Ali Tourism'S New Retail Chess Game: What Do The Left-Handed People Believe In And The Right-Hand Dufry Want?

After Ali announced the cooperation with dufry, a global tax-free giant, at the beginning of this month, the progress of their cooperation has been closely watched by the outside world. There are many people who interpret its intention, mainly the speculation of "to move the tax-free cake of China tax exemption".

Recently, dufry disclosed to the outside world the progress of its cooperation with ALI. The joint venture between dufry and Ali is currently being determined and established, and will look for opportunities to further develop China's tourism retail channels and cooperate in the field of digital transformation.

As an important part of the "five new" strategy, it is reasonable for Ali to extend the layout of new retail to tourism. When the outside world tries to interpret its cooperation with dufry, another previous battle investment can not be ignored. At the end of September, Ali announced a strategic stake in Zhongxin tourism and promoted the business model of "new retail of tourism offline".

It is obvious that Ali points to the new retail of tourism.

Difficult to shake the domestic tax-free pattern

On October 5 this year, Ali and dufry reached a strategic cooperation. The former agreed to acquire no more than 9.99% of the shares of the latter, and set up a joint venture in China with 51% and 49% shares respectively. On October 20, substantial progress was made: dufry announced the final number and price of new shares to be issued, raising a total of about 820 million Swiss francs, with ALI holding 6.1%.

"The impact is not big at the moment." When talking about whether Ali's stake in dufry will have an impact on the domestic tax-free industry, an analyst who did not want to be named told the 21st century economic news that their future cooperation may focus more on businesses that do not need tax-free licenses, such as cross-border e-commerce. This customer group is different from that of tax-free business.

Since this year, the domestic market has ushered in tax-free. On the one hand, the policy and epidemic situation drive the return of consumption demand, and the domestic economic cycle is activated; on the other hand, the tax-free industry has frequent positive policies, and the capital market is chasing tax-free hot spots. Data show that the domestic tax-free industry is in the stage of rapid development. In 2019, the scale of China's tax-free industry is about 52 billion yuan, with a year-on-year increase of about 32%, which exceeds the tax-free market of other countries in the world. According to the statistics of Haikou customs, from October 1 to October 8, Haikou customs supervised 1.04 billion yuan of tax-free shopping, 146800 passengers and 998900 pieces of duty-free goods on Hainan Island, up 148.7%, 43.9% and 97.2% respectively.

Under the fierce competition in the domestic duty-free market, Ali joined hands with dufry, which immediately triggered speculation that he would like to share the duty-free cake. This is related to the fact that the latter's global duty-free market share has always been the first. 21st century economic reporter noticed that since 2008, dufry has also begun to layout the Chinese market. However, due to licensing factors, the company is unable to carry out tax-free business in China, and its main form of business is airport tax.

Under the current policy framework, it is not only difficult for dufry itself to directly enter China's tax-free market, but also difficult to enter into the cooperation between dufry and Ali as a global tax-free giant.

"This is a special industry based on license plate." The above-mentioned analysts told the 21st century economic reporter that tax exemption belongs to the franchise industry and needs to enter with a license. According to the statistics of the 21st century economic report, up to now, there are only 10 tax-free licenses in the tax-free industry, which are respectively held by the China National immunity and exemption Commission, the state owned assets supervision and Administration Commission of Shenzhen, the state owned assets supervision and Administration Commission of Hainan, Sinopharm group and Wangfujing.

Ali has been involved in tax-free for a long time.

The 21st century economic report reporter noted that in November 2018, China Tourism Group tax-free business (i.e., China's China immunity) and Ali signed a strategic cooperation memorandum, and the two sides will work together to create a new model of tax-free retail and tourism shopping. The content of this strategic cooperation involves a wide range of business lines, including Ali's flying pig travel, Alibaba cloud, Alipay, rookie logistics, etc.

The tax-free cooperation with China's China tax exemption system will be substantially implemented in 2019. In March this year, Feizhu travel launched the "outbound purchase" channel, which adopted the mode of duty-free reservation. That is, passengers can book duty-free products in advance through the platform before or during outbound travel, and choose the time and place of pick-up online to realize "online purchase and offline pick-up". The 21st century economic reporter inquired about the Feizhu travel app and found that the "outbound shopping" channel has been changed to "travel shopping". According to the location of duty-free shops, it is divided into two overseas sub channels, namely, South Korea and Japan, Hainan, Hong Kong, China, Macao, Guangzhou, Xiamen, Shenyang, Nanjing, Xi'an and other domestic channels. In addition, the platform also launched direct mail home. It is worth mentioning that the cooperation with China's China immunization service is the core of tax-free shopping of Feizhu travel platform. In other words, the main supply channel of the tax-free Feizhu travel platform comes from the duty-free shops of China immunity.

Ali shares in dufry can not solve the problem of tax-free license. However, the analysis of Everbright Securities points out that "from the perspective of Ali, this cooperation is expected to significantly improve its purchasing and supply capacity of tourism retail end, and strengthen its tourism industry layout."

Can "subvert" the new tourism retail?

Some analysts believe that dufry's supply chain and big data resources are an opportunity for Alibaba to "copy the bottom" of overseas e-commerce retail through this cooperation.

According to relevant statistics, dufry's market share in the field of International Airport tourism retail accounts for about 20%, benchmarking with 2.5 billion potential customers worldwide. In addition, dufry has 1000 international brand suppliers, which has become a valuable resource for Alibaba to enter international retail.

In fact, the development dividend of Alibaba's Taobao, tmall and other e-commerce platforms in the domestic market has been nearly saturated, and the competition pattern in the domestic e-commerce market has become increasingly fierce. Although the trend of e-commerce sinking is more and more obvious, under the "siege" of pinduoduo, meituan, shuoyin, Kuaishou and other platforms, Ali needs to rebuild a new growth point.

Retail is only a part of tourism tax-free.

In order to "innovate" the tourism industry, Ali put in the "heavy bomb" of flying pig travel. The "New Travel Alliance" plan launched in 2018 is still fresh in my memory: this plan is to jointly build a new industry ecology with consumers as the center, relying on big data and building full link connection with global travel service providers, national tourism bureaus and Alibaba ecological partners, so as to improve the travel experience.

The 21st century economic reporter has noticed that since its birth, flying pig travel has repeatedly emphasized its non OTA (online tourism) attribute. Its core mode is to link travel businesses and enterprises, relying on Alibaba's ecosystem resources such as Taobao and Alipay to improve the efficiency of tourism and hotel industry. The subsequent development shows that the positioning of flying pig tourism has been upgraded from "OTP (online tourism service platform)" to "OTM (online tourism ecology)".

On the eve of this year's National Day holiday, flying pig travel took the lead in launching the "ten billion subsidy" plan, which once aroused doubts about whether it would start a new round of money burning war. Zhuang zhuoran, President of Feizhu travel, said that the 10 billion subsidy is not a short-term marketing, but a long-term measure to build business value for consumers. Instead of focusing on the growth of the industry, he should not focus on the growth of the industry.

The strategic investment in Zhongxin tourism once again demonstrates Ali's determination to further extend the tentacles of "innovation" to offline.

This year's epidemic has not only brought a direct impact on domestic travel agencies, but also exposed the "chronic disease" of travel agencies. Feng bin, chairman and general manager of Zhongxin tourism, said in an interview with the media that under the epidemic situation, the travel agency industry, whether it is suppliers, channel providers, resources and products, is in a decentralized state, and there is no efficient aggregation platform.

At the end of September this year, Zhongxin tourism announced that Ali planned to transfer 45.470395 shares of Zhongxin tourism, accounting for about 5% of the total share capital of the listed company. At the same time, Zhongxin tourism also signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement with Zhejiang Ali travel Investment Co., Ltd., the parent company of flying pig travel, to explore and promote the business model of "new offline retail of tourism" by establishing a joint venture.

The cooperation between Alibaba and Zhongxin tourism involves product supply, channel and brand, big data technology, payment and system, etc. According to the analysis of Anxin securities, the joint venture company of the two companies is positioned in the field of tourism B2B, and plans to build a global tourism distribution platform. Compared with the current B2B mode of offline negotiation, it is expected to improve the efficiency of domestic tourism industry in the aspects of matching, channel, customer acquisition and capital.

Feng bin also hopes that the cooperation with ALI can solve the problems in the travel agency industry. "We want to work with Ali to build a comprehensive service platform for b-end travel agencies. The two core issues to be solved are resources and capital." Feng bin told the media that Ali happened to have both technology and finance.

Whether it is taking a stake in Zhongxin tourism or holding hands with dufry, Ali has further strengthened its layout of new tourism retail by connecting product wholesalers and channel operators in the tourism industry. The expectation from travel agencies may be the possibility that Ali can "subvert" the tourism industry.

?