"Ctrip mode": "Giant" is not invulnerable.
Through online and telephone booking, Ctrip has become the absolute leader in the field of online travel booking in China. Ctrip gradually penetrated into the fields of holiday booking, business travel management, special merchants, tourism information and so on from the very beginning hotels and air ticket agents, and was once praised as a model of "seamless combination" between traditional tourism and the Internet. But the "great" Ctrip is not without loopholes. Hotel and air ticket reservations still account for an absolute large proportion in the overall business. In Ctrip's revenue of 1.7 1 billion yuan in the first quarter of 2008, hotels and air tickets accounted for 89.9%, and other value-added services only accounted for 10. 1%. Such a business structure has added many variables to Ctrip's diversification, and over-reliance on traditional business may not be conducive to Ctrip's strategic transformation into a professional tourism e-commerce. When hotels, air tickets and other traditional businesses meet more and more powerful competitors, Ctrip will gradually become passive. Rising stars such as E Long, Mango and Tongcheng have firmly occupied nearly a quarter of the whole industry, and the mobile 12580 and China1014 with hundreds of millions of users have made Ctrip feel great pressure. From Ctrip's point of view, only by improving the relationship with hotel members and other measures to consolidate the market position can we continue to maintain our advantages in the increasingly fierce competition for travel agencies. In addition, improving competitiveness through further diversification is also a very critical strategic step.
Another disadvantage of Ctrip mode is that it still relies mainly on the call center of thousands of people to complete the scheduled transactions, and only a few orders are completed through the network, which is far from the large international travel network companies. Once these giants enter China on a large scale, their cost advantage will probably threaten Ctrip's market position.
"Ctrip is invincible", which is the unanimous evaluation of Ctrip's position in the hotel and air ticket booking industry. However, "the fortress is the easiest to be breached from the inside", and Ctrip hotel members have sought countermeasures in order to avoid being completely controlled by it. At present, some powerful hotels mainly reduce their dependence on Ctrip in two ways. One is to build a self-built network direct sales channel through the hotel homepage or a third-party platform. By the end of 2008 10, nearly 50% of the rooms in 7-day hotel chains were booked and sold through websites, and the online booking rate continued to rise. About 80% of the customers of Home Inn came from self-built channels. Another way for hotels to get rid of Ctrip's control is to develop cooperative booking websites crazily.
Travel vertical search: rain is coming, and variables still exist.
Tourism vertical search is highly sought after abroad for its professional services. Kayak has integrated the hotel user review website Travelpost with its existing vertical search service, and Travelzoo and Catway Eagle have also released vertical search functions. In addition, TravelFusion, a travel search engine company established in the UK in 2000, entered China in 2008, and is now planning to promote it on a larger scale. Next year, we will focus on raising awareness and let more users experience its professional intelligent travel search service. Domestic cool news and Qunar are also doing business similar to these multinational giants. However, a very big problem facing this model is how to overcome Ctrip's control over hotel resources. At present, all companies doing vertical travel search have chosen to cooperate with Ctrip instead of standing on its opposite side. This left Ctrip with the opportunity to get involved, which brought uncertainty to the domestic tourism vertical search industry to a certain extent. Moshe Rafiah, founder of TravelFusion, admitted in an interview with the media that he really felt the pressure from Ctrip and E Long after entering China.
Travel Comments: How to do as the Romans do?
The global travel review website giant Catway Eagle's revenue in the second quarter of this year reached 290 million US dollars, more than four times that of Ctrip in the same period. Catway Eagle has successively established sub-stations in Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Japan and India, and achieved success. In 2009, Catway Eagle officially entered China and established Catway Eagle. The goal of tripadvisor is to become the "public comment network" of China hotel industry. The concept of Catway Eagle is very clear, which is to make tourists generate value in mutual communication and influence the consumption behavior of other tourists, so as to build a high-viscosity tourism community. However, the biggest obstacle of travel review mode is how to make domestic tourists get used to sharing their travel experiences online in a short time, and get consumption reference information from online evaluation. Judging from the current development mode of domestic tourism e-commerce, most tourists are still satisfied with the rapid and rich information on the Internet and have not actively shared their experiences for the time being. Do you want to spend some time to cultivate new consumption habits of domestic users, or do as the Romans do? This is a question that Tripadvisor needs to weigh carefully. Perhaps it is the practice of Tongcheng. Com is worth learning from. Tongcheng. Com has launched the mode of "returning comments to cash" in its scenic spots and hotel reservation channels. Comments and rewards ranging from tens of yuan can always capture the hearts of users more than advanced concepts.
"Online Travel Supermarket": Moving Forward in Exploration
In the domestic tourism e-commerce industry, there is a model that is quietly attacking the city, that is, the "online travel supermarket" model featuring diversification and one-stop. The biggest practitioner of this model is Tongcheng. Headquartered in Suzhou. Established in 2003, this travel e-commerce company has gradually changed from a simple B2B model of travel agencies to a diversified travel e-commerce company covering travel agencies, hotel reservations, air ticket reservations, scenic spot marketing, travel supplies and travel management software. Tongcheng.com CEO Wu Zhixiang has always declared that Tongcheng.com will become the "Wal-Mart" in the tourism e-commerce industry. In the past two years, the rapid and steady growth of the company has proved that this model has been successful so far. In 2008, Tongcheng.com successfully won the venture capital of150,000 yuan, which is also the investors' full affirmation of its business model. In addition, the mode of B2B and B2C dual-platform operation also ensures the steady development of the same-process diversification strategy to a certain extent. However, diversification always has to deal with the problems of scattered resources and vague positioning.
In fact, the current situation is that Tongcheng and Ctrip have launched a silent competition in the field of tourism e-commerce, and whoever completes the deployment first will be the ultimate winner. After painful transformation, Ctrip's non-traditional business has reached the scale of 10. 1% total revenue. At this point, Tongcheng obviously has inherent advantages, because Tongcheng has taken a diversified road from the beginning. However, in the face of Ctrip, Tongcheng still feels great pressure.
There is no right or wrong mode, and all modes that meet the characteristics of the times and the needs of users are successful. Up to now, the tourism e-commerce industry has entered the stage of rapid integration, and the industry value chain is becoming clearer and clearer. Whether you can find your own direction as soon as possible will determine the life and death of an enterprise.