"Small gathering, big space" private customized tour is becoming a "new Internet celebrity"

In recent years, with the continuous improvement of people's concept of tourism consumption, some niche destinations and niche tourism games have become popular, and private customized tours with more private, more worry-free and free advantages have also begun to become popular. The impact of the epidemic has made people pay more attention to the privacy and safety of tourism, and in the context of tourism recovery, customized small group tours have gradually become one of the norms of travel in the form of "small gathering and large space". In this issue, the reporter interviews the practitioners of front-line customized tourism and introduces this new tourism trend.

The current state of the market

The outbreak of customized tours is the market demand

Shakespeare once said, "There will be a thousand Hamlets in the eyes of a thousand readers", and this phrase is applied to tourism activities as "there will be a thousand ways to play in the eyes of a thousand tourists". A private customized tour is a travel route designed specifically for tourists, focusing on a unique experience. Private customized small group tours can be "customized on demand" according to the requirements of tourists in terms of group member selection, route selection, time length, transportation, accommodation and catering standards, which has the advantages of being more private, more worry-free and freer. It is these advantages and a good sense of travel experience that make private customized small group tours usher in explosive growth in the future.

In fact, as early as around 2014, private customized tours have begun to appear in the Chinese tourism market, due to the limitations of most people's tourism consumption concepts at that time, and the price is higher than that of general group tours, which has been in a slow stage of development. At present, the domestic customized tour market is still in the initial stage of development, most of the customized tour market is in developed first-tier cities, and the market still has great opportunities. With the recovery of tourism market demand, the market potential and scale of customized tourism are still huge.

The "China Domestic Tourism Development Annual Report 2021" released by the China Tourism Research Institute mentions that the people's demand for quality, convenience and customization of a better life is constantly increasing. In 2021, the domestic tourism market will fully recover, due to the suspension of outbound tourism, so that the previous trillion yuan of outbound tourism consumer demand back to the domestic market, the number of domestic tourism reception in the central and western regions will grow faster, and the development gap with the eastern region will continue to narrow. The vast western region is an active market for private customized small group tours.

In the "2021 Cultural Tourism Industry Annual Inventory and 2022 Cultural Tourism Industry Trend Analysis Report" just released by the Focus Research Institute, it was analyzed that new consumers put forward higher requirements for product quality and service quality, which will force the entire industry to improve and upgrade. Although people's tourism behavior is greatly restricted and suppressed, people's tourism needs and expectations have not decreased and decreased, but have higher requirements. Chen Yang, president of the Focus Research Institute, suggested that travel agencies should explore new forms, expand new businesses, and make efforts to domestic tourism/explore private groups, customized groups and other products.

This is confirmed in the "2021 User Travel New Trend Insights" released by Ctrip, "Consumers are gradually abandoning the previous travel methods of large groups, long-term lines and sloppy travel. Private groups are the most popular way of travel for families under this trend, rising from less than 3% to 1/3 of group travel. In 2021, the number of orders registered for private groups on Ctrip's platform increased by nearly 70% year-on-year. "Hulunbuir, Sanya, Xining, Guiyang, Lijiang, Guilin, Zhangjiajie, Xishuangbanna, Jiuzhaigou and Urumqi have become the top ten most popular private group destinations for consumers. Last year, the per capita expenditure of domestic private groups was about 4200 yuan. The average group size is 3.6 people, which is basically equivalent to a family of three or four.

Industry interviews

Customized tours are like independent travel upgrades

Consider whether the service can keep up and whether expectations are met

"Customized tours will definitely increase and develop", Yuan Ri, manager of Demai International Travel, affirmed the market prospects of private customized tours. She said that as a way of travel starting from the needs of tourists, private customized tours can make it more convenient for tourists to enjoy characteristic resources and services to meet the needs of current tourists for more personalized tourism and higher quality. Combined with the practice of Demai and most of the customized tour services in the current market, she believes that the current customized tour has the meaning of "independent travel upgrade", and this semi-customized and semi-independent travel mode of travel starting from the needs of guests will naturally develop and grow.

It is understood that the main population of Demai's current customized travel business is the customized travel of intimate groups such as families, parents and children, and friends, and the travel society combines the direction and resources it is good at according to the needs and preferences of tourists to harmonize, dig deep experience, try to meet the services that are difficult to feel, and then give travel recommendations. Culture, photography, research, excavation of characteristic destinations, and exclusive value-added services of high-end hotels are the characteristic directions of their customized tours, such as the ancient capital cultural theme tour, the Ali Great Northern Line crossing, and the Kanas "Zhen Youth" sports camp. In 2021 alone, Demai launched 107 featured travel programs.

Through personal needs to provide services, more services for people with high-end tourism needs, this is the current development trend of Demai customized tourism, but Yuan Ri also reminded, "for the customized tour that serves high-end people, whether the service can keep up, whether it is expected to meet is also the need for tourism providers to be carefully controlled", private customized tours are not needed to be satisfied, but also depends on whether the service provider has relevant resources and whether it can be practiced.

Private customized tours have a long history and have developed slowly for many years, but after the epidemic, they have sprung up and attracted wide attention. For this, Yuan Ri said that the rapid development of customized tourism after the epidemic depends on the restriction of tourists' outbound travel and tourists' consideration of the privacy of travel, and revealed that in 2021, some theme tourism tourists in Demai will choose to change to customized tours to other destinations after they cannot travel due to the impact of the epidemic in group travel destinations, which is very obvious under the epidemic. The service operation process of their customized tour has not changed significantly from the previous theme tour, mainly because they need to carefully capture the needs of customers, and most of the theme tour resources they have can be changed to customized tours when the conditions are met.

Customized tours should broaden the knowledge and cultural output

Elevate your travel experience to a deeper level

Different from the diversified operation of tourism companies and the satisfaction of pan-demand, there are also some tourism practitioners who focus on a certain characteristic area who are also constantly deepening in small group customized tours. For example, Ma Chunlin, an independent photographer who loves to study Mount Everest and a planner of a small team of customized tours, revealed that his team's travel destinations are near the Himalayas, and while leading tourists to experience the ultimate natural scenery, he will also explain the history and culture of the Himalayas to spread the snow mountain culture that is currently in China's more marginal corners.

Ma Chunlin shared his views on current private customized small group tours based on his own practical experience. He believes that relatively strong travel agencies, individuals or small groups are facing development dilemmas such as customer attraction, restrictions of laws and regulations, and mixed phenomena in the industry in terms of customized tours. And customized travel is a relatively high cost of tourism, the difficulty of attracting tourists, but also let some people in considering the economic benefits of the slow development of customized travel into the form of "travel photography". In addition, in reality, the threshold of customized tours is too low, it is easy to lack cultural connotations, and the lack of clear characteristics is also a factor affecting the overall development of customized small group tours.

For customized small group tour products, Ma Chunlin believes that broadening the output of knowledge and culture to enhance a deeper sense of tourism experience, and pushing customized small group tours to a more professional and vertical depth may be a development direction in the future. He said: "Through the export of culture, everyone will have a more vivid and clearer understanding of my tourism products." I think that by doing this, the prospects of customizing travel products will be a little better. ”

He stressed that the development of customized tourism should build up its own core competitiveness, to provide high-quality tourism services, to position customized tourism in the upper reaches of the tourism pyramid, and to create a sense of difference in content and experience through its own professionalism, rather than just the packaging of the "high-end sense" on the surface. "If I build it with Hisalayan knowledge, then my client will be very impressed with what he knows about himalayas every time he travels with me, so that he will look at me and then they will constantly introduce new friends over." (Text/Yangcheng Evening News reporter Li Cungen intern Zhang Wen)

Source: Yangcheng Evening News