How traditional travel agencies deploy tourism e-commerce

According to statistics, the size of the online travel market last year reached 200 billion yuan. Traditional tourism has suffered an unprecedented impact. Many traditional tourism companies have also begun to try to transform into tourism e-commerce, but these companies have little understanding of tourism e-commerce. Coupled with the lack of professional tourism e-commerce talents, the transformation path is difficult. I personally think that traditional travel agencies should do the following four things when laying out tourism e-commerce: 1. Have a new ideological understanding. Traditional travel agencies, especially small and medium-sized travel agencies, should deepen their understanding of tourism e-commerce. At present, for young people, they generally like free travel and self-guided tours, and rarely go out with group tours. It has become increasingly difficult to organize traditional groups. The number of teams in some large companies in a year has also been significantly reduced, and the loss is basically Divided up by the Internet. There is no way for a weak travel agency to compete with a strong one. The number of teams will definitely continue to decline. They can only rely on some old partners and users to maintain it. But how long can such a customer group be maintained? Since it can't last too long, why not find a new way out. Tourism e-commerce is undoubtedly a new way out for small and medium-sized travel agencies. There is still great potential for tourism e-commerce to maintain local markets or vertical markets. 2. Reintegrate resources. Traditional travel agencies have rich tourism resources, including scenic spots, cars, and houses. However, these resources are relatively scattered and we must integrate them. Traditional group tours are different from tourism e-commerce. Traditional groups are mainly based on teams, while e-commerce is mainly on individual travelers. You may be able to get very low prices for cars, houses, and scenic spots for groups, but this is not necessarily the case for individual travelers. This is no longer an advantage. Everyone knows that online shopping is convenient in one way and cheap in another. It is the same with the tourism industry. If you do not have a price advantage, it is very difficult to gain a foothold in the highly competitive Internet. Therefore, we must reintegrate resources, re-negotiate with hotels, fleets, and scenic spots, and try to get the lowest price possible. In addition, we should try our best to find more resources and cooperate with more suppliers. Not only should we have an advantage in price, but we should also have diversity to meet the needs of different consumers. 3. Talent reserve Tourism e-commerce talent is a very critical factor, related to future success or failure. I personally believe that tourism e-commerce should reserve talents in the following aspects: 1. IT talents. Some friends will say that we are not an IT company and there is no need to reserve IT talents. This view is wrong, because tourism e-commerce will involve website platforms. Tourism websites require people to develop and maintain them, and they need to write programs, which are not available to ordinary people. Some people even say that the website can be developed by an Internet company. This is certainly feasible, but errors will inevitably occur during the operation process. You cannot ask an Internet company to solve it every time, and the cost will be very high. Graphic and art talents are also indispensable. In the online sales process, many activities need to be carried out and a lot of pictures of the activities are needed, which require art to solve. 2. Network talents. IT talents and network visits are different concepts. Internet talents mainly refer to talents in Internet marketing, website promotion and optimization. Especially for the tourism industry, which has rich products and various contents, professional tourism online marketing talents are in a key position, which is also an important factor in determining your success or failure. 3. Traditional talents. Needless to say, traditional tourism companies have many experienced planners and external liaison personnel, which are indispensable for tourism e-commerce. Offline business requires these personnel to complete. 4. Internet layout This part is very critical. The previous foundation is ready. How to layout will determine how far your e-commerce road can go. 1. Establish an independent e-commerce platform. A travel website must be established. It is the key to building your own brand and will also be the main position of your e-commerce. Selling travel products through its own platform is the first choice for many travel companies because it has great flexibility, is easy to promote, and does not accept any restrictions. The most important thing is that it is easy to build your own brand. Taking the road of branding is the ultimate solution. 2. Lay out Taobao. Currently, Taobao is the largest C2C in China, and its daily traffic ranks first among similar platforms in China. We cannot throw away the golden nugget of tourism e-commerce and should use its strong customer flow to serve ourselves. You can start your own ordinary store on Taobao, and powerful travel agencies can open your own flagship store. 3. Lay out other travel distribution platforms. There are many platforms similar to Taobao, such as Paipai, Xinxin Travel Network, Tongcheng Travel, etc. Anyway, don’t miss out on anything you can use. One more place for display, one more sales channel.

(Editor: China E-Commerce Research Center)