Author/ Author of "Finance and Economics" Weekly Zhang Jikang
Editor / Chen Fang
Beijing outings are several times more expensive
On April 30, the first day of the May Day holiday, the sky in Beijing was clear, and many people chose to go out and feel the breath of nature. Gao Ge came to the Jietai Temple in Mentougou, Beijing, early in the morning, took the ticket purchased for 45 yuan and the 48-hour nucleic acid certificate, and successfully entered this thousand-year-old temple, stopping and walking inside.
The ticket was reserved by Gao Ge a day in advance, and she originally planned to stay in a nearby homestay at night, and get up tomorrow to go to Miaofeng Mountain and Tanzhu Temple. Open Gaode searched, was startled by the price, a homestay called Qilu Club, to stay a night to 3393 yuan, more than the usual price of 1403 yuan is nearly two thousand yuan, is 2.4 times the daily price; another named Huazhu Beijing Shanshan has a year to live in 3875 yuan, is more than 3 times the usual 1251 yuan a night.
Gao Ge did not die and went to Ctrip, which specializes in tourism, to search and found that the situation was the same, a private soup courtyard called Beijing Nailan Mountain Private Soup Homestay cost 6117 yuan for one night, while usually only 793 yuan, which is more than 7 times more expensive. A room called Little Donkey Homestay costs 2186 yuan a night, which is nearly 6 times the usual price of 366 yuan.
"It's also too expensive." In the end, Gao Ge dismissed the idea of living nearby, planning to drive home for an hour in the afternoon and play in another place tomorrow.
Before May Day, Zhao Wei originally planned to take her three-year-old child to the Club Med Joyview Resort in Yanqing, Beijing, and she heard a friend say that it was very suitable for taking children to play, with complete facilities for playing, as well as hosting services, which was particularly worry-free and labor-saving. On April 21, she searched on Ctrip and found that the price was 5,000 yuan on April 30, soared to 6,111 yuan on May 1, and the salary for staying for two nights for half a month was gone, while the daily stay here was only 1188 yuan.
"Good is indeed good, but the price of May Day is too expensive, I plan to go back to find a weekend and bring my children to play." Zhao Wei eventually planned to take his children to play in the parks around Beijing on May Day.
Photo/Visual China
Huang Xin, who works in Beijing, began preparing for a May Day outing a month ago. She excitedly made a play strategy on platforms such as Xiaohongshu, turned over the attractions that can be played around Beijing, and finally determined the place she wanted to play on May Day - Gubei Water Town.
Although he had not yet gone, Huang Xin, who had already done his homework, touched the door of Gubei Water Town. "The ticket to Gubei Water Town is unlimited in and out, kong ming lantern drone show and music water dance show are more interesting, after two or three days to play we can also choose to visit the Great Wall at night." She said excitedly to her friend.
The two men spent a few days deciding on a trip, only to be dumbfounded when it came time to book a hotel. Opening the Meituan, Huang Xin saw that the price of a hotel near Gubei Water Town had soared to one thousand yuan a night.
"What's the most outrageous thing? If you book a hotel now, you only need to spend 149 yuan, while the same room model costs 1002 yuan on April 30. Huang Xin said helplessly while refreshing the hotel interface.
Unwillingly, she chose several express hotels, and as a result, the original price of rooms with a price of two or three hundred yuan was raised to more than 1,000 yuan during the May Day period.
As an ordinary worker, five or six times the hotel premium is a bit unacceptable to Huang Xin, who has already done enough play strategies, and she can only helplessly choose to go to other places. But as may day approached, she noticed that hotel prices on the outskirts of Beijing had risen sharply.
Sun Yong originally planned to go to Beijing around the May Day holiday to find a holiday villa or boutique homestay, live for a few days, sightseeing in the mountains, after searching for a circle on Ctrip, he dispelled the idea, the price of a night is generally several times more expensive. "A Shanshang boutique homestay in Huairou costs 5400 yuan a night. I searched several more in succession, one of which was usually more than 3,000 yuan, and it cost 5,600 yuan on May Day. ”
Sun Yong, who couldn't help it, ran to the WeChat group to complain, and his friends told him that this was normal, because everyone couldn't go out and could only play around Beijing.
A random spot check by Caijing Tianxia Weekly found that accommodation prices in hotels near attractions on the outskirts of Beijing rose during the May Day period, with two or three times as few as many and six or seven times as many as those.
But there are many people who are willing to pay for expensive Beijing outings, and when Sun Yong searched, he found that although some homestays are expensive, there are many people who book, and they are full early.
Photo/ Finance World Weekly
Indeed, Tang Sheng, who likes to take advantage of the holidays to take his family to travel abroad, had to take his family to play in the suburbs around Beijing after his plan to go abroad on May Day this year was in vain. Although the price of the hotel he booked was more than three times more expensive than usual, he felt that it was worth it, "Usually busy at work, no time to take the children out, May Day this small long holiday I have to take the children out, in my opinion the price does not matter, the family can go out together is the most important." ”
Li Na, who just got married, booked a hotel on the outskirts of Beijing on May Day this year. Originally, she also expected to spend her honeymoon across provinces on May Day, but after the epidemic was serious, she began to search for tourist places near the outskirts of Beijing. She eventually booked a homestay in Huairou District, and the price of the homestay changed from 269 yuan on non-holidays to 1152 yuan, which was more than four times more expensive.
For Li Na, although the soaring price is difficult to accept for a while, she is more willing to spend some money to go out and play than the regret of not being able to spend her honeymoon.
Qian Yu, who made an appointment with friends early to go to Miyun for the May Day holiday, is not sensitive to price, in her opinion, as long as the city is not locked down, she will definitely go out, as for the price is expensive. "My biggest headache is to take the baby at home during the holidays, which will definitely make the chicken fly and the dog jump, so I can go out."
Qian Yu said that in previous years, holidays were all going abroad, but last year they took the time to go to Beihai and Inner Mongolia, and this year they could only swim around Beijing. Eventually, she and her friends booked a parent-child-themed villa in Miyun, Beijing, and spent nearly 3,000 yuan a night, compared with less than 1,000 yuan for the usual price.
"Sky-high" tour around
"Sky-high" peripheral tours are not unique to Beijing, in fact, in many parts of the country, this year's May Day peripheral tours have seen different degrees of price increases.
Shu Jin, who works in Shenzhen, originally planned to go to the surrounding South Australia First Beach on May Day to see the sea, but when searching for hotel prices, he found that the hotel that originally only needed 182 yuan to stay in became 1176 yuan during the May Day period, which was more than 6 times more expensive.
Shu Jin's Luohu District is 49 kilometers away from Nan'ao Beach, and she originally planned to play around Nan'ao for 2 to 3 days, but chose to drive a one-day round trip under the high hotel price.
Zhong Fei, who is also in Shenzhen, originally planned to go to Dameisha and Jinsha Bay to play nearby, searched for hotel prices on Ctrip and immediately broke off his thoughts. Zhong Fei said that the daily booking of Shenzhen Zhongxing Hetai Seaview Hotel only cost 429 yuan a night, and on May 1, it became 1756 yuan, a threefold increase. The same is true of the Shenzhen Marriott Hotel, which is usually 1091 yuan a night, and on May 1, it is 4472 yuan, which is more than three times more expensive.
Hebe, who lives in Fuzhou, has chosen to travel abroad on holidays in previous years. According to her recollection, before the epidemic began, she had visited Cambodia once on holidays, when the six-day in-depth tour cost a total of about 5,000 yuan.
Now, if she wants to travel to Dongshan Island, which is only a two-hour drive away on May Day, the hotel price alone has reached 643 yuan a night, plus other travel costs, adding up to even more than it costs her to go abroad once.
Wu Min turned over her Ctrip order, in 2019, when she and her husband traveled to Sabah, 7 days and 5 nights of free travel with organic wine, the two people spent 8641 yuan, and May Day in Xi'an to stay in a better hotel, a night will need more than three thousand. A weekly inquiry by Caijing Tianxia magazine about what she said was a beautiful hotel in Xi'an Wildlife Park and found that the price of accommodation on Ctrip on May 1 was 3,048 yuan, an increase of nearly five times.
Photo/ Finance World Weekly
"It is not necessary to travel, which makes the surrounding travel more popular." A tourism industry practitioner revealed that most people do not want to waste 5 days of vacation, 5 days at home is too boring, so tourists in various provinces and cities have chosen to travel around, and the pricing of hotels will be dynamically adjusted according to the market.
Tourism expert Yang Yanfeng believes that the outbreak of tourism around May Day has been greatly affected by the epidemic, and the original medium- and long-distance tourism has been restricted due to the epidemic, resulting in the concentrated release of demand for urban suburban homestays.
Qunar big data shows that compared with last year's May Day, local tourism and peripheral tourism are a major trend in this year's May Day holiday, and the proportion of travel passengers in the railway province during the May Day holiday this year reached 80%, the number of hotel orders in the same city accounted for nearly 60%, and the number of foreign tourists and poor tourists declined significantly.
Indeed, tourists who cannot go abroad from the province have "wild" in the surrounding area. According to the May Day travel trend released by Tujia Homestay, as of April 22, the order volume of country houses during the May Day period reached 51%, an increase of 20% over last year, which is also the first time that the order volume of May Day country houses exceeded that of urban homestays.
In terms of price, Tujia data shows that during May Day this year, the average price of bookings per night on the platform reached 1362 yuan, and the average price of homestays per night accounted for more than half of the bookings.
Among them, the average price of country houses booked per night during the Beijing May Day period exceeded 2,000 yuan, and the number of homestay reservations in the suburbs of Beijing doubled compared with May Day in 2021; the average price in Shenzhen, Huizhou, Hangzhou, Chengdu and Qingdao reached more than 1,000 yuan. In contrast, Lijiang, which takes tourism as its pillar industry, has an average price of only 180 yuan per night for May Day homestays this year.
Li Na expressed her understanding of the soaring price of hotels, "Under the epidemic, the tourism industry is not happy, as long as the price increase is within a reasonable range, I will not calculate too much." ”
Wei Changren, founder of Jinlu.com, told Caijing Tianxia Weekly that the resident population of first- and second-tier cities is large, like beijing, which has a permanent population of more than 20 million, and there are many people who can pay for sky-high hotels. In general, the demand for surrounding hotels and homestays is greater than the supply, and there are not a few people who can accept this price.
"As far as I know, some camping bases in the suburbs of Beijing will rent out moisture-proof boards under camping tents, and the rental price of a board is as high as more than one thousand yuan a night, and so on, people who can accept a thousand yuan to rent a one-night moisture-proof board will not pay too much attention to the rise and fall of hotel prices." Wei Changren said.
The helplessness behind the price increase
"Finance and Economics" Weekly will send some hotel prices to the tourism industry practitioners, they generally sigh, although expensive, but to put in previous years even if it is "sky-high price", May 1 half a month in advance on the full room, and this year to April 30 there are many hotels can be booked.
Indeed, under the influence of the epidemic, the number of bookings in hotels around the city during the May Day period is not as hot as imagined.
"Finance and Economics" weekly found that as of now, the surrounding hotels in Beijing, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and other places have not yet sold out in large areas. Ctrip also said that the background shows that the number of orders on May Day this year is not as good as in previous years, and at the same time in the past, the hotels on Ctrip's platform will basically show sold out.
The may day price increase of homestay hotels around major cities is also helpless.
"We can't do it, the labor cost of the holidays is already expensive, cleaning, drivers we have to pay three times the price," the owner of an apartment hotel on the outskirts of Beijing told Caijing Weekly, "the surrounding hotels and homestays are all at this price, and we are also following the market." ”
The owner of a homestay in Gubei Water Town also said that the price of May Day will be more expensive than usual. In the off-season, the price is basically around 200, but on May Day, the price has risen to 600 yuan to 900 yuan. Even if the price has risen by 3 times to 4 times, the occupancy rate of homestays on May Day is still stable at about 70%, while the occupancy rate of non-holidays is basically below 50%.
Yang Yanfeng believes that the price increase of hotels around the city is more like a time and space dislocation, they are only more saturated in the local time of the holidays, but the occupancy rate of most hotels and homestays is only between 20-40%, and in general, the hotel industry is still in an unsaturated state.
Photo/Visual China
Moreover, since the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, the tourism industry has suffered obvious setbacks. According to the World Tourism Council WTTC data, in 2020, due to the sluggish development, the global tourism industry disappeared 62 million jobs, and tourism, hotels, ticketing, airlines and other industries have experienced different degrees of departures.
In 2021, global international tourism revenue was $0.61 trillion, a continued decline of 4.5% compared to 2020. Domestic tourism is also in a difficult stage of recovery.
According to the cultural tourism market situation of the Qingming Festival holiday released by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in 2022, in the three days of the Qingming Festival holiday in 2022, the number of domestic tourism trips nationwide was 75.419 million, a year-on-year decrease of 26.2%,2%, and the domestic tourism revenue was 18.78 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 30.9%. The domestic tourism revenue of the national Qingming holiday in 2022 is only equivalent to the total tourism revenue of the Qingming holiday in Sichuan Province in 2019 before the epidemic.
In this context, the days of listed tourism companies are generally not good, in 2021 a total of 19 listed tourism companies have a loss situation, the largest amount of losses Caissa Tourism, revenue for three consecutive years of high double-digit decline, the first quarter of 2022 revenue of 122 million yuan, down 49.4% year-on-year; net profit loss of 1.431 billion yuan in two years, the first quarter of 2022 again lost 0.66 billion yuan. The same is true of Utrust Travel, with revenue falling sharply for two consecutive years, with a total loss of 2.19 billion yuan in 2020 and 2021, and another loss of 61 million yuan in the first quarter of 2022.
As China's largest online travel platform Ctrip is also having a hard time, losing 645 million yuan and 3.269 billion yuan in 2020 and 2021 respectively, in order to change the status quo, in the past two years, Ctrip founder Liang Jianzhang and CEO Sun Jie have been working hard to live stream goods, although certain achievements have been made, but it is still difficult to reverse the situation.
Huangshan, a well-known scenic spot in Anhui, has even fallen into the situation of welcoming guests without guests, and zhangjiajie and other scenic spots that rely on tourism for a living are also the same, most of which are at the door.
Under the difficulties, this year's May Day holiday, the situation is not optimistic. With the re-arrival of the epidemic, many places have issued non-essential proposals not to go to the province, and for most people, inter-provincial tourism still does not have practical considerations.
In such a situation, the emergence of "sky-high" peripheral tours seems to have become a difficult thing to understand. Wei Changren believes that although the current "sky-high price" of surrounding travel hotels shows a relatively deformed state, in the future, the market price of peripheral tourism will slowly adjust to a more reasonable stage.
In Yang Yanfeng's view, with the easing of the epidemic in the future and the recovery of medium- and long-distance tourism, the demand for peripheral tourism will also be diverted. At that time, it will also alleviate the situation of the sharp increase in the price of homestay hotels in a short period of time.
For the consumption format of peripheral tourism, Wei Changren expressed his recognition of this new tourism format. In his view, peripheral tourism serves the daily consumption of urban residents, and this "weekend economy" will meet the normalized consumption needs of urban residents in the future.
At the same time, the popularity of peripheral tourism has also promoted the prevalence of new consumption methods such as camping economy and caravan economy. According to Ctrip statistics, the average daily order volume of may 1st Beijing camping products booked through Ctrip increased by 9.9 times compared with the Qingming Festival. The Tujia platform shows that many camping-type homestays have been booked during may day.
(At the request of the interviewee, the consumer in the article is a pseudonym)