In 2013, the size of China's overseas tourism market has reached 98.19 million person-times, travel consumption reached 796.8 billion yuan, and for the first time from the post-80s as the main consumer group, this set of data is expected to become 310 million Chinese spending 2855 billion yuan on overseas travel by 2020.
Among them, the share of more freedom and personalized "customized travel" is gradually increasing, and in the first half of this year, at the three wedding fairs in Beijing and Shanghai alone, only 200 couples booked overseas free travel customization.
Compared with the "concept" of the previous two years, "customized travel" has now become quite large-scale, and there is a momentum of officially becoming a new generation of travel methods after group tours and self-guided tours.
The rise of customized travel has brought new ways of travel, but also brought a new profession - travel customizer.
Does this fresh profession with the aura of "taking you to see the world" also have bright career prospects?
With this common question from many eager travel enthusiasts, I interviewed the most representative company of the current customized travel - the unique trip.
The first domestic custom travel company that came out of Beijing's financial circle insisted on only doing one-on-one private customization for overseas independent travel, and now it has rapidly developed into nearly 30 full-time travel customizers, and it is still in a state of urgent need for talents.
This custom travel company, which currently has the most travel customizers, can there be clear planning considerations for the position of travel customizer while customizing overseas trips for more and more customers?
Give young returnees a buffer belt
Trip: Http://www.uniqueway.com has been recruiting travel customizers as early as 2012, and it can be said that Trip no two first "made" this profession. At that time, this post was issued on Renren Network, International Student Forum, and Douban, and immediately received the attention of many graduates of famous universities, especially returnees. And from the very beginning to the present, 90% of the travel customizers recruited into the unique journey are indeed returnees.
On the one hand, it is based on being responsible for customers, and only people who know the overseas travel destination very well can do a good job of private customization for customers; On the one hand, I have found that the philosophy and love of travel on The Only Trip is especially recognized by these young people who have studied and lived abroad for many years.
When we recruit travel customizers, we value the candidate's overseas travel experience and ability to plan the itinerary, and to be honest, those who can start traveling and studying abroad early are children from good families. Compared with other young people, they have more freedom and "unrealistic" in their bones, so for themselves, it is actually difficult or unwilling to enter the traditional workplace as soon as they graduate, and live a nine-to-five life away from travel.
So the work of the travel customizer of the unique trip is like a buffer belt for the young returnees, still free, still traveling, and at the same time creating value.
At the same time, the unique trip will also give these travel customizers some special benefits, such as sending them to travel at public expense, on the one hand, so that they can customize a better itinerary for customers after a more professional and thorough inspection, on the other hand, to reward them - they work so hard to customize travel for customers, work overtime, dedicate a lot of rest time, and should give them a trip for their loved ones.
The daily working environment and working atmosphere of The Unique Journey try to make the travel customizer feel comfortable and happy. Three floors of independent LOFT, painted with walls of travel around the world, gym equipment for the table, and work partners with whom they can chat about travel – on the trip, colleagues talk most apart from discussing their clients' itineraries, they ask each other, when are you going? Covenant or no covenant?
Give the dream of travel a future
When it comes to the development prospects of travel customizers, the premise is the development prospects of customized travel. To be sure, the customized travel industry will grow stronger and stronger, which is the result of the impact of the entire Chinese market economy, the post-80s and 90s lifestyle, Chinese public holidays and other factors.
And Chinese will increasingly recognize the value of professional services and the value of human time. In terms of simple economic principles, an ordinary person who does not understand the destination, if he wants to know a location very well and plan a trip of about 10 days (taking the most popular France + Italy as an example), it will take about 10-20 working days, which varies from person to person, and the time it takes about 5 days for professional customizers to communicate with customers. Within this range, if the customer pays the equivalent of 10 working days to hire a customizer to complete the customization, then both sides save time and efficiency. This is the basic principle of economic transactions. No matter how good the community, no matter how perfect the raiders, they can't reduce the time to read the raiders, and sometimes because of too much redundant information, it increases this time.
At this stage in China, the economic situation and quality are not directly proportional, and the customers who can accept the customized travel model are more ordinary white-collar workers. Therefore, the biggest problem of customized travel now is to ensure quality and low cost. The purpose is to make ordinary white-collar workers spend thousands of dollars, and even if they spend less money than independent travel, they can enjoy a high-quality trip with peace of mind. In this case, small workshop travel is definitely not enough, which requires a mature process, a high-quality and non-redundant database, a group of customizers who can communicate well, and a perfect IT support system; At the same time, the mode of ground connection can not guarantee the quality, now the vast majority of foreign Chinese ground connections are short-term part-time, almost no license or long-term to do this line, so there is no quality assurance at all, really to see the mood of the tour guide on the day. And the development of customized travel will never be a hundred in the future, but only a few boutique customized travel companies with the best reputation and the lowest customization cost will stand out and occupy the vast majority of the market.
As for the "development prospects" of the profession, in fact, for those young people who love to travel, it is not so much "prospects" as "dreams". High salaries, large companies, stable and developed, etc., these are too narrow for them, and they are not their primary consideration at the moment. What they want is to "realize their dreams", whether it is from doing a career or becoming the person they want to be. Then in the journey of peerlessness, there is such an opportunity to broaden your horizons and get closer to your dreams.
And many people who come to apply for the trip customizer of the unique trip are people who also have the idea of doing "customized travel" themselves, and they are like-minded, so they hit it off with the trip of the no two, and they have to run together on the road of customized travel.
They have traveled to many countries to see different cultures and landscapes, they have more experience and perception of travel, and they want to customize the trip thing so that more people at home can better experience the trip itself. From a close distance, they are happy and satisfied that customers are touched by the scenery they recommend when they arrive in the local area, and from a distance, they are proud to have influenced the attitude of a group of Chinese people towards travel and the world.
The unknown is the opportunity
Customized travel is a sunrise industry, when the first trip began to do customized travel, there were few peers in the domestic market, but in just one year, more and more so-called custom travel companies, APP emerged, or sell fixed routes, or do high-priced luxury, the capital market has been very hot. But in fact, so far, about "customized travel" and "travel customizer", each is different, there is no unified industry standards, so some people who know the work content of travel customizers will worry that the experience I have accumulated in doing customized travel in this company will not come in handy for the next one, so there is no "career development".
But to put it another way, this is our common opportunity. The blank and unknown of the customized travel industry is waiting for us to change ourselves. For example, the customization process, service model, road book style, etc. of our unique journey are all from scratch, from having to excellent. It can be considered that we are creating industry standards, which is a rare opportunity. If the custom travel industry can really develop rapidly, then the current travel customizer is the first batch of travel customizers, look at the first batch of people who do e-commerce with Ma Yun, this group of people are the people who define the rules of the game and understand the process the most. Personally, I think this is much more interesting than going step by step in a mature traditional industry. It's done, and I'm proud.
At the same time, in order to encourage and retain the travel customizers who want to do the "customized travel" thing together, the unique trip will also give options accordingly, believing that the future of "customized travel" will give these travel customizers a good return.
More and more feel that the trip is doing a very great thing, seeing the trip with the trip customizer to achieve the customized trip, but also by the custom travel. I feel sincerely proud to see customers in different cities in China before departure, during travel, and after returning home, sending a circle of friends to show that they are very happy and satisfied when they travel, especially when it comes to thanking the travel customizers of the unique trip. But even more proud to see photos of employees traveling outside.
Peerless Journey has been saying to its internal employees, "Walk the world, do something meaningful, and change yourself," and these three sentences are actually the development prospects of customized travel and travel customizers.