Per reporter: Zhang Huaishui Per reporter Per editor: Chen Xu
There are less than 20 days left before the Spring Festival.
At this time in previous years, major travel agencies have entered a "state of battle" - grouping, chartering flights, booking hotels, booking buses, it is the decisive moment before the hottest peak season for outbound travel, travel agencies must compete every second.
This year, however, is a completely different story.
"Overseas travel products have been removed from the shelves, and the number of orders during the Spring Festival is zero. Even domestic customized tours are bleak. Manager Wu, a domestic travel agency specializing in overseas customized tours, helplessly told the Daily Economic News reporter.
As the overseas epidemic situation has not improved, there have been clusters of epidemics in many parts of The country in recent days, which has led to the tightening of prevention and control policies, so overseas travel and domestic long-distance travel products have been removed from the shelves.
Recently, the National Development and Reform Commission and 11 other departments jointly issued the "Opinions on Doing a Good Job in the Spring Festival Work in 2021 and Strengthening the Prevention and Control of the Epidemic in the Spring Festival", proposing to actively guide staggered peak travel and advocate the masses of workers to celebrate the festival on the spot.
The "Daily Economic News" reporter found in the investigation that after the tourism industry has experienced a cold winter and a reshuffle, major travel agencies have turned their attention to the domestic short-term tourism market. Especially after the recent release of the "local festival" initiative in many provinces, the popularity of local tourism and peripheral tourism products has risen rapidly.
On January 21, Ctrip released a report saying that 80% of users prefer to travel locally. Through the analysis of users' latest search behavior, Ctrip's current local New Year's popularity has increased by 260%; in the overall search volume, local travel hot search volume accounts for more than 40%.
The staff of the listed company CYTS told the "Daily Economic News" reporter that the company has carried out corresponding publicity for short-term tour projects, such as Gubei Water Town in Beijing and Yiwu Town in Zhejiang Province, and launched a number of Spring Festival tourism product packages. "Although the epidemic prevention and control situation is still relatively severe, under the guidance of the 'local New Year' policy, we believe that the local tourism and surrounding tourism markets still have a certain popularity."
Image source: Xinhua News Agency
<h2>Tickets for tourist cities are now available from 10% off</h2>
According to the experience of previous years, it is common to find train tickets and plane tickets during the Spring Festival, and air passengers generally do not have luxury for special tickets.
For example, tickets to popular cities such as Sanya are already very tense more than a week before the Spring Festival, and most of the popular departure periods of the flight economy class only have full-price tickets left, and even the economy class is full, and only business class can be purchased.
However, on January 22 of this year, the Daily Economic News reporter opened online travel platforms such as Ctrip and Qunar, using Beijing as the starting point, and searched for tickets to Sanya, Shanghai, Xi'an, Guangdong and other popular tourist cities, but found that the starting price of some routes was only as low as 10%.
Image source: Screenshot of the travel platform product
Not only that, but multiple platforms have also launched "air ticket + hotel" special packages to attract customers with greater discounts.
Taking Ctrip as an example, from February 11 to 12, the price of the air + hotel package from Beijing to Sanya was only 430 yuan, and the price of the air ticket + hotel package from Beijing to Shanghai was only 216 yuan. On that day, the lowest ticket from Beijing to Shanghai was 180 yuan, less than one-third of the second-class ticket price of the high-speed rail.
Lei Zheng, president of the International Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, introduced that the pricing mechanism of airlines is more complicated and will consider cost and market competition factors. Normally, ticket revenue can cover the operating costs of the entire flight, including variable and fixed costs. However, under the epidemic, airlines have to determine ticket prices according to the marginal contribution. "That is, as long as the revenue from the flight exceeds the variable cost of the flight."
"In the context of tightening epidemic prevention and control measures, domestic long-term travel is destined to be difficult to improve." Manager Wu of the aforementioned travel agency told the "Daily Economic News" reporter that the company had previously designed customized travel products such as Yunnan and Xinjiang, and the groups were all organized, but there were constantly provinces in China that were classified into medium- and high-risk areas, and finally had to be suspended.
According to the "China Domestic Tourism Development Report 2020" released by the China Tourism Research Institute, the number of domestic tourists in 2020 is expected to be 3.426 billion person-times, down 43% year-on-year; domestic tourism revenue is 2.76 trillion yuan, down 52% year-on-year.
The reporter found on the Chinese government network epidemic risk level inquiry system that as of 15:00 on January 23, 2021, there were a total of 6 high-risk areas in China, involving relevant areas in Beijing, Hebei, Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces; while the number of medium-risk registered areas was 67.
<h2>Cost-effective short-term tour packages have been launched in many places</h2>
According to the big data of Mafengwo Tourism, the domestic destinations with the highest tourism popularity during the Spring Festival holiday this year are Sanya, Guangzhou, Changsha, Shanghai, Chongqing, Xi'an, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Harbin and Beijing. Since January this year, the surrounding tours and in-depth gameplay of major cities have attracted the attention of young tourists, and the popularity of tourism searches for the keyword "peripheral tourism" has increased by 71%.
Ma Yutao, a big data research center for tourism in Mafengwo, analyzed that after a whole year of normalization of epidemic prevention and control, Chinese tourists have gradually become accustomed to the current epidemic prevention and control situation, and are willing to try safer and healthier ways of travel, and tourism consumption decisions and consumption habits have also undergone obvious changes.
Taking Sanya, the most popular Spring Festival travel, as an example, the Daily Economic News reporter noticed in the process of investigation that some 5-star hotels in Sanya have launched discount packages and upgrade rights packages including hotel and scenic spot tickets.
For example, atlantis Sanya recently launched a 199 yuan upgrade benefit package, including a package room upgrade to a Royal Club Seaview Room, while enjoying Royal Club benefits. Under normal circumstances, the Royal Club Seaview Room is about 1,000 yuan higher than the average price per night of ordinary rooms.
In terms of packages, Atlantis hotel launched a 2288 yuan Hainan islander exclusive package, 3202 yuan Sanya Atlantis Supreme Seaview Room 1 night (2 breakfasts + 2 large and 2 small unlimited play aquarium + 1 water world ticket + 1 single C show performance ticket + 1 hotel shuttle bus pick-up + hotel minibar free drink 1).
Sanya Haitang Bay Mangrove Forest Resort has launched a 1599 yuan deluxe seaview big bed room with double breakfast package, including buffet dinner for two and professional travel photography. Moreover, whether it is a package or a benefit package, it is valid for more than 3 months.
The reporter compared multiple online travel platforms and found that even in normal times, the price of the standard room of the Atlantis Hotel is about 2200 yuan per night. During the Spring Festival in previous years, the price per night will even reach more than 5,000 yuan.
The "Daily Economic News" reporter combed and found that a number of online travel platforms have recently launched "local New Year" products. Ctrip and Group Tours recently launched the "Nian Wei Private Group" and "Chinese New Year's Eve Meal Private Group" products that are independently formed in local groups, where users can form independent groups with family and friends, use cars independently, and have exclusive drivers and guides.
Fliggy also launched the "Reunion Festival" to enrich the "Local New Year" products. Fliggy said that this year, the platform has increased the supply of one-stop products according to the new needs of consumers for "local New Year", such as hotels + ski tickets + dinner one-stop holiday package products.
In addition, Zhejiang, Guangzhou, Beijing and other provinces and cities have also launched Spring Festival tourism packages. Yiwu New Crown Epidemic Prevention and Control Headquarters issued a notice on January 17 that those who stayed in the local New Year from February 1 to February 26 can apply for a "New Year red envelope" electronic consumption coupon of 500 yuan / person, and can be used in offline consumption places in the city within a specified time.
<h2>Listed companies are transforming into tourism service consumption</h2>
The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) recently released the "Recovery and Development Report of World Tourism under the COVID-19 Epidemic", predicting that the number of international tourists in the world is expected to end positive growth in 2020, with a decline of 1% to 3%, and international tourism revenue is expected to decline by 58% to 78% overall.
According to the China Tourism Research Institute, it is expected that in the first quarter and full year of 2020, the number of domestic tourists in China will drop by 56% and 15.5% respectively, and the number of domestic tourism trips will decrease by 932 million year-on-year; domestic tourism revenue will fall by 69% and 20.6% respectively, and the annual revenue will be reduced by 1.18 trillion yuan.
Yang Yanfeng, director of the Online Tourism Research Center of Beijing Union University, said in an interview with the Daily Economic News that the epidemic is still spreading around the world, and there will be structural changes in tourism destinations in the future. Affected by flights and related policies, long-distance travel abroad will inevitably be suppressed to a certain extent, and tourism demand may be more inclined to domestic short-distance tourism and Southeast Asian markets after the recovery.
Yang Yanfeng believes that the demand for cultural tourism consumption will shift to peripheral tourism, local tourism, rural tourism or resort city leisure tourism with the temporary absence of overseas travel or long-distance tourism, and will drive the rise in demand for local tourism products and tourism consumption service products. "For example, the consumption of services such as catering, car rental, and homestays may gain a larger market share."
A staff member of Caissa Tourism told the "Daily Economic News" reporter that before the epidemic, the company's main business mainly focused on overseas travel and aviation and railway catering. Considering that the current epidemic has a relatively large impact on the overseas travel business, the company is also actively transforming and putting more energy into the domestic tourism market. "In addition to local tours and peripheral tours, we are also trying to do some local consumer business, such as retail, research courses, and research and development of tourism creative products."
The staff of CYTS told the "Daily Economic News" reporter that with the recovery of the domestic consumer market, the consumer psychology of tourists also has a reconstruction process, and local tours and peripheral tours may recover faster.
"At present, the company's heavy asset investment is mainly Gubei Water Town and Yiwu Town, these two attractions do not rely on tickets to make money, the income is mainly from catering, hot springs, hotels and other related supporting tourism service projects."
According to the staff of CYTS, the company has launched dozens of Spring Festival preferential packages on the online platform, which are sold in the form of package tickets, and according to different package prices, attraction tickets, hot spring discount coupons, etc. will be given away.
According to the information provided by Flush, caesars tourism revenue composition, tourism services (citizen retail) revenue accounted for 47.85%, tourism services (corporate MICE) revenue accounted for 19.16%, of all business segment revenue composition, accounting for the top two.
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