Image source @ Visual China
Wen 丨 Science and Technology New Knowledge, Author 丨 Bitter Melon, Editor 丨 Yi Page
The gates of the ride-hailing battlefield have never been closed.
Recently, according to the Financial Associated Press, people close to Geely Holding Group said that Geely Group will launch the online ride-hailing platform "Happiness Ten Million Homes", which is the fourth online ride-hailing platform of Geely Group after Cao Cao Travel, Courtesy Travel and Yao Travel, the difference is that "Happy Ten Thousand Homes" will operate in the mode of aggregation platform.
The aggregation platform seems to have become a new direction for the online ride-hailing track, and has received the attention of many new players. However, according to the news of the late LatePost on November 29, Meituan Taxi has recently regained its strength and split the smart transportation platform that has been established for less than a year. The two major divisions of taxi and unmanned vehicle distribution under the platform are independent, and part of the polymerization capacity line is dismantled and converted into self-operation, and at present, in the Meituan taxi APP, self-operation and aggregation mode coexist.
At the same time, The same as the aggregate taxi mode of AutoNavi Taxi was recently interviewed again, this time the problem is the third-party online ride-hailing platform it accessed. Due to the access to non-compliant online ride-hailing platform companies, vehicles and drivers in Tongling City, engaged in illegal online ride-hailing operations in the name of "aggregation", the Tongling Traffic Law Enforcement Detachment and the Municipal Cyberspace Office conducted a joint interview with Gaode Taxi.
In the online ride-hailing market, AutoNavi taxi is the earliest platform to appear in the aggregation model, with this model, although there is no self-operating power, but the market share is among the best, the low-cost aggregation model is like a green channel, attracting the attention of many players, meituan, Baidu map, Hello travel, Tencent map, etc. followed, but the hidden risks behind this operation model are gradually being exposed.
The aggregation platform that takes the "shortcut" no longer seems to have the original advantage in the next online ride-hailing market.
01, aggregation platform chaos
In 2016, the relevant policies of the traffic management department were introduced to standardize the management of the online ride-hailing industry, raise the entry threshold for drivers, and require that online ride-hailing vehicles must be operated with a license, but in a short period of time, the problem of insufficient supply of drivers is brought about. For a time, the number of online ride-hailing has declined rapidly, and the difficulty of taking a taxi has become a common problem in the online ride-hailing market.
At the same time, the policy requirements of one city and one checkpoint make it easier for local online ride-hailing platforms to obtain the issuance of relevant licenses, and a large number of local online ride-hailing service platforms have taken the opportunity to be born, but the difficulty of obtaining customers has become a new problem. Most users are not accustomed to actively looking for new platforms, compared to mature third-party travel platforms, it is not easy to believe in a small and medium-sized platform that has not been heard of, and the aggregation platform can provide traffic entrance for these local small and medium-sized platforms.
AutoNavi is the first platform to join the online ride-hailing market in an aggregate mode. Use their own traffic to reach cooperation with various online ride-hailing platforms, endorse them with the name of AutoNavi, and give a new idea to enter the online ride-hailing market with the help of the online ride-hailing transportation capacity of the access platform. After a large number of platforms gathered together, the orders of various platforms gathered into a tower, and AutoNavi also successfully occupied a place in the online ride-hailing market.
The aggregation mode can integrate the multi-platform online ride-hailing capacity, which has the advantages of improving operational efficiency and quickly seizing the market, and can directly place orders without users downloading various online ride-hailing APP, giving small and medium-sized platforms a living space for group heating. At the same time, after the resources of various platforms are integrated, the price comparison at a glance restricts the "free development" of industry prices, which is not a kind of supervision of the entire industry.
Low cost is also one of the most significant advantages of the aggregation platform model. In April 2019, Meituan Taxi announced the launch of the aggregation model, which can call a car with one click on the Meituan Taxi platform. Prior to this, Meituan Taxi has always been a self-operated model, and the reason for changing the operating model is very simple, that is, losing money.
In 2017, meituan took Nanjing as its first stop to test the waters of the online ride-hailing business, and after obtaining the "Online Ride-hailing Business License", it officially launched an independent ride-hailing APP in March of the following year and officially joined the online ride-hailing battlefield. However, after experiencing fierce cash-burning subsidies, Meituan has not changed the market pattern. According to Blue Whale TMT, an investor close to Meituan revealed that at that time, Meituan Taxi lost $50 million per month, but meituan said that "the news is not true."
In the past 5 months, the official announcement within the US group will no longer open up new cities, which means that the US group has abandoned the self-operated model. In April 2019, the ride-hailing business was merged into the Meituan APP, and the independent taxi APP was removed from the shelves, continuing to survive in the online ride-hailing market with a lower-cost aggregation platform model.
On November 29, according to the news of the delay, the Meituan taxi has recently regained its strength, the taxi business department is independent, increasing the intensity of commission-free, and "grabbing" new drivers. It seems that it wants to continue to develop in the self-operated model, but for now, in the Meituan taxi, the Meituan self-operated online ride-hailing and other platforms can be called a car with one click, which may mean that the Meituan will not give up the operation mode of the aggregation platform while launching its self-operated online ride-hailing business.
Baidu Map also launched the aggregation taxi business as early as 2017, and also launched Baidu's self-operated self-operated self-driving taxi service in 2020, but the volume in the market is still not high. At the same time, platforms such as Hello Travel and Tencent Maps have also joined the ranks of aggregation platforms, and the hidden dangers in the industry are also gradually exposed.
02. Risks and hidden dangers of not taking responsibility
The disadvantages of the aggregation model are particularly reflected in the difficulty of management, starting with security issues. E-hailing safety accidents occur frequently, the supervision of travel platforms is difficult to fully cover, and the operation mode of aggregating multiple platforms directly leads to an exponential increase in management difficulties.
On June 12, 2021, when Ms. Gao in Hangzhou was traveling with the first car, she chose to jump out of the car to save herself because the driver did not drive according to the route planned by the navigation, and the transaction was carried out through the AutoNavi platform, but in the follow-up processing, there was no figure of AutoNavi.
AutoNavi Taxi clearly states in the user agreement that any problems that occur when you use this service will be resolved by you and the third-party service provider through negotiation, and any loss caused to you will be borne by the third-party service provider. This clause was questioned by netizens after the Incident of Ms. Gao: Taxi through the AutoNavi platform is because of the trust in AutoNavi, is it reasonable that AutoNavi does not bear any responsibility after a safety accident?
But from another point of view, as an aggregation platform, it is indeed difficult for AutoNavi to supervise every driver, and even each online ride-hailing platform itself is difficult to strictly review every driver, if the safety management is strengthened, the safety cost is too high, and the lack of driver supply will become a new problem.
The safety of online car-hailing is a difficult bone to gnaw, the camera in the car, the recording during the trip, all kinds of measures are difficult to completely eliminate hidden dangers, and the quality of the driver is still difficult to control. This is not only a headache for aggregation platforms, but also a headache for the entire online ride-hailing market.
However, in contrast, professional travel platforms can have more energy and funds to control the safety of online ride-hailing. As an aggregation platform, it is a layer of oil on the profits of drivers and online ride-hailing platforms, if you invest money, it is feasible to strengthen safety control, but the profit of the aggregation platform itself is not high, and it is not cost-effective to improve safety costs.
If the supervision of online ride-hailing access platforms is strengthened, it will inevitably increase the operating costs of the aggregation platform, which will undoubtedly further squeeze the profit margins of the platform, which is probably one of the reasons why AutoNavi declares that it does not participate in disputes between users and service providers.
At the same time, in terms of user experience, if there is a problem with the travel services provided by the third-party platform, the reputation may not only be damaged by the service platform, but also the aggregation platform will be affected to a certain extent. On the third-party complaint platform, aggregation platforms such as AutoNavi Map and Baidu Map have received many complaints, all of which stem from the poor car experience of taxi users.
In addition, compliance issues need to be addressed. As the ride-hailing market matures, the issue of ride-hailing compliance is receiving more and more attention. Recently, interface news reported that Geely Automobile will launch an online ride-hailing aggregation platform "Happiness Ten Million Homes", which mainly promotes compliant transportation capacity, requiring third-party transporters to hold their own vehicles and drivers to join.
On September 2, 2021, the official WeChat account of the Ministry of Transport released a message saying that the Ministry of Transport, together with the Central Cyberspace Administration, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Public Security, the State Administration of Market Regulation and other five departments, jointly interviewed 11 online ride-hailing platform companies, including Meituan Taxi and AutoNavi, and asked each platform company to examine its own problems and immediately rectify non-compliance.
Two months ago, on July 21, the Tianjin Municipal Road Transport Bureau and the Public Security Bus Sub-Bureau interviewed Meituan, AutoNavi and other aggregation platform enterprises and put forward specific work requirements, including especially the relevant requirements for the development of compliant operations.
At the same time, there are also certain risks in terms of laws and regulations, and the laws and regulations on the online ride-hailing aggregation platform are constantly improving, and this operating model may face policy supervision risks in the future. With the continuous development of the online ride-hailing market, the hidden risks brought about by the low-cost market are gradually emerging, and the advantages once brought by the aggregation model are gradually disappearing.
03, the advantage of aggregation gradually disappeared
In 2019, AutoNavi gave itself a definition of "fourth-party platform", as a "third-party platform" for third-party travel platforms and users, and the definition of "fourth-party platform" is particularly appropriate for online ride-hailing aggregation platforms.
The fourth-party platform is a traffic-heavy business, in a sense, it is able to achieve a win-win existence, traffic and capacity, and reach cooperation on the aggregation platform. Third-party ride-hailing platforms operate with the traffic advantages of aggregation platforms, and high-frequency ride-hailing services can further consolidate their traffic advantages for aggregation platforms.
In March 2021, AutoNavi once joined hands with 60 online ride-hailing platforms across the country to form a "Commission-free Alliance" to exempt drivers from commissions at a specific time period, that is, all fares belong to drivers. This model does have a great attraction for drivers, and AutoNavi has also gained a certain reputation and traffic with it.
In this game, perhaps only small and medium-sized platforms are injured, no commission commission means that this is a performance that loses money and makes money, "commission-free alliance" seems to repeat the script of the burning subsidy war, the difference is that this performance does not bring them reasonable income, Gaode Map as an entrance platform, it is logical to accept the traffic exchanged for commissions.
In fact, for the current mainstream online ride-hailing aggregation platforms, such as Meituan, AutoNavi, Baidu, Tencent, etc., online ride-hailing is only a supplement to the travel business, and there is no long-term business planning, and the main role of this business may be to drain the flow.
Taking Meituan Taxi as an example, for the online ride-hailing business, Meituan has tried many times, and once it does not meet expectations, it will shrink the business. Interestingly, at the end of 2018, Meituan had abandoned the self-operated model of online ride-hailing, but the second year's financial report showed that new businesses such as online ride-hailing and shared bicycles achieved profitability for the first time, but in the financial report, it was not announced how much revenue was contributed by online ride-hailing.
As a high-frequency business, online ride-hailing can bring certain traffic to the platform, and at the same time, it can also supplement the platform's life service business. In terms of the most important aggregation platforms at present, the overall focus is more on the life service business, and the planning and resource investment of the travel business is not as good as the vertical travel platform, only meituan has re-launched a separate taxi APP with the re-acquisition of its own online ride-hailing business.
In this attitude, the disadvantages of the aggregation platform may not be eliminated. In order to meet the user's requirements for service quality and policy environment compliance with online ride-hailing, it is necessary to invest more energy and cost for the aggregation platform, which undoubtedly conflicts with the attitude of the aggregation platform to the online ride-hailing business, and is not consistent with the purpose of carrying out the online ride-hailing business.
The future of the online car market will be more mature, the next step of competition will be around compliance, service quality, convenience and other issues, low-cost entry of the aggregation platform although can quickly cut into the market, but there is no support of self-operating power, coupled with the high probability of the online car business will not invest too much energy and cost, in the next competition, the aggregation model is no longer an advantage. In the future, the aggregation model may only be an important part of the ride-hailing market, and the vertical travel platform is the more important operating model.