The logic of explosive products is dead, and China's outbound travel has changed

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2024-06-27 20:59Tiger Sniff APP official account

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01 The logic of explosive models is dead, China's outbound travel market has changed, and the proportion of independent travel has surpassed that of group tours.

02With the narrowing of the information gap for outbound travel, young people's consumption demand for outbound travel has changed, and more attention is paid to non-standardized itineraries and unique local experience products.

03However, small and medium-sized tourism businesses face challenges in mining and integrating operations of fragmented tourism resources.

04Choosing the right platform is crucial for small and medium-sized travel merchants, such as Ctrip, Fliggy, Xiaohongshu and Douyin.

05In any case, small and medium-sized tourism businesses are expected to bring more surprises in the new era of China's outbound travel.

Technical support is provided by Tencent Hybrid Model

This article is from the WeChat public account: Jinlv.com (ID: ctcnn1), author: Chen Jie, editor: Zhuang Zhuang, and the header picture comes from: Visual China

Recently, when chatting with a few friends who have made border trips, they all mentioned a point of view: the logic of explosive products is dead, and outbound travel has changed.

The so-called "explosive logic" is also called the "explosive big single product strategy" of outbound travel. For example, in the past few decades, the best-selling goods in Europe have basically been "X country X day tour"; The best-selling in Southeast Asia is the "New Malaysia and Thailand X Day Tour"; The American explosion can't escape the "East Coast/West Coast X Days" ...... The same is true for some outbound cities, such as Tokyo's "Mt. Fuji Day Tour" and Bangkok's "Grand Palace + Floating Market Day Tour......

In essence, there are three core points in the underlying logic of the "explosive large single product strategy" of outbound travel: poor information, standardization and low price.

Tourism businesses take advantage of the huge information barriers and high communication costs at home and abroad, on the one hand, to sort out the most concentrated demand points from the increasingly surging and scattered outbound travel demands of Chinese people; On the other hand, it also integrates the top resources in outbound travel destinations. In the design of outbound travel products, standardized methods are adopted, "fixed scenic spots + fixed routes + negotiated price accommodation/catering/large and small transportation", thus creating a popular outbound group tour product.

Due to the huge production capacity of this standardized group tour product, the sales price can be pulled to the lowest, which has a strong temptation to the consumer side. As a result, thousands of outbound travel commodities that traveled to many European countries, hundreds of dollars traveled throughout Southeast Asia, hundreds of dollars went to Japan and South Korea, and dozens of outbound travel commodities that ran around Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan once became the basic plate of China's outbound tourism.

In the past, as long as a tourism merchant ran out of one of the above hot-selling items in an outbound travel destination, not to mention getting rich overnight, it could also make a lot of money.

It's just that the popular "explosive big single product strategy" has died, and what has become of the outbound travel market?

One

The fundamental reason for the sigh that "the logic of explosive products is dead, and outbound tourism has changed" is that the underlying logic of outbound tourism has been completely subverted.

With the expansion and deepening of China's outbound travel market, the information gap of outbound travel, with language barriers as the core, is shrinking rapidly. According to industry insiders, the proportion of Chinese tourists who have repeatedly visited Japan and Thailand in the past year has exceeded 40%. In other words, 4 out of 10 Chinese tourists to these two countries are visiting at least for the second time.

Young people aged 20-35 have become the main force of these Chinese tourists, who have a very high rate of returning tourists.

For them, a mobile phone is enough to travel all over the world.

Poor information?

It simply doesn't exist.

With the narrowing of the information gap of outbound travel, the proportion of independent travel has begun to surpass that of group tours.

In 2019, the proportion of outbound FIT and group tour orders on Fliggy's platform was still 64, and in 2024, the proportion of outbound FIT orders will be more than 6 times that of group tours. During this year's May Day and Dragon Boat Festival holidays, Fliggy's outbound free travel orders accounted for more than 80%, and outbound group tours were completely crushed.

The travel concept of these young people who are keen on independent travel is iterated across the board, and the most distinctive label is that the itinerary is non-standardized. Taking the 5-day tour of the UK as an example, the popular way to play now is to buy a ticket to fly to London, and first report a 1-3 day tour to the local Internet celebrity attractions, towns or cities with inconvenient transportation; Back in London, buy an Underground card to wander around, visit museums, watch a Premier League game, and listen to a West End musical......

Another surprising statistic is that under the tide of consumption downgrade, the unit price of young people's outbound independent travel on the Fliggy platform has increased by 34% compared with 2019, which means that the influence of "low price" in young people's outbound travel consumption decisions has been greatly weakened.

When the consumption demand of young people for outbound travel has completely changed, it is inevitable that the once popular "popular single product strategy" will go downhill, and the epidemic has accelerated the turn of the market.

China's outbound tourism has entered a new period of transformation.

Two

What is the current strategy for new products for outbound travel?

Discover and integrate local, experiential fragmented products, gameplay or services.

In the traditional sense, the fragmented resources of outbound tourism still focus on tickets, accommodation, transportation, and catering. However, with the enhancement of the online direct sales capabilities of strong resource providers and the competition for popular outbound travel resources on major platforms, consumers have been able to book these outbound travel products proficiently through online official or third-party channels. For example, tickets to the Louvre Museum in France, high-speed rail tickets from Paris to Strasbourg, tickets to the NBA in the United States, etc.

Food, SPA, travel photography, skydiving, live ammunition shooting and other unique and experiential fragmented goods, games and services are becoming a new point of interest for young people to travel abroad, and the more localized and less opportunities for domestic experience, the higher the value.

Not long ago, Jin Lujun went to Phang Nga, Thailand, after continuous flights and car and horse, I really want to experience the Thai characteristics of "horse killing chicken (SPA)", but Phang Nga is a very niche travel destination, and you can't find reliable stores on major platforms.

If it is difficult for tourism businesses to obtain the agency rights of some exclusive local fragmented tourism resources, another way is to "develop" fragmented tourism resources by themselves. In the first half of this year, one of the most popular Internet celebrity check-in spots on Mount Fuji in Japan was none other than a local Lawson convenience store, because a very good Mt. Fuji shooting camera could be found opposite this convenience store. This Internet celebrity check-in point is excavated by Chinese tourism merchants and made it popular, and all kinds of Mt. Fuji one-day tour products were once hot because of the addition of this Internet celebrity check-in point.

In addition, some Chinese tourism merchants have developed 12 one-day tours with different routes based on the more than 20 existing Internet celebrity check-in points on Mount Fuji, which can be said to be the ultimate in mining fragmented tourism resources.

Mining fragmented tourism resources requires a keen sense of smell, but in order to maximize profits, the ability to integrate operations is still indispensable.

Most of the products on a one-day sea trip in Phuket, Thailand are priced at a few hundred yuan, but there is a Chinese tourist merchant who can sell the same type of goods for 999 yuan per person, and it has become a hit, how did this happen?

First of all, they have mastered a number of the best local fragmented tourism resources, including one of the best local sea boats "White Moonlight", professional photographers who can follow the whole process, snorkeling spots in niche waters and supporting water play facilities, exclusive seaview restaurants, Chinese tour guides leading the whole process, etc.; Secondly, these fragmented tourism resources will be connected into a tourism line, so that Chinese tourists can enjoy the experience of going to sea in just one day that exceeds the expected quantity and quality.

You must know that any single experience or gameplay in this product has to be sold locally for a few hundred yuan, and now it is integrated to sell for less than 1,000 yuan, and the cost performance is stretched to the limit.

Three

The increasingly fragmented demand for outbound tourism should be met by the supply of massive tourism commodities, and the increasingly fragmented, subdivided and vertical mining of tourism resources is destined to be the main force of outbound tourism supply is small and medium-sized tourism businesses, but they will encounter two new problems in the past two years:

Do you want to make your own brand?

How to choose the right platform?

A travel partner pointed out that travel agencies face many challenges in branding - tourism is low-frequency consumption, the proportion of "repeat customers" is inherently less than that of physical goods, and the cost-effectiveness of brand investment is difficult to verify.

However, there are still more and more practitioners who are unwilling to continue to be "white labels", and they are unwilling to give up any opportunity to build a brand.

The founder of a travel agency believes that the era of content makes it possible for travel agencies to make brands. Nowadays, young people have a strong brand awareness, and these Internet aborigines search for reviews and strategies on the Internet before consumption, which is as natural as eating and drinking, and the heart-warming product experience content must be accompanied by "which travel agency is this booked", "I want to know all the information of this travel agency in one minute" and so on.

The more vertical, subdivided, and extreme the services provided, the greater the significance of the brand to the travel agency. For example, who do consumers think of when they think of diving in Southeast Asia? Who will come to mind first on a custom trip to Japan? Such a brand is recognizable and high-value, worthy of small and medium-sized tourism businesses ALL IN, otherwise, you can postpone the brand promotion plan first, and start with product polishing. Only with good products and services that are sustainable and professional can the brand break ground.

For merchants who want to fight on the matter of "becoming a brand" in the future, which platforms are worth testing the waters?

From the perspective of tourism verticals, the two largest players in outbound travel are Ctrip and Fliggy;

From the perspective of content planting, Xiaohongshu and Douyin are active enough for outbound travel content planting;

There is no doubt about the effectiveness of Xiaohongshu and Douyin in accumulating word-of-mouth for "white labels", and the floodgates of content volume have opened, giving brands the soil to emerge. This is the first stop for many small and medium-sized tourism businesses. However, there are shortcomings in the operation of these full-category content platforms in the tourism vertical category, and it is necessary to know that the transaction and fulfillment links of tourism commodities are much more complex than those of physical commodities.

In recent years, traditional OTAs have fallen into the "Matthew effect", and most of their resources and traffic have been carved up by their own operators. According to public data, Fliggy has added more than 1,000 overseas local entertainment and ticketing merchants to its platform in the past year, including 200 local operators from 29 countries opening stores on Fliggy.

In the just-concluded e-commerce 618 promotion, Jinlvjun checked the sales data of tourism commodities on major platforms and found that outbound travel-related commodities still maintain a strong growth momentum, and the explosive power of small and medium-sized tourism merchants is still being further released.

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