Taobao, Tmall, JD... The contentization of trading platforms seems to have become a new trend in the entire Internet industry, and this trend has also spread to the tourism market, changing the marketing model of online travel platforms in the post-epidemic era.
Open Ctrip, the hotel, air ticket, travel and other transaction entrances that originally occupied half of the first screen were compressed, and then replaced by live broadcasts, word-of-mouth lists, planet flagship stores and other video and graphic content. Mafengwo, which started with travel content, also launched a "buzz" function covering short video releases.
In the early days of the industry, in order to compete for the entrance of online tourism, major platforms have seized market share through cash-burning marketing, and price wars have once become the mainstream of industry competition. As the pattern gradually stabilizes, the platform caters to the changes in consumer demand, and the marketing model is more diversified. However, whether it is price reduction promotions or advertising placement, special route recommendation, in fact, it still belongs to the traditional marketing model of "let consumers come to you", and now the content of online travel platforms has realized "let content find consumers".
In essence, the people, goods, and venues of tourism transactions are being reconstructed by content marketing.
Travel inspiration, young people say to go
In the entire travel industry, consumer groups were originally dominated by white-collar workers and potential middle class, but in the past two years, a fact that cannot be ignored is that Generation Z has gradually become the fastest growing user of tourism consumption.
According to a set of public data, during the May Day period this year, the post-90s accounted for more than 50%, becoming the absolute main force, of which the post-95s accounted for 23%. Not only that, compared with the same period in 2019, the travel growth rate of people born in 95-00 years reached 1.85 times, and the growth rate of post-00s reached 2.5 times. Taking Ctrip as an example, analysys data shows that 82.2% of the people with intermediate and above consumption levels on Ctrip's platform and 77.7% of the post-95s-80s population, and high-net-worth young users have become the main users of Ctrip.
Changes in the user structure have put forward new requirements for the marketing model of online tourism. On the one hand, the younger generation pursues personalization and freshness, and is immune to traditional, one-way, and clichéd exposure propaganda, on the other hand, the penetration of new content forms such as short videos and live broadcasts makes them more concerned about the social satisfaction brought by interaction.
Moreover, the content itself has a reference effect on consumption decision-making, and when the content form changes, the consumer's decision-making link will be shorter and more direct.
As early as last year, Ctrip has already made efforts to broadcast live, which was actually a helpless choice for the tourism industry to be frustrated under the epidemic, but the construction of the content ecology with live broadcasting has just brought new ideas to Ctrip's content-driven transactions. Nowadays, around the "tourism marketing hub" strategy, Ctrip has formed a content marketing cycle system with Planet as the carrier to open up live broadcasts, lists and communities.
Ctrip's content marketing is not only to use diversified content as a medium to achieve the interaction between brands and young consumers, but more importantly, iterative content ecology, which can continuously stimulate users' travel inspiration and meet the potential travel needs of the younger generation in the era of content fragmentation. To put it simply, this is similar to content planting, when users browse content or social platforms, they are naturally attracted to the content, which in turn produces consumer psychology.
Compared with conventional marketing such as subsidies and advertising, content marketing achieves the matching of tourism products, services and traffic through user data insight and accurate content distribution, and realizes the leap from "people looking for goods" to "goods looking for people".
Taking the Planet flagship store as an example, on June 1, the Planet flagship store of the Macao Sar. Government Tourism Office was launched, and after the launch, the flagship store launched hot topics such as #Wonderful Macau Week# and #Macao With Peace of Mind, and after 30 days of creation, the topic was viewed more than 150,000 times. At the same time, its linkage promotion of "Macau Airlines ticket buy 1 get 1 free" and other consumption coupon projects guide users to achieve a closed loop of interest before traveling.
The biggest feature of the Planet flagship store is the private domain traffic operation, which obtains user traffic and accumulates fan groups through graphics/short videos, topic interaction and challenge activities. As a result, through this content marketing position, merchants can more accurately present their distinctive tourism services to fans with different needs, which is a typical goods looking for people.
Of course, Ctrip's content marketing is interconnected, and the exposure of planet numbers can be seen at the entrances of attraction POI pages, home page information flows, Ctrip community squares, Ctrip full-site search, etc., which will further expand the scope of users reached by content.
Product upgrades behind consumer experience enhancements
In 2020, the outbreak of the epidemic, the domestic tourism industry suffered a comprehensive setback, online travel platforms have shown signs of slowing down or even declining growth, and in 2021, as the epidemic eases, the people's tourism demand can be released. We have seen Ctrip take the lead in returning to growth, with the performance of its four major businesses of hotel reservation, transportation ticketing, tourism and vacation business and business travel management significantly improving compared with 2020.
At the same time, with the help of the effective control of the domestic epidemic, Ctrip has also begun to focus on content marketing. For example, the Planet flagship store, as of the end of June, the size of the Planet flagship store fans increased by 36% month-on-month, and the number of orders for merchant fans to purchase self-operated travel products in the flagship store increased by 75% month-on-month; for example, Ctrip's list has achieved more than 50% conversion efficiency since its launch.
The high conversion rate of Ctrip's content marketing, in addition to complying with consumers' behavioral characteristics and psychological demands, in fact, the more core driving force comes from the continuous iteration of the content ecology to provide diversified empowerment for Ctrip's supply chain, prompting the supply side to better understand and serve customer needs, product innovation and upgrading, which is easier to arouse users' consumption desires.
Especially affected by the epidemic, there has been a clear trend of change in the tourism market, and the marketing needs of merchants have also changed accordingly. Ctrip's content marketing strategy has just undertaken the changes in the marketing needs of merchants after the epidemic, and has driven the activity of the consumer side by empowering the supply side, forming a positive cycle between the two sides and driving the platform to resume growth.
As a major domestic tourist destination, Sanya has long been the No.1 tourist destination, and the outbreak of the epidemic last year brought a "catastrophic" impact on the tourist city. Ctrip, on the other hand, uses the new business of "travel + live broadcasting" to bring orders to attractions, hotels, etc. in the form of reservations, helping merchants recover.
Since 2020, nearly 50 Ctrip live broadcasts have covered Sanya tourism pre-sale products, with pre-sale products with nearly 600 million yuan of GMV, driving an increase of about 16% in the GMV of inactive Sanya tourism products and an increase of about 21% in orders.
Among them, sanya Atlantis's performance is particularly eye-catching. With the help of Ctrip Planet flagship store, live broadcast and other marketing tools, the hotel touches the traffic of travel and travel users with very attractive content. At the same time, Ctrip also delivered a highly active, high-consumption, and high-repurchase user base to the hotel, and with the support of user data, Atlantis's hotel services were upgraded. For example, the hotel package business, which packs afternoon tea, SPA, dinner, hot springs, etc., so that guests can get a more immersive experience.
From the consumer side, we can intuitively feel the changes that Ctrip empowers the supply side and brings to airports, hotels, attractions and other businesses.
For example, the revitalization of rural tourism that Ctrip focuses on this year, the main reason why most of the high-quality rural destinations are still not on fire is that there is no high-end or even "qualified" accommodation support, Ctrip has created 10 high-end rural accommodation benchmark products, which is driven by helping rural tourism projects to make up for the shortcomings of accommodation, improve the experience of tourists, and increase repurchase.
The biggest change this year is also in the business travel market, Ctrip business travel through flexible digital business travel solutions, together with the upstream and downstream industry chain to serve customers. For example, in response to the trend of young business travelers, the "free booking and mixed payment function" has been launched, shortening the booking time by about 75%; corporate employees can also realize the unified booking of air tickets through Ctrip business travel, without the need for advance reimbursement, and the follow-up Ctrip will realize the monthly end of hotel bookings, integrate more product resources, and gradually realize one-stop travel.
Content marketing helps the travel market attract more traffic, but it's the products and services that really impress consumers.
Under the epidemic, the scene is globalized and localized
An epidemic has transformed the global travel market and spawned new changes in the travel market.
In China, benefiting from strict epidemic control, short-distance tourism such as local tours, peripheral tours, and self-driving tours has increased, while mountaineering, skiing, and diving theme tourism have emerged, and the traditional tourism model has not yet recovered after being frustrated. Moreover, in tourist destinations, niche attractions that are convenient for punching cards are more popular with young consumers. However, in overseas markets, outbound tourism, cruise ships, and inbound tourism for foreigners are still plagued by the epidemic.
In line with market changes, Ctrip has increased its layout for short-distance travel in the past two years, and has opened joint projects with many scenic spots to enrich the experience of high-quality products in scenic spots. Especially for deeply personalized scenes, Ctrip continuously improves the professional level of service personnel to meet the user's in-depth play experience requirements.
Taking skiing as an example, with the approaching of the 2022 Winter Olympics and the slogan of "300 million people on ice and snow", the public's enthusiasm for ice and snow sports has never been higher. On the one hand, Ctrip uses creative marketing such as ice and snow tourism business, super brand days, and super destinations to stimulate consumers' enthusiasm for tourism, on the other hand, it cooperates with snow resorts to create ski tourism services according to the needs of different groups. For example, to provide ski day trips or ski quick experiences for surrounding consumers, and to launch ski independent camps and ski parent-child camps for teenagers.
Camping is also a new form of tourism that has emerged and erupted after the epidemic, and most of the campsites around the city have beautiful scenery and fresh air, which is more in line with the psychological demands of young tourists who expect to stay away from the city and return to life. In the Ctrip community, the number of releases of "camping, cooking, and camping" related content has increased by more than 400% year-on-year this year, and the number of readings has increased by more than 11 times.
Skiing, camping, diving... These more personalized and more immersive excursions have clearly activated the market potential of localized tourism, which is actually a key step for Ctrip to deepen the domestic market and drive the recovery of the entire industry.
However, deep ploughing in China does not mean ignoring overseas markets, the outbreak of the epidemic has also made overseas tourists more focused on local tourism resources, what Ctrip has to do is to copy its own successful recovery experience in the domestic market overseas, in the form of service to the sea, to promote the development of overseas local tourism.
In December last year, MGTO launched the Singapore Rediscovers Vouchers (SRV) project to activate the local tourism market, and Ctrip became one of the partners of the Singapore Tourism Board SRV project with its advantages in technology, products, publicity and user experience. As of August, bookings for local travel in Singapore through Trip.com increased by 434% year-on-year, and the transaction volume of Singapore's local tourism market increased by 270% over the same time dimension.
The reason why Ctrip's platform has achieved higher growth than the local travel market is that Singapore users can use the subsidy amount of SRV when ordering designated travel products Trip.com, and the Trip.com provide more complete and integrated tourism products and services by accessing Singapore's tourism resources.
At the same time, with the operation of the Planet flagship store in the domestic market, live pre-sale and other content marketing, Singapore has further leveraged the consumption potential of Chinese tourists.
Looking back at the tourism industry in the past two years, the spread of the epidemic has brought indelible damage to the global tourism market, but the commercial variables carried by this major event also lurk in the upgrading of tourism consumption in terms of products, services, marketing and so on. As an industry leader, Ctrip is both deeply rooted in China and global in mind, which has played a positive demonstration role in the recovery of the online travel market, and its content marketing strategy will also promote the improvement of platform operation efficiency and change the traditional tourism model.
The Tao is always reasonable, and has used the name Crooked Dao, the Internet and the new media in the science and technology circle. The WeChat public account of the same name: Dao always has a reason (daotmt). This article is an original article, and any form of reproduction without retaining the author's relevant information is not retained.