The end of the characteristic town is the integration of business formats (Part 2)

Text | Li Peng

(Due to space limitations, the content of the article will be updated in two parts, the upper and lower parts. Go to the homepage to view the complete content)

With the Holy Spirit Tianhu Town is an example of business integration

Let me briefly introduce the Shengtian Lake project. Shengtian Lake is located in a very remote location, on the edge of the Yellow River, at the southernmost tip of Shanxi, separated from Henan by the Yellow River. Ruicheng County, where it is located, is the most remote county in Yuncheng City, Shanxi Province. It is completely a large agricultural county. The average salary in the county is about 1,000 to 2,000.

We said something at the Beijing headquarters at that time, "If the Shengtian Lake project can be completed, we will not be afraid to go to other places in the country."

From the past 4A level Starting from the tourist attraction, we re-planned it into four business formats: tourism, study and education, sports and vacation and health care.

At present, the tourism, research and sports formats have been completed and are already in operation. With the re-planning and positioning, it has also won many national and local level honors. It has now become a key local project and a local star project, and has received support from leaders at all levels.

Shengtian Lake has very good natural resources. It belongs to the end of the Sanmenxia Wetland Reserve. "The water area is 4 square kilometers." Moreover, this water area is an agricultural irrigation water area, not a drinking water source, so it can carry out a large number of Water sports.

There is another advantage. In the northern project, winter is not only not the off-season, but actually the peak season. Every November, nearly 10,000 whooper swans overwintering come to Shengtian Lake, and winter has become the peak season. CCTV’s annual news broadcast reports on swans spending the winter, and CCTV’s live broadcast of the first ray of sunshine on New Year’s Day this year was also filmed on the edge of Shengtian Lake.

So it has two unique core resources: "First, the rare large lake in the northern region, and second, the swans that live in the winter."

For tourism, we start from 4 Let’s talk about the entire planning and operation logic for each business format respectively.

In terms of tourism, cruise ships, small trains, and swan boats were all tourism projects before we came here. But since we came here, we have done a lot of non-powered projects, such as kayaking, non-powered parks, paddle boards, jungle adventures, etc. The operating costs are lower, the later maintenance costs are lower, and the experience is stronger.

Before taking over, the number of visitors here was around 100,000 a year. After we took over, the tourism business can now reach 400,000 people a year. During the Spring Festival, May Day and National Day holidays, the number of people entering the park on the same day can reach up to 18,000. "The income from more than 20 days of holidays alone is very considerable, and the income from short holidays accounts for half of the entire tourism industry's annual income."

"So you can also see the difference in income between low and peak tourism seasons. Obviousness. ”

In order to solve the off-season problem from Monday to Friday most of the year, we built the Yellow River Camp inside.

The Yellow River Camp has a total of 1,474 accommodation beds, a restaurant for 1,500 people, and more than 50 indoor classrooms, including indoor sports fields, outdoor sports fields, standard football fields, standard basketball courts, tennis courts, and Some outdoor sports venues, including water sports, etc.

We have undertaken a large number of research studies and winter and summer camps. The projects in our own camps can also be sold separately as travel projects during holidays and weekends, but from Monday to Friday, these contents are also available. A lot of content has been added to the study.

In terms of size, with such a large venue, such a variety of courses, and such high-quality hardware conditions, I think it can be ranked among the top three in terms of overall size among all domestic study camps.

Now that we are in Yuncheng City, we only need to sign up for study tours from two counties. The camp is basically full from Monday to Friday during the entire semester.

However, the revenue from this part of the study program is relatively low per customer. The price per customer we do in winter and summer camps is relatively high. You can also take part in some team building, parent-child theme activities, etc., but these incomes are still very small compared with study and winter and summer camps.

In this way, we can fill up Monday to Friday, weekends and holidays throughout the year. With the same cost of a group of people, I can do two things, so the operating cost is basically reduced by 1/3.

Yellow River Camp Study Activities

The third format is sports, because Shengtian Lake is also one of the first batch of sports towns in the country and one of only 10 characteristic towns in Shanxi Province. As one of the towns, we have a national-level fishing venue, an 8-kilometer running track around the lake, a football field, etc. The Ironman Triathlon of the Second Youth League is also held in Shengtian Lake. We have a series of sports facilities that help us a lot in sports tourism.

We have two approaches to the sports business. One is to undertake government sports activities and sports events; the other is to target marketing and use large-scale sports events to advertise and build the reputation of Shengtian Lake in the local area, using sports The business format supplements the overall publicity, because these sports facilities themselves are also used by the camp and are not idle.

We are only now starting to develop the resort and wellness business. This year we have also planned an RV and tent camp, but we do not plan to operate it ourselves because it goes against the entire operational logic of our town. is different.

So I just took the core area of ??the town and completed the site foundation. Later, I wanted to introduce brands to cooperate. We will invest in the fixed foundation and use the cooperation and sharing model to complete this business format.

There is another piece that I want to invest in, which is the second phase of the parent-child hotel, parent-child B&B and study building. After the second phase of the study building is completed, the entire camp’s accommodation capacity will reach 3,000.

There are about 260 family hotels and 40 family homestays. This is what I want to invest in next. We have applied for a policy loan, which will cost about 400 million yuan. When all investments are completed, the total investment in Shengtian Lake will reach 1 billion. According to the current business model, the annual revenue is about 70 million to 80 million.

Where are the customers?

We don’t want to make Shengtian Lake a destination, nor can we achieve the annual flow of millions of people. After all, we are also dealing with a peripheral tourist destination. The market can radiate to Zhengzhou, Xi'an and Taiyuan at most, and is built around the three provinces of Shanxi, Shaanxi and Henan.

We will target 500,000 traffic in this area. The unit price of each customer spending 100 yuan is 50 million. Plus the income from winter and summer camps, etc., we can reach a scale of 80 million. .

From the perspective of our business integration, basically the gross profit of the entire operation can reach about 45% to 50%. This is because after the business integration, there is no off-season, and the operating efficiency is very high. There is a profit margin of about 40 million.

"Why do we do these business formats and content? In fact, this is our positioning range."

Which group of people are you most focused on when traveling around the world now? Many people say they are arresting young people. I don’t think so. Young people’s curiosity is more important. If you are an organization, it is okay to target the young people market, but it is difficult to catch young people in a single fixed project, especially in peripheral tourism, and it will involve complex tasks. Difficulty purchasing problem. "So children are the core focus of our travel around the area."

With Shengtian Lake's business model, I can't do anything that the school can do. I don’t do things that traditional tourism can do, that is, sightseeing tours and senior tours.

"From an operational perspective, this is also to form a closed loop of traffic."

When the children come out of school to do research, they are exposed to my project. After the children leave, we will Give him free tickets or experience coupons, and the children can bring their parents on weekends and holidays. After meeting the parents, I can sell winter and summer camps.

This combination of business formats, coupled with the advantage of swan resources in winter, allows me to achieve no off-season throughout the year. At the same time, it also allows me to reduce operating costs while locking in the market. For tourism in the traditional market, when you think everyone is your customer, you cannot invest in channels and publicity. But now I focus on the market of parents and children first, and I can do a very good job in channel positioning and market launch. Accurate.

We now require everyone on the project to have the ability to be a research mentor. The current personnel are used on both sides. When the flow of people is very large during holidays, all the research instructors are service personnel in the scenic area business projects.

When doing research or winter and summer camps from Monday to Friday, a large number of people can become instructors, which reduces my personnel costs.

How to improve project vitality

Many projects now approach us to build tent camps and homestays, but we have rejected them all. The biggest reason is that we are still worried about its vitality.

We have done this kind of content before, so we know very well that when mass customers turn to niche customers, and this wave of people experience it and become fixed fans, the market will basically reach a fever pitch. The level of competition.

Because the threshold is very low, there are many people who can come in, but gradually the Internet celebrity effect cools down. When the mass customers become enthusiasts, what do you do?

So I summarized several types from the perspective of project vitality.

The first is to change customers without changing business formats.

Like traditional tourism, you don’t change business formats or customers, but you must be the destination and a type of resource. There are many people who have never been to the Forbidden City. I am the only one who has visited the Forbidden City, but everyone has to come. This kind of thing is no problem. I always joke with everyone that if the Terracotta Warriors were replaced by a pig as the general manager, there would be no loss.

The second method is to change customers without changing channels.

Research is this type. I worked with the principal or the education bureau to get this business done, and the children came one after another. The principal may work for 10 or 20 years, but this wave of children keeps changing, so we don’t change channels to change customers. It also has strong vitality.

The history of study camps in China is very short, but like some camps I inspected in the United States, the banner on the wall as soon as you enter is the 86th Summer Camp. In foreign projects like this, his customers come one after another, and everyone needs it, so its duration is very long.

The third type is to change the content without changing customers.

From a single project perspective, if you keep changing content, the investment is very large and difficult to calculate. It is possible to do some niche projects, but I think it is debatable how strong the traffic flow or replicability is.

There are also some so-called Internet celebrity projects that change content. In fact, we don’t have many Internet celebrity projects in Shengtian Lake Town. Why? Because these projects are short-lived, I don’t need these projects to attract traffic to me, and these projects may not necessarily attract traffic.

Let me give you an example of this cheating roller coaster. It became very famous on the Internet. It was said that a cheating roller coaster cost one person to ride for 100 kilometers. Everyone was very happy to watch it, and it became an Internet celebrity project. But why don't we do this? It's very simple. Because people can’t come just to ride an Internet celebrity roller coaster, your project is not a core resource that attracts strong attention.

We prefer to do internet celebrity projects that are, firstly, experiential, secondly, have vitality, and thirdly, internet celebrities, which have strong traffic and can really attract people. red project.

Summary of business integration

Finally, let me make a summary of our business integration.

First, "Non-replicable resources are the core factor of all projects," whether you are building a B&B, a tent camp, a research camp, or a farm or rural comprehensive Whether it's physical or mental, you must be very careful and find relatively good resources before doing it.

Second, if many of our projects cannot solve the off-season problem, then these projects will be in vain and it will be difficult to justify the investment.

Third, be cautious in copying and copying some internet celebrity content. Brands can be copied, but each project has its own characteristics, specific groups of people, and unique local resources.

The so-called cultural tourism must have its own characteristics. Why do people leave their place of residence to live? They all want to try something unique. If your project can be done by others, it will eventually be possible. Another price war.

So if you look at the scenic spots with first-class resources, they all make money, but the travel agencies in the first-class scenic spots do not make money. Why?

Because resources can be monetized, but after the resources are standardized, it will be difficult for those who operate the resources to monetize.

So this is the question. The core of cultural tourism is how to own resources. The second is to have resources that cannot be copied. The third is to find ways to monetize resources. Resources are used to create it through the combination of business formats and customer analysis.

We first did some youth camps and research camps in China, but now our new projects are all projects integrating this type of business.

When we communicate with some parties or local governments, if there is no business integration and it is just a simple camp, we will not pick it up, nor will we pick it up for pure tourism.

This is also a form that we have explored in the peripheral tourism market that can not only settle the accounts, but also have some long-term vitality, and can enter the market in a good way. This is also the benefit of being the first to integrate business formats.

The second benefit is that because of the integration of business formats, my research channels and winter and summer camp channels will be relatively fixed. The current parent-child market is actually a stage where demand far exceeds supply. I think there are still 5 to 10 years of dividends, especially after the double reduction, a lot of time is not allowed to go to training classes on weekends and holidays. In fact, there is no place to take children.

If you have a good integration of supply formats and good supply products, this market only needs simple promotion to let people know about it, and people will come.

For example, we promote parent-child content on Douyin during May Day and Spring Festival, and we can leverage sales of 1 million to 2 million with a cost of 50,000 to 60,000. During the Spring Festival, our official account sold hundreds of thousands of copies on Douyin. Therefore, at this stage, some profitable products and some profitable needs must be grasped quickly.

The above is my personal experience, and it is not particularly comprehensive. However, judging from the projects that have been inspected, operated, and planned and designed, I think the peripheral travel model at this stage can be done. Get up.