Some people say that you should concentrate on doing one thing well and love what you do. However, one company broke this tradition by using one industry as its main line of business and achieving great success in another.
That business is Atour Hotel. is obviously a hotelier, but he has emerged in the field of home e-commerce, and the hotel business has become a "side business". What's even more amazing is that Atour has opened thousands of stores, but the owner doesn't need to invest a penny. During the mask period, the entire hotel industry was in trouble, but Atour seemed unaffected, and also became the only hotel company in China that has been profitable for three consecutive years.
While others are still struggling in their respective fields, Atour continues to achieve outstanding results. What is unique about the brand Atour?
In early 2012, Wang Haijun, who was in his 30s, sold his beloved 27T diesel version modified sports car. He no longer pursues the thrill and pleasure brought by the acceleration of sports cars, but chooses to listen to his inner voice and starts the road of entrepreneurship.
However, his choice was not just to give up a sports car, he also gave up his position as vice president of Huazhu Group (Hanting). As a tourism management major, he has been working in the hotel industry since graduation, and has worked in many traditional economy hotels such as Homeinns and Jinjiang Inn. In 2004, he joined Huazhu Group and became the core founder of the group.
As we all know, express hotels often use standardized room layouts, which are seriously homogeneous, and in order to ensure profits, they can only continue to compress costs and carry out the best war.
Wang Haijun has long been tired of the standardized hotel layout and service methods. He believes that hotels should not just provide accommodation services, but should become a way of life. He longs for a warm, happy and unique humanistic hotel.
A trip to Yunnan deeply touched Wang Haijun's heart. He came to Atour Village, a village with simple folk customs and full of happiness. This village not only impressed him, but also became the name of his future hotel**.
In August 2012, Wang Haijun registered a company called "Atour" in Chengdu and started his entrepreneurial journey.
In the beginning, the hotel industry generally pursued the standard of "sleeping comfortably and being able to access the Internet". However, Wang Haijun has already begun to ask Atour Hotel to get rid of the fast, customer-oriented, and create a satisfying experience hotel.
In Atour, instead of cold marble floors and ornate crystal chandeliers, the hotel lobby is a 24-hour library known as the "Bamboo House". Instead of asking for immediate reservation information at check-in, the front desk will hand over a hot cup of tea as soon as possible.
In order to provide the ultimate service experience, Atour has refined various services according to the 17 touchpoints of customers, and constantly surprises customers and exceeds their expectations.
In terms of catering, Atour has designed breakfast according to the characteristics of different regions, with breakfast starting at 5 a.m. and supper until 2 a.m. Whether guests are checking in for an early flight or in the middle of the night, they can enjoy the unique warmth of Atour here.
It is precisely because of this attentive service that Atour has become one of the hotels with the highest star rating in China, even surpassing the level of some five-star hotels.
Controversy abounds! Atour Hotel continues to explore IP cooperation, and the "Atour Wu" Hotel in cooperation with Wu Xiaobo, and NetEase Cloud, Guoke.com and other brands have joined hands to try to find a unique route in the market. This attempt has increased Atour's popularity and reputation to a certain extent, but it has also sparked a debate about the sustainability of IP hotels.
Under the dual influence of experiential services and IP creation, Atour Hotel's reputation and popularity have been enhanced. However, as a personalized product, IP hotels have a higher cost, with an average room rate 15% higher than that of ordinary hotels in the same area4%, and large-scale replication is limited, making it difficult to achieve high profits. As a result, Atour's listing plan has been repeatedly postponed and has fallen into confusion.
There have been some negative voices on the Internet, and criticism has been heard endlessly, such as "Wenqing can't support Atour", "Humanities, IP as decoration, it is difficult to hide Atour's emptiness", "Atour Hotel: Wandering on the road to market, trapped in IP" and other articles have emerged. Despite this, Atour is still firmly on her own path.
As early as 2014, when the number of Atour stores reached more than 30, there was a contradiction between expansion and cash flow. The rapid expansion consumed a lot of cash flow, prompting Atour to start thinking about how to scale further. At this critical moment, Wang Haijun won 20 million funds for Atour. Although this fund was originally only enough for Atour to open one store, in just a few years, Atour has opened hundreds of stores, which can almost be said to be a miracle of zero-cost store expansion.
On August 12, 2015, Atour cooperated with **.com for the first time to crowdfund hotels, with a fundraising target of 2 million yuan for the construction of new franchised stores. This cooperation provides new impetus and opportunities for the development of Atour, and also lays the foundation for its future exploration.
Late at night, the exciting story of hotel crowdfunding is quietly unfolding here. What is unusual is that this is not an investment project in the traditional sense, but a small investment amount of 2 yuan to 4999 yuan, allowing investors to participate in it, but the harvest is rich and diverse hotel rights, including hotel mattresses, stored value cards, afternoon tea and other luxury experiences. This innovative crowdfunding model is led by Atour, a leader in the hotel industry.
At one time, it was just a seemingly trivial crowdfunding, but over time, the wave of investment intensified. The initial fundraising target was set at a staggering 6.6 million yuan, far exceeding expectations, demonstrating the strong pursuit of Atour crowdfunding by hotel consumers. Since then, Atour's crowdfunding plan has been continuously upgraded, and the investment threshold has been expanded from the initial 4,999 yuan to an astonishing 30,000 yuan, and the returns have become more and more abundant.
Whenever Atour plans to open a new store, they always hang up four eye-catching crowdfunding proposals for investors to choose from. Each plan is unique and corresponds to a different target group. For example, the easiest plan is to invest only 2 yuan to participate in crowdfunding, and there is also a chance to draw a grand prize of 7888 yuan. This is not a simple investment, but also to make more people familiar with Atour and plant a seed for the future stay experience.
The second plan increases the investment amount to 299 yuan, and investors can not only enjoy a room worth 699 yuan, but also intimate breakfast and afternoon tea. The purpose behind this is to increase the overall occupancy rate of the hotel by attracting more guests.
The investment threshold for option 3 is higher, reaching 4,999 yuan, and investors will receive a membership card of the same amount and a mattress worth 8,000 yuan. This program directly targets Atour's loyal members and frequent associate members, providing a unique opportunity for membership renewal and associate membership upgrades.
The last plan, which is also the most eye-catching, requires an investment of 30,000 yuan, but can participate in the hotel's dividend plan. This is not only an investment, but also a real participation in the hotel business, and the investor will become a partner in the hotel business and share the fruits of the hotel's profits.
Atour's crowdfunding is no longer just a simple fundraising, but an interactive one full of creativity and fun. It's not just an investment, it's a heritage of the hotel's culture, so that every investor can get an unprecedented experience and return on it.
In order to reduce the investment risk, Atour promises to return the principal after three years and give an additional mattress worth 8,000 yuan, which will undoubtedly attract customers who are familiar with the Atour brand and have certain investment strength. The first two plans focus on advertising to attract new customers, while the latter two plans use crowdfunding, and this clever design has enabled Atour to achieve amazing performance.
It is reported that Atour has attracted more than 5,000 members to participate in only six crowdfunding sessions, with an average of more than 10 stays per member. Especially in the crowdfunding of the Atour Hotel project in Tianjin, it has set a crowdfunding record of 50 million in 5 hours. Such achievements, as Wang Haijun, the founder of Atour, said, "The original intention of Atour crowdfunding is not to raise funds, but to allow users to participate in the construction and investment of hotels." ”
From individual customers in the market to hotel users, and then to hotel members, Atour has become more closely connected with users. As of September 30, 2023, Atour has joined 1,080 hotels, realizing the Atour China 1,000-store plan. At the same time, Atour was successfully listed on NASDAQ on November 11, 2022, and delivered a satisfactory answer to the market.
Wang Haijun often said: "A hotel is not only a place to sleep, but also an entrance to a better lifestyle." With the development of Atour Hotel, this sentence has gradually become a reality. According to Atour's financial report for the third quarter of 2023, Atour's overall revenue reached 129.5 billion, a year-on-year increase of 93%. Behind these data, it is the result of the rapid development of Atour's retail business.
In the third quarter, Atour's retail business sales approached 30.2 billion, which is simply three times that of the previous year! This number can't help but be jaw-dropping.
Atour has more than 2,000 scene retail products, covering almost all aspects of life. And the most sought-after is the sleep product, especially the popular deep sleep pillow.
Whether it is Atour's JD.com*** or Atour Planet's Tmall***, the sales of the three pillows focusing on providing a deep sleep experience have exploded, and each of them has exceeded 100,000 sales.
In particular, the highest-selling Atour Planet Deep Sleep Memory Pillow Pro, according to the data as of November 11, 2023, the official cumulative sales have exceeded 800,000. The price of this pillow is only 309 yuan, and 800,000 pillows contribute 2400 million in sales! This number should not be underestimated. Compared with the annual sales of 2-300 million yuan of head home furnishing companies such as Fuanna and Mercury Home Textiles, Atour has unconsciously stood proudly in the head position in the pillow industry.
Why has Atour, which has always been rooted in the hotel field, be able to make waves in the home furnishing industry? This is inseparable from the impact of the rapid growth of Atour stores. Each Atour store has a display window for retail products, and each room becomes a model room for product trials.
What's even more interesting is that all Atour Gold members can choose two Atour tips services and try both products for free on the app before entering the room. The threshold for becoming an Atour Gold Card member is extremely low, and you can receive it almost for free, which means that almost all guests staying at Atour have the opportunity to become a trial of Atour Home products.
When it comes to introducing products to customers in the home furnishing industry, few companies are willing to give customers a free one-night experience. This traditional model has been subverted by Atour. For Atour, they offer more than just one night trial, but several nights, and this experience can significantly increase customer conversions. And if the product quality is excellent, the conversion rate of customers is usually not too low.
Atour skillfully combines scene and retail to amplify the value of the hotel again. Compared with the traditional home furnishing industry, the gross profit margin of the hotel industry can almost double. In the hotel industry, once there are no guests checking in after 12 p.m., that night becomes vacant and there is no profit to speak of. And during the tourist season, the rooms are fully occupied, but the hotel is not able to generate more profits. However, the home furnishing industry is different, the product will never expire, and what cannot be sold this year will continue to be sold next year; Especially with a sales model like Atour, there is no additional store sales cost, so no matter how you look at it, it is profitable.
In 2021, Atour launched its first sleep brand, Atour Planet, to expand sales of home products. The results show that when the hotel industry was in recession, Atour maintained profitability for three consecutive years, and the net profit attributable to the parent company in 2021 reached 14.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 245%. At first, it was just working hard in the hotel industry, but now Atour has surpassed the boundaries of the hotel, opened up a new battlefield, and pushed the industry competition to a higher level.
Looking back on Atour's 20 years of development, they first built their product image by providing experiential services and creating eye-catching IP hotels, then achieved rapid expansion through crowdfunding, and achieved profit growth through derivatives such as pillows. Atour has not only gained a firm foothold in the industry, but also continues to innovate and lead the development trend of the industry.
Atour Hotel, from selling hotel services to selling pillows, its target users are always those who pursue high-quality sleep. The founder, Wang Haijun, once said: "Our competitors are not competitors, but changing user needs." This sentence profoundly reveals Atour's business philosophy. Instead of focusing on competing with competitors, Atour pays more attention to how to meet the changing needs of users.
In the operation of Atour, it is no longer just about operating rooms, but also about operating spaces and people. While other hotels are still thinking about how to reduce costs and how to establish a better image in the minds of customers, Atour has already gone beyond the framework of traditional hotels. They're thinking not just about how to be a hotel, they're about how to be a way of life.
Atour has gradually evolved into a lifestyle that blends humanity, warmth and fun, which is its unique charm. In the future, what scale will Atour develop? What kind of surprises will it bring? These are the questions that are very exciting.
The rise of Atour has attracted much attention, "The Birth of Internet Celebrity Hotel: Why did NetEase choose Atour again?" ", turning the hotel into a wool paradise", how can the more and more expensive Atour become a gentle township for social animals on business trips" and other reports are discussing the success of Atour. It's not just a hotel, it's more like an "Oriental Selection". And those who once questioned Atour's "not doing business" are now also sighing: selling pillows for 90 days to earn 300 million, this "not business" hotel is too good at playing!
This article by Xiaogua has brought us a new understanding of Atour, and the editor Yiyimu has sorted it all out. In the world of Atour, every detail is full of surprise and warmth, which is what makes it so fascinating.