as Meituan and Ctrip have also launched live broadcasts one after another, increasing content planting. But in terms of content alone, there are also differences between Douyin and traditional OTA platforms.
Taking Ctrip as an example, Ctrip-related industry insiders explained the difference between the two to DT Business Observer
Douyin is a content platform, and the core destination is to watch what users want to see;
Ctrip launches content based on user transaction data and industry data, knowing what types of hotels users are interested in and which flights are now resumed, so the starting point of Ctrip's content is what kind of products will be liked by users, and then to produce content, and the content directly refers to the transaction. ”
DT Business Observer" checked the Ctrip live broadcast room and Douyin short** (with travel products**) have similar findings: Ctrip's live broadcast room is basically explaining the tourism product itself, how the route is, how the hotel is, **how, and Douyin's grass planting is short**, many of which are through the personal experience of the influencer, giving people more sensory stimulation.
If you want to win the wine and tourism business, Douyin not only has to compete for users, but also for wine and tourism businesses.
In the past few years, the rivals of Douyin Wine Tourism, Ctrip, Meituan, Tongcheng and other platforms, after long-term accumulation, have formed fixed cooperation and even deep binding with hotels and tourist attractions, and have also monopolized the bargaining power of most of the best merchants in the market.
For example, one of Meituan's strategies in the scenic spot ticket business is "underwriting": "Give the scenic spot a fixed fee, and within a specific period of time, Meituan will complete all the ticket work of the scenic spot, and Meituan will be responsible for the profit and loss, and it has nothing to do with the scenic spot." ”
In 2023, Meituan will strengthen its control over this resource: "In some scenic spots, as long as Meituan is exclusively underwritten, Meituan will directly prepay almost 80% of the underwriting money to the scenic spots." In the past, there has never been such a big deal in grabbing resources. ”
This means that Douyin needs to give more subsidies or bring higher conversions to attract hospitality merchants to settle in and launch.
In this regard, Douyin's approach is:1Gives the flow skew; 2.Make concessions on commissions (software service rates).
In May 2022, the Douyin platform updated the "Software Service Fee Policy", clarifying that the commission rate for wine and tourism merchants to enter Douyin is 45%, which is lower than Meituan and Ctrip - Meituan has three grades, and Ctrip's hotel booking commission has three grades.
But another problem is that if wine and tourism merchants want to sell goods on Douyin, it is almost inevitable to do content operation
Wine tourism, especially the tourism business, brings people a sense of audio-visual impact and experience in a short ** scene is far stronger than the traditional OTA platform, Zibo barbecue, Harbin tourism on Douyin explosion has been able to illustrate this.
And finding the right talent to cooperate, rely on content to get out of the circle and operate well, is a threshold thing.
For those small and medium-sized businesses, if they want to convert on Douyin, they usually need to find a third-party service provider who is familiar with Douyin's marketing mechanism and traffic rules to help them find, connect with talents, produce content, distribute, stream, etc., and finally, the third-party service provider will extract commissions from the verified transaction amount.
Therefore, small and medium-sized businesses have to bear additional expenses such as agency operation and talent pit fees. The combination of multiple fees, coupled with a low write-off rate, makes Douyin not necessarily more cost-effective than OTA platforms with higher commissions.
A set of data from IFC can support this conclusion:
From March 2021 to March 2023, the top 10% of the top 10% merchants of Douyin wine tourism won nearly 60% of orders, and this figure is only 35% in Meituan.
It can be said that compared with Meituan, Douyin wine and tourism orders are more seriously monopolized by head merchants
The opponent is very strong and there are many difficulties, but Douyin is investing more and more in wine tourism.
In May last year, Douyin Life Service officially announced the launch of the calendar room function (the "Hotel Reservations" page above), which was seen as a key move by Douyin to attack OTAs
This is equivalent to booking a hotel on Douyin, which is no longer limited to live broadcast rooms and short **, but can be directly searched and booked on Douyin when consumer needs are clear, just like the OTA platform.
For merchants, the orders generated by the "calendar room" will also be more certain than the interests planted.
In July last year, Douyin Life Service adjusted its departmental structure: "The wine and tourism business has been upgraded to a subordinate first-level department, which is parallel to the in-store business (including in-store catering and in-store integration). Prior to this, the three businesses of wine and tourism, in-store catering, and in-store integration were in a parallel position. ”
In other words, Douyin has raised the "wine tourism" business to a higher level than "in-store catering".
Why does Douyin unswervingly spend a lot of effort to do wine tourism?
Naturally, because the wine and tourism business is highly profitable, it is a very profitable business.
Meituan is a good example.
Meituan's overall strategy is to treat high-frequency consumption but low-profit or even money-losing businesses as traffic**, such as takeaway, bicycle sharing, shared power bank, etc., these businesses basically cover the entire daily consumption scene, and when people establish APP usage habits, it is easy to generate consumption in high-profit hotel and tourism business.
Before 2022, Meituan's main business was three: food delivery; Arrivals, hotels and hotels; After the second quarter of 2022, Meituan re-split and recombined its food and beverage delivery, on-site hotels and tourism, and "Meituan flash sales, B&Bs and transportation ticketing" in "New Business and Others" into "core local commerce", and can no longer see the revenue from "on-site hotels and hospitality and tourism" separately.
Therefore, we can see from Meituan's 2021 financial report that the revenue and profit of each business are extracted:
In 2021, Meituan's food delivery business contributed more than half of its revenue, with a profit margin of only 64%。The revenue of in-store, hotel and wine tourism is only about one-third of that of catering takeaway, but it contributes 14 billion yuan in profits, with a profit margin of 433%。It can be said that it is a "piece of fat" that the platform must compete for.
Of course, not only to make money, Douyin's greater ambition to do wine tourism is to make itself a "universal entrance" for users on the mobile phone.
In 2022, Zhang Nan, CEO of Douyin Group, talked about her extreme imagination of Douyin at an internal meeting:
Users can not only open Douyin to swipe content when they are bored; It can also be used for shopping, choosing restaurants, making travel plans, buying air tickets and booking hotels. ”
It is also the common direction of many actions on Douyin in the past two years:
* In the consumption scene, it not only has to be interested in planting grass, but also builds shelves like Taotian, enriches commodity categories, and introduces big brands; **In the consumption scene, it has increased its investment in catering, in-store and wine tourism to grab the business of "Meituan".
However, in the face of the menacing Douyin, Meituan and Ctrip have made ** one after another.
In response to the shortcomings in content, Meituan set up an independent live broadcast team in the fourth quarter of 2022 and invested a lot of resources: including the homepage entrance of more than 50% of users, the traffic skew of the live broadcast period, and the fee reduction and exemption for the broadcast brands.
On January 17 this year, Ctrip reached a cooperation with Kuaishou: Ctrip, which has a large number of wine and tourism resources, has successively connected the ** chain of products such as attraction tickets to the Kuaishou platform, and Kuaishou provides it with traffic boosts, talent cooperation and other rights and interests.
Everyone has bottlenecks, but no one wants to lose the fat in their mouths. Douyin still has a long way to go if it wants to grab a bigger cake.