In the view of Zhang Nan, CEO of Kanghui Group, if "fragmentation" is the key word in the tourism market in 2023, then "involution" is the trend prediction he made for the tourism market in 2024.
With the rapid recovery of domestic travel, tourism marketing channels have turned to online social media, so that destination products have distinct fragmented characteristics, and customized semi-independent travel, small package groups and "one-day tours" have increasingly become the first products recommended by tourism merchants. Zhang Nan predicts that domestic travel will remain hot in 2024, and the "involution" of outbound travel merchants will be further intensified. Under this trend, what travel agencies should do in the future is to focus on content mining and provide tourists with high-quality tourism product supply.
The overall recovery is 40% in 2019
Zhang Nan said that Kanghui Group's tourism business in 2023 will recover to about 40% of the pre-epidemic level as a whole, but if domestic travel and outbound travel are judged separately, the recovery gap between the two is slightly larger. Among them, the recovery of the domestic travel market in 2023 is relatively ideal, and it has now reached about 130% of the pre-epidemic level, while outbound travel has only recovered to about 15%.
The reason for the polarization situation, Zhang Nan explained, is mainly after three years of suspension, the outbound tourism industry chain has just begun to recover, the overall price is high, coupled with the fact that many tourists are worried about the safety of the exit, a considerable number of outbound tourists turn to the mainland, making the domestic tourism market show explosive growth.
Although the recovery process is different, Zhang Nan believes that domestic and outbound travel have a common feature - the growth rate of independent travel, semi-free travel and small package tours is much higher than that of large group tours.
Specifically, in terms of domestic travel, tourists prefer personalized customized products, basically in the form of semi-free travel and small package travel, at the same time, the number of young tourists who choose independent travel is increasing, and the large group tours dominated by middle-aged and elderly groups in the past are slightly lagging behind this year. In addition, corporate incentive travel has also increased significantly, and the pent-up travel demand for three years will be released in 2023.
In terms of outbound travel, Zhang Nan pointed out that the independent travel tourists, who are just needed by the market, are the first to recover, in contrast, the large group of tourists has not yet fully returned, so the number is more prominent. However, due to the slow recovery of outbound travel as a whole, the number of FIT visitors in 2023 has not increased significantly compared to the stock in 2019 and before.
Domestic destination products are becoming fragmented
In Zhang Nan's view, the popularity of customized products such as independent travel and small package groups is closely related to the change of sales channels in the tourism industry.
In the past three years of the epidemic, the blockage of offline channels has forced a large number of tourism businesses to turn to online social media such as Douyin, Kuaishou and Xiaohongshu, and the platform "planting grass", short videos and live streaming have become popular in the tourism industry.
However, due to the impact of the epidemic, tourists' sense of anxiety has made them pay more attention to the flexibility and privacy of their itineraries, and long-term, long-distance large-scale tour products cannot meet these new needs. Zhang Nan told a reporter from Beijing Business Daily that on online social media platforms, the sales of large group tour products are not optimistic. In addition to the needs of tourists, the requirements for customer service for online sales of large group tour products are also relatively high, and in the rush of conversion, the supporting customer service level of many travel agencies may not be able to keep up. "But as long as the travel agency is fully prepared on various online social media platforms, the operation in 2023 should be considerable. Zhang Nan added.
Zhang Nan said that a significant number of tourists use a number of different short-term product combinations of "one-day tours" to replace complete large-group tours when planning domestic travel itineraries. Therefore, more and more businesses are forced to make a living and launch more products such as "one-day tours" and "two-day tours", which also leads to the trend of destination fragmentation in domestic travel in 2023.
Fragmented travel has also led to changes in the average order value of the domestic travel market. Zhang Nan said that since 2023, the change in the form of tourism products has made the measurement of customer unit price more complicated: from the perspective of the unit price of fragmented tourism products, it has decreased compared with the past, but the total price of some low-priced fragmented products is higher than that of the overall group tour products with the same number of days and destinations.
The outbound travel supply chain is more "involuted"
Based on the situation of the tourism market in 2023, Zhang Nan believes that the overall recovery of the tourism industry in 2024 is "cautiously optimistic". Among them, the demand for domestic travel will continue to be strong and will be "still hot" in the future, while the pace of outbound travel is slightly slower, and large travel agencies will remain rational in their layout, and will continue to recover in an orderly manner in the future.
However, in the stable outbound travel market, there will also be a situation of "involution" of merchants, especially the ground links at the supply chain.
Zhang Nan said that with the release of the list of countries for the resumption of outbound group tours in the three batches of pilots and the rekindling of outbound enthusiasm, coupled with the announcement of visa-free exemption for Chinese tourists in many countries in the fourth quarter of 2023, a large number of domestic tourism practitioners have returned to the market and gone overseas for layout.
However, after multiple rounds of demand release during the May Day, summer and Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holidays, the number of outbound tourists and flights has declined, and the safety concerns of some outbound destinations have also affected the willingness of Chinese tourists to travel. In the case of oversupply, Zhang Nan predicts that in order to recover a large amount of money and time invested in the early layout, in the future, tourism businesses will also attract customers through various ways such as price reductions and continuous introduction of new tricks to recover costs.
More "tourism +" integration products will be launched
Under the new trend of tourism in 2023, Zhang Nan gave the direction of Kanghui Group for what aspects of business travel agencies should focus on in 2024: from providing functional value to providing emotional value to tourists.
In fact, the emotional needs of tourists are increasing year by year, and with the emergence of diversified forms of tourism such as special forces and finding a "partner", the term tourism, which used to simply refer to "sightseeing", has also been extended to a more diverse concept. Zhang Nan believes that travel agencies should also capture the emotional needs of tourists in a timely manner, and at the same time pay attention to products and services as a carrier of emotions.
Zhang Nan said that the future development direction of tourism must be the integration of "tourism +". Therefore, in 2024, Kanghui Group's product ideas and resource ideas are to further transform to content, launch more integrated products and in-depth travel products that are deeply cultivated in one place.
"In this fan-defined era, the importance of content is even more important as online social media platforms become the main sales channel for travel products. Only by relying on content can travel agencies find the corresponding vertical customer groups and achieve precision marketing. Zhang Nan concluded.
Beijing Business Daily reporter Guan Zichen Niu Qingyan