It's nothing new for hotels to do Douyin
With a huge daily active traffic of more than 600 million, everyone wants to get a piece of the pie. However, in addition to entering the pile, potential problems have gradually exploded, and low-price involution is one of them.
"Wine Management Finance" noticed that the buffet of high-star hotels was the most obvious.
Beijing Jianguo Hotel launched a "traditional handmade on-site hand-rolled noodle buffet" with a group purchase price of only 28.8 yuan on Douyin. The Hilton Chongqing has launched a semi-buffet lunch of beef noodles for 68 yuan and a semi-buffet lunch on Sunday for 98 yuan.
A number of hotel marketing leaders complained to "Wine Management Finance" that most of the low-cost rooms launched by Douyin live broadcast are usually to make profits and lose money in exchange for exposure and traffic. But after a long time, it's a little unbearable.
They are also worried that many hotels that are eager to attract traffic have even launched ultra-low-cost group buying products, which is easy to trigger a domino effect, forcing their own hotels to follow up, which will cause the market to be more serious in terms of low prices.
According to industry insiders, the price of hotel Douyin group purchase is generally about 40% lower than that of other platforms to be competitive in the market.
For consumers, the price concession of the hotel is a benefit. But behind the attitude of repeatedly making profits, there is a difficulty in the hotel, and there is a growing marketing anxiety.
The hotels that are "busy" on Douyin
According to the data, in 2023, the number of wine and tourism sales merchants will increase by nearly 7 times year-on-year, and the payment GMV will increase by more than 300 times year-on-year. Among them, live broadcast accounts for the largest proportion and is growing rapidly, and the GMV of live broadcast payment for wine and tourism has increased by more than 200 times year-on-year.
As of September 2023, a total of 14,000 scenic spots and more than 100,000 hotels have opened official accounts on Douyin.
However, the cruel truth is that not all hotels can be profitable by listing products on Douyin group buying.
As more and more hotels gather for Douyin group buying, some potential problems are starting to emerge.
The first is the low-price involution.
Wine and tourism merchants are pouring into the Douyin live broadcast room, and the requirements of wine and tourism merchants for the efficiency and effect of live broadcast are increasing day by day, and the price is becoming more and more involuted.
According to the person in charge of a hotel's Douyin live broadcast, it is more difficult to bring goods on Douyin this year than last year, but the effect and traffic are slightly worse than last year. The algorithm for live streaming has been adjusted, and the average stay time in some hotels' Douyin live broadcast rooms is now less than a minute.
"Wine Management Finance" noticed that the Beijing Hilton Hotel recently launched a deluxe double room (some dates have been booked) for a limited time (including double breakfast + double afternoon tea) in the Douyin seckill, and the unit price of only including double breakfast on Ctrip is 1335 yuan a night.
And this is just a microcosm of hotel accounts on Douyin group buying.
"Wine Management Finance" noticed that there are currently many live broadcast rooms on Douyin that claim to be "100+ per capita to let you sleep all over the country", and you can stay in hotels such as All Seasons, Hanting, and Orange for only 100+.
One hotel investor was anxious. He believes that if the industry continues to roll up at a low price on Douyin, it will be a harm to hotels that want to be a brand and a quality.
The low price strategy is highly attractive to price-sensitive consumers. If it is a short-term promotion, it is fine, but in the long run, it is easy to cause local or even pan-regional low-price scuffles.
This also makes many hotels that have not yet settled in hesitate to join Douyin group buying. Most of them don't want to drive down hotel prices and adversely affect brand and quality.
When asked about the reason for entering Douyin, many hotel investors said that many hotels around the city have launched group purchase products on Douyin, which is difficult for people to sit still, and following the trend has almost become the only choice.
In practice, a large number of hotels don't know what to do in the live broadcast room.
According to a person familiar with the matter, livestreaming professionalism and product quality are the keys to touching consumer demand and forming repeat purchase stickiness. At present, many hotel live broadcast rooms are mostly in a disorderly state in terms of positioning and content.
Another major problem is the write-off rate.
It has been disclosed by the media that in 2023, the order write-off rate of Douyin wine and tourism merchants will be below 30%, and the lowest write-off rate of Daren live wine and tourism orders will only be in single digits.
According to a research report by Haitong International Securities, the average write-off rate of Douyin local life as a whole is about 20%, while the write-off rate of Meituan is 40%-50%.
The performance efficiency is also one of the core factors restricting the development of Douyin's wine and tourism business. Especially during major holidays such as "Eleventh" and the Spring Festival, it is also unknown how many "hard-to-find" hotel resources Douyin can obtain.
But what is certain is that Ctrip, as a shareholder of Huazhu, BTG, and Atour, is likely to receive the full support of these hotel head groups.
In this regard, a wine and tourism observer said that compared with traditional OTAs, Douyin only improves the efficiency of information dissemination but does not solve the efficiency of market transactions.
Douyin's main focus is interest-oriented, and immersive scenes are easy to stimulate users' travel interest and impulse to place orders, but it is also easy to initiate refunds after calming down.
At the 2024 TravelDaily Digital Intelligence Forum Guangzhou, Ge Juan, General Manager of Baiyun Hotel, pointed out the hotel's pain points in live streaming.
First of all, in terms of cost, hotel live broadcast requires a professional team and a professional supply chain, which requires a lot of cost and energy, which increases the pressure on the daily operation of the hotel;
Secondly, in terms of profits, the new guests and traffic attracted by the live broadcast room often have a strong purpose, mainly for the price slightly lower than the market price, which is an impact on the hotel's profits;
Finally, there is the write-off rate. How to ultimately improve the overall stickiness and repurchase rate of users after the product is sold out and the in-store service needs to be better coordinated and connected with the platform.
Who is the hotel and Douyin, who is playing badly?
The hospitality business is known as a "cash and profit cow", which can be confirmed by Meituan's 2023 annual report.
In 2023, Meituan's revenue will be around 40 billion yuan, which is almost the same as Ctrip. In addition, Meituan's profit margin in 2022 is 45.8%, and it will remain around this value in 2023, much higher than other OTA platforms.
Some people say that Douyin is a wine brigade because of its mouth-watering high profit margins, so it has been "sharpening knives" and wanting to take away a large piece of the cake.
It is understood that the current commission rate of the accommodation business on the Douyin platform is 3%-6%, the commission rate of Meituan hotel booking is 8%, 10% and 12%, and the hotel booking commission rate of Ctrip is divided into 10%, 12% and 15%.
At first glance, TikTok is more commission-friendly. However, you must know that the latter two have formed a complete closed loop in the wine and tourism ecology as old OTAs, and Douyin is not mature enough in this regard.
According to data from QuestMobile, as of September 2023, the number of deduplicated active users of Douyin, Kuaishou, Xiaohongshu, Bilibili, and Weibo reached 1.088 billion, with a penetration rate of 88.9%. Among them, Douyin topped the list with 743 million monthly active users, a year-on-year growth rate of 5.1%, while the number of monthly active users of the travel service OTA platform was less than 200 million.
In terms of traffic, Douyin beats all major platforms. But a closer look will find that if you want to do a good job of Douyin, you have to squeeze your head, which is not easy for ordinary hotels.
According to a set of data from Guojin Securities, from March 2021 to March 2023, the top 10% of Douyin's top merchants in wine tourism accounted for nearly 6% of orders, and this figure is only 35% in Meituan.
In other words, compared with Meituan, Douyin wine and tourism orders are more monopolized by head merchants, and it is more difficult for small and medium-sized merchants to make money on Douyin.
Of course, we can't ignore Douyin's contribution to the development of online tourism.
It is with the help of Douyin that the "little-known" small cities such as Zibo, Harbin, and Tianshui will become popular, stimulating the desire of Chinese people to travel, and to a certain extent, driving the increase in scenic spots and hotel bookings.
However, many hotels still don't understand and feel that they have been kidnapped by Douyin:
"Douyin traffic is so large, my price is already very low, and I have given promotion fees and even sacrificed other platforms, why is it so difficult to do?"
In fact, it is difficult for hotels that have no awareness of Douyin and "brainless" influx to make money.
This situation occurs mainly because these hotels lack a clear understanding of Douyin, and it is not clear that Douyin, which has high traffic, also has a high operating threshold.
First of all, the rules and gameplay of Douyin change quickly. It's hard to expect hoteliers to sync in time. And behind closed doors, you will soon miss out on Douyin's push.
Second, Douyin's operations are complex. It is necessary not only to produce content and production flow, but also to harvest traffic and create performance. However, it is difficult for the hotel to have a professional talent team to operate, and even if it has the strength to form, the input-output ratio is likely to be very low.
The most critical way to play Douyin is labeling, and every consumer will be tagged by the Douyin algorithm system, which is the key to traffic matching.
The same is true for hotels, each piece of content and each live broadcast will also be tagged, and if you want to get users' attention, you must have special content worthy of attention.
While the number of users interested in hotels on Douyin continues to rise and they are willing to spend more time and money, it doesn't mean that they will be loyal forever, and most consumers still go for cheaper prices.
At the moment of homogeneous competition in hotels, most hotels do not have high-quality products that can meet the needs of users such as curiosity, usefulness, fun, show-off, and identity.
A senior wine and tourism expert trader took the "group purchase product name" as an example, and the "880 yuan two-night luxury (double with breakfast) sea view room" is far less attractive than "440 yuan per capita for 3 days and 2 nights to grab a 270-degree sea view room for a limited time, including breakfast, and a soft beach at hand".
He believes that you have no people, and you are the biggest selling point of the hotel, and the same economy hotel is not easy to sell on Douyin.
For hotels, no marketing channels can be abandoned, but they must still be in awe of professionalism.
Hotel marketing must not be all in Douyin, it is just a channel and business amplifier, and you can't lose business for the sake of traffic.
Co-ordinator丨Lao Dian Editor丨A Xin
Some of the pictures in the article are from the Internet. The original content of Liquor Management Finance is prohibited from being reproduced without authorization;