What are the differences between the three camps of China tourism?

Ctrip, Mango and Traditional Wholesalers, who is the final winner?

Ctrip, which has always occupied a leading position in the field of tourism distribution, began to feel a latent crisis.

On September 2 1 day, Southern Reporter learned from the 20 1 1 China Tourism Distribution Summit Forum held by Global Travel News that more and more travel online enterprises began to abandon the closed tourism distribution model adopted by Ctrip and integrate resources to start a new stove; The cross-border development of e-commerce, SNS, search engines and other enterprises is making China's tourism industry into a melee.

Especially in August last year, Taobao Tourism was launched, and Tencent became the second largest shareholder in May this year. After Qunar.com received a strategic investment of $306 million from Baidu in June, the online distribution market in China began to change suddenly.

Competition intensifies contradictions.

"After Baidu acquired Kunar, Qunar monopolized the search portal with Baidu's 84% share in the search engine market, which brought huge traffic. Other online companies' previous natural search in Baidu no longer exists, and they all changed to where they went. This is an unfair display through monopoly. "A few days ago, Cui Guangfu, CEO of E Long Travel Network, bombarded Qunar.com at the forum. At the same time, Ctrip has also been threatened. Tang Lan, the company's senior vice president, later said that the search engine was monopolized by Baidu and Qunar.

In fact, in March last year, Ctrip had already opened fire on where to go. "Ctrip has made a blacklist, including a number of hotels, and sent a warning fax to other hotel counterparts. These blacklisted hotels, in addition to the lowest-priced hotels that have signed a marketing agreement with Qunar.com and can be searched by Qunar.com, also have the agreement hotel of mango net's Green Mango. " A tourist who asked not to be named told reporters.

In the industry's view, the lowest price commitment letter of Ctrip Hotel, which was called "Fax Gate" in the industry last year, and the repeated confrontations between Ctrip and its peers are essentially the intensified competition between Ctrip's existing distribution model and other new online distribution models.

Impact of cross-border development

Before, China tourism distribution enterprises mainly went to airports and other public places to issue cards for marketing, and the booking method mainly relied on call centers. But now, in addition to internet and mobile phone booking, booking methods are also growing rapidly; Paika marketing is gradually shrinking, mainly relying on search engines and social networking sites (SN S) and other channels.

"Under this trend, the competitive threshold of online enterprises has gradually increased." Cui Guangfu said that online travel companies now have three booking platforms: call center, website and mobile phone. There should be about 20,000 contracted hotels and 654.38 million+international hotels in China, and the sales volume should reach one million every month. "This kind of entry barrier has made many emerging small companies lose the opportunity to enter the industry leading echelon." Cui Guangfu said that in this context, the development trend of online travel distribution enterprises is only the stage of resource integration and cross-border model innovation.

Last August, taobao travel was officially launched. According to Ren Wei, director of Taobao.com's tourism industry development, the daily average number of tickets issued by Taobao can reach 26,000, with 20,000 hotels and 35,000 transactions per day, forming four business segments: air tickets, hotels, scenic spots tickets, vacation routes, car rental, tourism services and destination communities.

Subsequently, Tencent invested about US$ 84.4 million in E Long, and bought newly issued shares in E Long, accounting for about 16% of the total shares in E Long, becoming the second largest shareholder. In June, Qunar.com received a strategic investment of $306 million from Baidu, and Baidu became the largest institutional shareholder in Qunar.com .. "The deal between Baidu and Qunar has brought the biggest unknown to China's future online travel. 20 10 in the second quarter, Baidu's search share in China's web page market reached 83 .9%, and Qunar.com also ranked among the vertical travel search markets. The combination of the two makes the industry full of expectations and concerns. " Global Travel News Li Chao said that people are worried about whether vertical search will create a monopoly in the tourism market in China, whether the marketing cost of your advertisement will rise, and whether travelers will get a very neutral search experience, neutral search results and a good search experience.

According to the statistics of A m adeus, before July last year, the traffic of Ctrip.com was basically slightly higher than that of Qunar.com, but after July this year, especially after mid-July, the traffic of Qunar.com has completely surpassed that of Ctrip.com. ..

The competition pattern of the three major groups

"Our initial operation mode is different from that of traditional distribution enterprises. Everyone thinks that membership is very important, but where to go, don't be a member; Everyone says that the chain is closed, so we have to make an open chain. " Zhuang, CEO of Qunar.com, said that after Baidu's investment, the two sides have launched a series of cooperation, hoping to establish an end-to-end platform facility.

The emergence of Taobao and Qunar. Com sells tourism products at wholesale price online, which brings confusion to Ctrip's original price management. Not only that, at present, about 60% of Ctrip's air tickets come from telephone booking, but the telephone booking business is limited by the capacity of the call center and the service cost is also high, so the growth has encountered a bottleneck.

It is reported that Ctrip has established its own characteristic hotel Alliance in the past few years after Starway, Home Inn, Hanting and BTG. Compared with the alliance between competitors and the Internet, Ctrip pays more attention to the construction of ground services and product systems.

However, this closed industrial chain operation is now questioned by the industry, and it is difficult to have a bigger breakthrough space. "E Long has transformed into an online open marketing integration platform, and we hope to become the largest online travel service company in China." Cui Guangfu said that although Baidu and Taobao jointly controlled the entrance of search engines, E Long achieved a new breakthrough in marketing channels on social networking sites, with 2.37 million fans in QQ space, Sina Weibo and Tencent.

"Online travel platforms in China will be divided into horizontal platforms based on media presence and vertical platforms based on tourism presence. The horizontally open platforms include Tencent, Sina and Baidu, and vertically there are vertical platforms such as E Long and Qunar. " Cui Guangfu predicted that in the future, China tourism distribution industry may form three major groups, with Ctrip, E Long+Tencent +Expedia, Baidu+Qunar and Taobao in the first camp; 1 14, 12580, Tongcheng and Mango will form the second camp; Traditional wholesalers, travel agencies and agents will be the third camp.

Argument of views

Tourism Group Buying: Is it a gimmick or a trend?

Gong Jiele (Vice President of Handan.com):

In foreign countries, tourism accounts for a large proportion in group buying. In fact, group buying is a Wal-Mart supermarket with piles. On the surface, it is sales, but the essence should be promotion. This is a cheap way to promote sales.

Yu Dunde (C EO of Niulv.com):

Last year, the gross profit of domestic travel agencies was 5%-6%, and the gross profit of the whole market was declining. Personally, I think this is because the product structure is changing, and the amount of low-margin products launched by enterprises is higher than that of high-margin products. However, at present, some group purchase prices are indeed exaggerated and should be more reasonable.

Fang (General Manager of Baozhong Tourism):

The goal of physical stores is to increase the proportion of individual customers, and group buying can reduce costs. We are also exploring this direction. For example, for personalized products such as 1000 people driving by car and1000 people traveling, group buying should save both costs and benefits.

Ding Chongyang (Assistant to President CYTS):

To deal with low gross profit, we still have to work hard from the channel. Our current gross profit margin of 10% is acceptable. However, whether to adopt group buying depends on the direction of future development.