Although low prices are important, live travel is not a pure traffic war and price war. The low-quality and low-price model does not work.

When the industry encounters "one twists and turns", any new additions become critical, not only about the amount of performance, but also about life and death.

At 8pm on Wednesday night, when Liang Jianzhang began to "call" in the live broadcast room of Ctrip's Shanghai headquarters, the official travel live broadcast room named "Flying Pig Eats Tour" at the Fliggy Headquarters less than 200 kilometers away to the southwest was also The opening of the gong sounded a bit of a fight in the air. The live broadcast, Yu Ctrip and Fliggy, are all strategic layouts. Liang Jianzhang, who is addicted to COSPLAY, wants to go out live broadcast as soon as possible for the company to rejuvenate as soon as possible. "The tourism industry is different from other industries. The effect of live broadcast and the demand value of potential users will be higher.

And Zhuang Zhuoran, the newly appointed President of Fliggy in June last year, also regards "content-guided transactions" as one of Fliggy's main growth engines-in the next three years, the volume of content-guided transactions will reach 10 billion. When the two head platforms on the track both started to make strategic raises—travel live broadcast, finally from Liang Jianzhang’s alone playing tickets, it turned into a collective play for the whole industry. Just as the e-commerce live broadcast could not find the second Li Jiaqi, the travel live broadcast could not replicate the second Liang Jianzhang. After all, the influence of personal IP is limited, and only Liang Jianzhang cannot carry the revival of the tourism industry.

However, compared with physical products, the travel products with higher unit prices, relatively narrow user groups, high performance thresholds, and susceptible to the epidemic, the live broadcast road is not as smooth as mercury.

Although Internet platforms and large and medium-sized wine travel airlines have successively entered the venue, a large number of long-tail players are skeptical of live broadcasts. When the epidemic hits again in the beginning of 2021, the sirens of the tourism industry sounded again, platforms and heads flocked into the venue, and long-tailed businessmen's indifferent tourism live broadcasts, can they carry the banner of industry revival? Boss live broadcasts that use face to drain traffic, and brand live broadcasts that compare prices and goods, who will become the mainstream form of travel live broadcast?

Ctrip Flying Pig

The narrow encounter between Ctrip and Fliggy is an inevitable competition, not a coincidence. In the e-commerce live broadcast, Fliggy’s brother company Taobao is the king; in the travel live broadcast, Liang Jianzhang is a well-deserved brother. The epidemic is like the spinning top in Inception, completely reversing the normalization of time and space, and completely rewriting the established trajectory of entrepreneur and demographer Liang Jianzhang.

Throughout 2020, Liang Jianzhang has successively cosplayed 37 characters: Haiwang, Kangxi, Ye Huajun, and cosplay. Although Liang Jianzhang has a lot of "black history" in the live broadcast room, "not looking at the camera", "not good at interaction", and "relying on the female anchor to support the scene", but this kind of contrast and cute domineering presidential personality has a different kind of attraction. The effect is clear. Sun Tianxu, the part-time "female anchor" and Ctrip vice president who partnered with Liang Jianzhang, admitted that Ctrip's live broadcast mainly relies on "Liang Jianzhang's personal IP." Although Liang Jianzhang's live broadcast is very hard, applauded and acclaimed, it activated 40% of the silent users of the Ctrip platform, and led to pre-sales of 4 billion GMV. During the peak period, the sales guided by the live broadcast accounted for 30% of the entire platform. However, considering that Ctrip's GMV in 2019 was as high as 865 billion, and in 2020, GMV dropped sharply compared to the same period last year-4 billion live GMV fell, which is a drop in the bucket. Therefore, Liang Jianzhang's one-person ticketing and BOSS live broadcast is not enough to carry Ctrip's return to blood, and it cannot carry the banner of industry revival.

Perhaps because of this, the flying pig, who was fighting in the air, chose "Let a Hundred Flowers" and invited the brand Boss to take turns to sit in the village. The first show was Ye Xinwei, the vice president of Accor Group. She was not only to brush her face, but to bring goods-Accor The group provides exclusive new product benefits to Feizhu's official live broadcast room every month.

The brand Boss has become the No. 1 spot in the live broadcast room. Yu Feizhu did not come up on a whim, but "has an early plan", which is also in the same line as the platform positioning of Feizhu. In November last year, Zhuang Zhuoran mentioned that “in the next three years, 150 new merchants with an annual transaction volume of more than 100 million yuan will be established, and the proportion of transactions by fans of wine travel fans will exceed 70%, and the upgrade from a trading platform to a service integration platform” .

Thousands of live broadcasts, the first one at a low price.

There was a view in the tourism industry that tourism is a product with a high unit price and low frequency, and a low gross profit margin. Therefore, it is not suitable for live broadcasts that make money at a loss. That being said, low prices are the right way to go for volume, and because of the low gross profit margin of tourism products, the platform must pay for extra bleeding out of its own pocket if it wants to give the lowest price on the entire network. As a latecomer Fliggy, if you want to get ahead, low prices are also a must.

Fliggy's "Ten Billion Subsidy", which appeared again in the live broadcast on Wednesday, its trump card was unveiled in September last year. Fliggy dares to subsidize, first, because most of the leading companies in the tourism industry are listed companies. For them, revenue in 2020 has been cut in half, and most of them are in loss or in a state of meager profit, and their performance is under pressure. There are not many homes to toss, and Fliggy has no independent listing, no performance pressure, and secondly, it also relies on the abundant cash flow of Alibaba Group. Therefore, Fliggy’s distribution of coupons, “spending money to draw prizes”, and drawing iPhone 12 and gold bars in the live broadcast room is considered to have set off a “wool war” of subsidies and price cuts.

The positive aspects of Ctrip and Fliggy can be said to have their own highlights. Whether it is Ctrip's live broadcast by Liang Jianzhang as the male number one or Fliggy's live broadcast that pushed the brand to the front desk, they all point to one conclusion-2021, the global epidemic Still raging, under the shadow of the Chinese epidemic that has not been completely eliminated, live broadcast will become an active choice for more and more players.

Live travel melee

On the crowded track of travel live broadcast, there are many players: OTA (Ctrip) + BOSS (Liang Jianzhang) live broadcast; traffic platform (Kaishou, Douyin) + Internet celebrity live broadcast (such as Ding Zhen); e-commerce platform (Taobao, Jingdong, Pinduoduo) + e-commerce anchor (such as Wei Ya), and travel platform (flying pig) + BOSS carousel, etc. Among the above-mentioned live broadcast modes in the future, which one will occupy the home field? At present, the anchor resources of each major platform have their own merits-just like a flock of sheep living by water and grass, anchors will inevitably live by traffic and will inevitably migrate to the head platform. In this regard, even Ding Zhen, who created the myth of the cultural and tourism industry in 2020, could not escape his fate-the exposure of Weibo topics exceeded 1 billion, and the volume of Douyin video playback was close to 1 billion, which led to a relatively large number of hotel reservations in Ganzi, Sichuan. An increase of 89% in the same period last year.

Ding Zhen’s boss, Zhang Xi, is very sober, “Ding Zhen has the same tourism resources as Litang, with obvious shortcomings and advantages. We did not create a god. He is an amateur and needs to grow up.”

As the saying goes, the flow of Internet celebrities and anchors, the platform and traffic of iron hitting, therefore, the winner of the "people" factor in the live broadcast is actually on the user side. Liang Jianzhang’s first live broadcast on March 24, why did he choose Douyin instead of Ctrip’s own platform? That’s why, because the latter has large traffic and many users. Of course, the traffic of Ctrip and Fliggy’s apps is not the highest. , But the accuracy and conversion rate may be far better than Kuaishou and Douyin.

Traffic first. As a latecomer, Fliggy will most likely take advantage of Ali's platform traffic to build momentum for Fliggy’s “walking and eating groups”-and Taobao Live, as the absolute brother of the global live broadcast business, its platform The user's acceptance of travel live broadcasts is also higher, and Uncle Flying Pig can enjoy the cool back-to-back. In the supply chain, Fliggy and Ctrip seckill short video platforms. Compared with bloody and crude price wars without a bottom line, whether to get exclusive products, first new products, and Internet celebrity products will test the platform's supply chain capabilities and industry voice.

Tourism products in the live tour room can be roughly divided into two categories: the first category is the local special products of tourist destinations, which can also be collectively referred to as tourist products, such as famous and special agricultural products in various places. In this regard, e-commerce platforms such as Taobao It may be even better. In the future, when Feizhu Live is selling such products, it can link up with brothers such as Taobao, Tmall, Ele.me, and Hema to enhance the radiation and liquidity of live broadcast through integrated marketing. The second category is classic tourism products, including tickets, hotels, restaurants, tourist routes, etc. The main products of Fliggy and Ctrip are in this category.

A certain deputy county magistrate who had participated in live broadcasts on Douyin and Taobao believed that “Douyin is mainly for product promotion. Look at the long-term effect. The conversion rate of tourism products is not as good as Taobao.” But whether for traffic platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou, or e-commerce platforms such as Taobao Jingdong, in the final analysis, travel live broadcast is only a small category. Therefore, in the future, the home field advantage of travel live broadcasts will become more and more popular with Ctrip. , Fliggy and other tourism platforms are relocated.

Another trend is that the brand's position in live broadcasting is becoming more and more important. Only Ding Zhenliang and Jianzhang no longer play the No. 1 position in the travel live broadcasting industry. Only branded merchants occupy the home market, attracting live broadcasts to attract customers and drive new growth. Power, in your own hands, build your own high-viscosity private domain traffic pool, instead of waiting eagerly for the "favoring gift" of a few big Vs, fighting against opponents on the open sea, travel live broadcast can truly be realized Normalization and popularization. This is also in line with Zhuang Zhuoran's three-year small goal for the next three years, which promotes "the proportion of liquor travel fan membership transactions on the Flying Pig to exceed 70%". After all, being alone is not a spring.

Dismantling the travel live broadcast dispute

Although travel live broadcasts seem to be very popular, the entire industry presents a "top-heavy" dilemma-large and medium players flock to the arena, and small and medium players are indifferent. We have recently contacted dozens of homestay owners. Although almost every homestay has suffered a sharp decline in income and is on the verge of bankruptcy, none of them have tried live travel. "No one has no money to live broadcast, and Wei Ya Liang Jianzhang can brush his face, we go to live broadcast and nobody cares, the effect will not be good", a homestay owner said, not only he has not tried live broadcast, but other homestays he knows The boss, never tried live broadcast. In fact, although the above attitude is a bit negative, it is not unreasonable.

An intuitive comparison data is that the "Live Streaming E-commerce Toward a Trillion Billion Market" released by KPMG and Alibaba Research Institute shows that the overall scale of live e-commerce is expected to reach 1.050 billion yuan in 2020, compared with 433.8 billion yuan in 2019, a year-on-year increase. An increase of 210%; while the Ctrip platform's live travel guide GMV in 2020 is only 4 billion yuan. It is not that Ctrip is unsatisfied, but that travel live broadcasts are really difficult to do. Compared with physical live broadcasts, travel live broadcasts have higher performance costs and higher customer unit prices. Therefore, they will not rise as quickly as e-commerce live broadcasts, and they need to be nourished by a long stream of water. A compromise is to put both high and low price products in the live broadcast room. For example, the local special products of the destination are generally low in price, and many prices are below 100 yuan. They can be mixed and matched with classic tourism products (tickets, hotels, restaurants, tourist routes, etc.), local tours are sold together with national tours, etc. Let the groups of different consumption power who enter the live broadcast room can achieve their own results.

The "Flying Pig Shopping Group" has also adopted this strategy. In addition to standard travel products, it has also expanded its catering categories, covering Michelin set meals, afternoon tea at the "Lady" Gaoxing Hotel, buffets, Guangdong Poon Choi, and Jinling Meat The latter generally has a lower unit price per customer, and most of it is localized consumption, with lower performance thresholds and higher user popularity.

Although low prices are important, live travel is not a pure traffic war and price war. The low-quality low-price model does not work. Therefore, professionalism and credibility endorsements are also required. For example, Fliggy introduces BOSS recommendation officers, such as e-commerce platforms will invite The station of county magistrate and other local government officials, etc. Ren Guocai, vice president of Jingyu Lvmama Group, did research on this. He concluded that "officials/entrepreneurs" have credibility, but they have weak guidance and poor interaction. "Stars/travelers" have their own traffic fans and are good at interaction. , So the combination of the two can achieve the best results.

Regarding the debate on whether tourism live broadcasts can carry the banner of recovery, optimists and pessimists will never reach an agreement. However, tourism live broadcasts that have just started less than a year ago have contributed to the industry not only in quantifiable GMV, but also The optimism and confidence that Man Guan gives users and the industry is the most long-term positive value of travel live broadcast to the industry. (* Article source: WeChat public account "Financial Stories Collection")