(100% reward, online answer, etc. ) The brand awareness of travel agencies is weak. What's the good solution! !

The Construction of Brand Management System of China Travel Agency

Author: Liu Ying Wuhan University of Science and Technology Law School Central South Campus.

Abstract: The present situation of brand management of travel agencies in China is not commensurate with the strong development momentum and prospect of tourism. This paper analyzes the necessity of brand management of travel agencies from the perspectives of intangible products, tourism demand and the cultivation of core competitiveness of travel agencies. It is pointed out that the construction of brand system of travel agencies should be carried out from several aspects, such as establishing brand awareness, brand guidance, brand expansion and brand consolidation.

[Keywords:] travel agency brand management system

The famous marketing guru Philip? Kotler believes that a brand is a name, a term, a logo, a symbol or a design, or a combination of them. Its purpose is to identify the products or services of sellers or sales groups and distinguish them from those of competitors.

Almost all outstanding enterprises have their own well-known brands in specific fields, whether they are among the top 500 companies in the world or China 100. These brands not only mark the quality, image, products and competitiveness of enterprises, but also precipitate huge intangible assets under long-term operation, saving a lot of marketing and advertising expenses and ensuring the sustained prosperity of enterprises.

First, the status quo of brand management of travel agencies in China

Tourism in China started from 1978. Although remarkable achievements have been made today, it is undeniable that most of these achievements are only quantitative. The foundation of China's tourism industry is relatively weak, and it will take some time to achieve intensive growth. Take the travel agency industry as an example. In China, are there any companies like Japan Telecom, American Express and Thomas? Cook, a multinational company with great appeal and influence in the industry, and China, China and Qingdao, the three most powerful travel agencies, have almost become public welfare because of their non-market operation in the early days, and the only dominant brands have been copied by latecomers. The brand management of China travel agency industry is summarized as follows:

1. Cold brand awareness

Most travel agencies don't pay enough attention to the brand in marketing, and they bury their heads in advertising tourist routes, which is both costly and laborious, but with half the effort. However, the routes of various travel agencies are roughly the same, which is very imitative. However, there is not a distinctive and impressive advertisement for tourist routes in the whole page of the newspaper.

2. Brand confusion, lack of personality

At the beginning of development, China, China and Qingdao monopolized their own markets, and their brand names were somewhat vague, which could not reflect their own characteristics. After the opening of the travel agency market, some new travel agencies added the words "China" and "International" in their names due to the influence of the horizontal division of labor system, which caused confusion in consumer identification.

3. Improper brand positioning

The purpose of brand positioning is to establish a distinct image for enterprises, strengthen customer awareness and stand out in the market competition. The brand positioning of China's tourism enterprises is often the embodiment of the chief executive's will, but the market research is insufficient. Without the brand positioning of consumers, it will be difficult to continue to operate and eventually be eliminated by the market.

4. Brand homogeneity, lack of creativity

The imitation of tourism products makes the travel agency industry more homogeneous. As long as there are enough funds and manpower and a few cases to imitate, similar tourism products will be overwhelming. This is a common phenomenon in the advertising pages of domestic newspapers: first, after a travel agency launched a new route and was recognized by the market, all the products of travel agencies in the full-page advertisement became twin sisters-similar routes, similar schedules and similar quotations. The travel agency industry does not protect new products effectively, which makes imitation save R&D expenses and is more profitable than innovation. On the other hand, the homogenization of tourist routes makes the competition for tourists more intense, and takes the form of vicious price competition, which drags down the industry profits of travel agencies.

Tourism has great economic potential in promoting China's economic and social development, but as the core enterprise of tourism, China's travel agencies are far behind other industries in brand management, brand awareness and brand building, and there are few well-known tourism trademarks. According to this situation, whether it can support the bright future of China's tourism industry is worrying.

Second, the necessity of implementing brand management in travel agencies

The demand of tourists is increasingly diversified, which puts forward higher requirements for tourism products. Strong capital and advanced technology can enable travel agencies to provide tourists with the same tourist routes and services at the same low price, but they cannot provide the same brand and customer satisfaction. The value of a brand lies not only in its distinguishing function from homogenized products, but also in the intangible benefits it brings to consumers. The importance of brand management in travel agencies is reflected in the following aspects:

1. From the particularity of travel agency products,

The products of travel agencies are mainly tourist routes, not material products, which have the characteristics of non-transferability, non-storability, synchronization of production and consumption, and are not as search-oriented as material products. The experience of tourist routes makes it impossible for travel agencies to physically display products. Tourist routes provide information to a great extent. Tourists can't tell the difference of tourism products before traveling, and experience the quality and service level of tourism products. This makes the brand of travel agency play an inestimable role in transmitting the information of tourism products.

2. From the perspective of tourism demand

In the development trend of global tourism, tourism consumption is showing the characteristics of personalization, diversification and multi-level. More and more tourists begin to pursue their own existence value, participate in characteristic tourism activities, and tend to choose travel agencies with strong strength and good reputation, and the requirements for hotel star rating and traffic comfort are gradually improving. Brand not only meets the self-realization needs of tourists, but also increases the added value of travel agency products and enhances competitiveness.

3. From the perspective of cultivating the core competitiveness of enterprises

Creating product brands can be preconceived before consumption, leaving a clear impression on tourists and enhancing the charm of products. Personalized brand identity gives people affinity. In the process of group travel, the image of travel agencies is promoted through carriers such as hats, guide flags and vehicles, which expands the influence of travel agencies. Through the customer loyalty, product premium and capital operation of successful brands, the brand of travel agency can have a competitive advantage that other enterprises can't imitate, and this advantage can be strengthened in continuous brand management to form its own core competitiveness.

4. From the perspective of industrial structure adjustment

As far as the development of China's travel agencies is concerned, it is basically "macro news, micro news"-the industry is growing gratifying year by year, but the economic benefits of various travel agencies continue to decline. This is related to the fact that China's sightseeing products can't attract repeat customers, and the short-term operation behavior of travel agencies can't maintain the brand loyalty of tourists. In 2002, China citizens participated in 878 million domestic tours, of which only 38 million domestic tourists were received by travel agencies, accounting for 0.49% of the domestic tourists. Through brand building, travel agencies can cultivate consumer loyalty with brand appeal, increase the number of repeated consumption, and thus expand the tourist market. For example, the Hawaiian islands in the United States receive tens of millions of tourists every year, more than half of whom are repeat customers, and many tourists have been there seven or eight times. In addition to the unique sunshine and beaches, more should be attributed to the popular brand "Hawaii".

5. From the perspective of coping with international competition

After China's entry into WTO, the tourism market is facing a wide and deep opening, and large foreign multinational tourism operators will enter the China market one after another, which will have a great impact and threat on China travel agencies by virtue of their advantages in capital, network, brand and management. If China travel agencies still insist on low-level price competition, they will not be able to cope with the trend of domestic and international competition. Therefore, China travel agencies urgently need to find potential and capable market segments and quickly build their own brand system.

In recent years, many large travel agencies have started to establish their own brands, such as Guangzhi Travel, Zhejiang Zhongshan International Travel Service, Shenzhen International Travel Service, China Travel Agency Head Office, China Youth Travel Agency Alliance and so on.

Thirdly, the construction of brand management system of travel agencies.

According to the prediction of the World Tourism and Travel Council, the prospect of China's tourism and travel industry in the next 65,438+00 years is very optimistic. It is estimated that the annual growth rate of tourism and tourism industry will be 65,438+00.9% by 2065,438+03, and the contribution of China tourism to GDP will exceed 840 billion yuan in 2065,438+03. According to the forecast of the National Tourism Administration, in 2020, the national tourism revenue will be 3.3 trillion yuan, equivalent to 8% of GDP, and it will truly become a pillar industry of the national economy. In order to make China's tourism develop as expected and actively respond to the competition of international tourism multinational groups after China's entry into WTO, the travel agency industry should make a breakthrough in brand management.

1. Establish brand awareness

The construction of brand system should start with consciousness. Tourism consumer goods market is a highly asymmetric information market. For tourists, because of the intangibility of travel agency products, tourists can't predict their consumption targets. The comprehensiveness of travel agency products determines the higher search cost of tourists. Therefore, compared with tourists, travel agencies are in an information advantage. If there is no brand to convey the signal of high-quality products to tourists, tourists will set an "average price" according to their own consumption experience, which will eventually lead to the phenomenon that "bad money drives out good money"

2. Take the enterprise brand as the leading factor

The existing research results show that product brand is the most important for intangible products; For intangible services, corporate brand is the first. Referring to this conclusion, the travel routes provided by travel agencies are intangible, and customers lack intuitive feelings and objective evaluation of the services they will enjoy before buying. Therefore, the strength, reputation and word-of-mouth of an enterprise should be an important factor affecting consumers' purchase decision and evaluation, and also a quality guarantee for tourists to get returns to make up for the cost of time and money.

The brand management strategy led by enterprise brand can take the form of "travel agency name+destination" in the naming of tourist routes, so that tourism products can be registered naturally through registered travel agencies to solve the property rights problem of tourist routes. The significance of branding tourist routes also lies in finding the positioning of enterprises and governments in the model of "travel agency name+destination". The former and the latter correspond to each other and establish their respective responsibilities in the new development stage.

3. Realize brand expansion

After the establishment of the core brand of travel agencies, we should focus on implementing the brand expansion strategy, which can be realized in the following forms.

"Scattered, small, weak and poor" is the weakness of China travel agency. Small and medium-sized travel agencies can avoid these weaknesses and take the road of joint operation. A number of travel agencies jointly operate a brand. For example, different travel agencies in Yangzhou unite to form an alliance of "daily tour", "relaxing holiday" and "travel in all directions". Many travel agencies promote one brand, many sign up and jointly send tours.

Secondly, with the help of capital, mechanism, talents and brand advantages, big travel agencies can start the brand integration promotion strategy, establish a unified CIS image recognition system, build a chain operation department with unified logo, unified image, unified service standard, unified business operation process, unified business philosophy and unified marketing mode, establish a brand flagship store, take the road of brand chain, expand the brand sales network and consolidate the brand loyalty of consumers. In August 2000, CYTS took the lead in introducing the concept of chain operation into travel agencies, and the first batch of CYTS chain sales offices opened in Beijing. At present, CYTS has 17 chain sales offices in Beijing, and the chain operation has achieved initial results.

Finally, franchising is a good way of brand management development strategy, and can also effectively realize the network development of travel agencies. Franchising is not only a brand issue, but also a process of managing output. Travel agencies can enhance their right to speak in the industry during the franchise process. In addition, as a non-capital-intensive enterprise, travel agencies can achieve the lowest cost expansion through franchising.

4. Consolidate brand quality

Travel agencies must also pay attention to protecting their own brands and cherish them in brand expansion. Many domestic brands have experienced brand reversal because of blindly developing the production of joint ventures. In order to ensure the purity of Tsingtao Brewery, Shandong Tsingtao Brewery insists on not using the brand of Tsingtao Brewery in other beers, although it implements unified technical supervision and quality standard testing. The brand of Sony Corporation of Japan is highly respected by many enterprises in the world, and many enterprises are willing to pay huge sums of money to borrow trademarks or related processing. For the sake of brand protection, they were all rejected by Sony. These are all to prevent the risk of brand being smashed.

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