Ctrip'S New Traffic Business

On the morning of November 2, CEO of Ctrip group sun jiefa announced a new round of senior management appointment, promoted Sun Bo to the group's executive vice president (EVP) and continued to be the chief marketing officer (CMO) of Ctrip group. Born in August 1982, Sun Bo is the youngest executive vice president of Ctrip.

This is an intriguing personnel change. The promotion of CMO status in Ctrip implies that Ctrip's strategy is quietly transforming.

On October 28, at the 2020 global partner summit of Ctrip, Liang Jianzhang, the co-founder and chairman of the board of directors of Ctrip, revealed one or two things.

"Ctrip's future goal is not only a platform to generate transactions or service customers, but also a platform for users to find inspiration and preferential offers. This is not only the marketing platform of Ctrip, but the marketing platform of the whole industry. " Liang Jianzhang said that Ctrip will put more high-quality B & B and high-quality entertainment products on the platform, deeply cultivate the supply chain, connect hotels, airlines and scenic spots, and deeply cultivate the quality, including improving the user's all-round experience and upgrading the platform technology.

In short, before, Ctrip was a trading platform, after that, Ctrip was a marketing trading platform. Ctrip's traffic business has a new business experience.

Deep ploughing private area flow

On the evening of October 28, Liang Jianzhang Cosplay Tang Seng appeared in Ctrip studio, followed by Jingdong retail CEO Xu Lei, stars Wu Zun and Zheng Shuang. After the live broadcast, 21-year-old Ctrip received a great birthday gift: the transaction value of the live broadcast on that day exceeded 380 million yuan, and the audience reached 19.41 million yuan. Since its launch, Ctrip's live broadcast matrix has had a transaction volume of over 2.4 billion, and the cumulative number of viewers has exceeded 150 million.

It is worth noting that Ctrip users who have been registered for more than 5 years are the main buyers of live broadcast with goods. According to the data disclosed by Ctrip, as of October 20, Ctrip's live broadcast matrix with "boss live" as the core has created a total of more than 2 billion yuan of transaction volume, and the product write off rate is nearly 50%. Nearly 150 million viewers gathered in the studio to watch the "ever changing boss Liang Jianzhang". Among them, more than 65% of Ctrip users have registered for more than five years, resulting in a transaction volume of more than 800 million yuan.

The contribution of loyal users to the performance proves the effectiveness of private domain traffic in promoting the sustainable growth of enterprises. According to Sun Bo, CMO of Ctrip group, the private traffic seeds planted by Ctrip two years ago in the fields of community and short video have made an important contribution to improving marketing efficiency today. Data shows that in the past few years, the per capita consumption frequency and per capita consumption amount of Ctrip users have been increasing year by year with a growth rate of about 10%. Super members launched in cooperation with other Internet platforms currently have more than 5 million users in the validity period, contributing more than 15% of the incremental product purchasing power. Based on this, Ctrip has recently upgraded its membership equity system and launched Top Black Diamond members to provide more value-added services.

However, Ctrip's cultivation of private domain traffic is more than a form of live broadcasting. At the 2020 Ctrip group global partner summit held recently, content construction is an unavoidable topic. Ctrip claims to abandon the past strategy, graphic community way to achieve the overall content upgrade. According to reports, Ctrip's community products, represented by travel photography, will expand into more content product types and light social functions, introduce 70% KOL, and cultivate talent who can play. At the same time, platform partners are encouraged to put high-quality graphics and videos into Ctrip community and products. In addition, Ctrip will also launch some IP cooperation with businesses; live broadcasting will also move towards the era of 2.0, upgrade to Ctrip live channel, and open the three-dimensional matrix of official live broadcast, KOL live broadcast and merchant live broadcast.

This content is not that content?

Sounds like a little familiar? Ctrip's play seems to be more and more similar to OTAs, such as hornet's nest, poor travel and so on.

Although the current Ctrip and wasp nest, poor travel in the business model is different. Relying on b-terminal massive inventory and channels, Ctrip provides users with air tickets, hotels, travel products and other resources, mainly through transaction commissions. Horsebee nest and poor travel rely on UGC and PGC to attract users, tap users' needs, and make profits through advertising revenue and providing targeted travel products, which are highly social.

But what's the difference between Ctrip, which has turned to be a marketing platform and strengthened content strategy, is there any difference between Ctrip and wasp's nest and poor travel?

"On the hornet nest platform, high quality content is the best flow entrance." According to Feng Rao, director of Ma honeycomb Tourism Research Center, the socialization of content is one of the development trends of tourism content. At the same time, the deep structure, personalization and scene of content are the trend of content. According to his introduction, wasp nest is continuing to explore the possibility of tourism content, will be the ultimate strategy. At the same time, we are also working hard on the supply chain, playing methods and non-standard products.

Cui Li, the co-founder of poor travel network, told reporters that at present, the network has been constructed to fragment BIU! Based on this, a mature business model of "content + transaction" and "content + marketing" has been formed. Data show, through BIU! The conversion rate is over 6%.

Zhuyu is in front, it is difficult for Ctrip's content playing method to jump out of the query of peers. Sun Bo responded, "a lot of people think that Ctrip's content is still a little bit self talking. In fact, there are deeper reasons for Ctrip's content. We are the most trading savvy in content social networking, which is our innate advantage. "

Liang Jianzhang further explained that the advantage of Ctrip's tradition is that it can be closely combined with transactions. If the content is well introduced, customers may lock in at that time; especially for some pre-sale products, even if users don't know the exact date, they will lock in the transaction, which makes the closed-loop transaction (success rate) higher. In addition, Liang Jianzhang believes that Ctrip platform is ahead of other platforms and has become two advantages of content platform.

In fact, live delivery with goods is one of the common ways for two OTAs to mine private domain traffic. On March 23 this year, Ctrip's "boss live" was officially opened in Sanya Atlantis Hotel. Since February 22 this year, Ma honeycomb tourism app has been launched on the live channel with three live "cloud tourism" live broadcast every day. On August 1, the travel live broadcast began to try to bring goods. The 9-day summer vacation has greatly promoted the transaction to a new high since 2020. The difference between the two is that the vast majority of the live broadcast of Ma honeycomb is the live broadcast of scenic spots, and some are live broadcast of restaurants and online cafe. Ctrip's live broadcasting can be divided into "boss live broadcast", "weekend shop exploration" and "overseas local" live broadcast. The "boss live broadcast" is the main IP, which mainly carries goods for Gaoxing Hotel and holiday products.

Perhaps the reason behind the growth of Ota is to find new growth points. Wu Liyun, Professor of the Chinese culture and Tourism Industry Research Institute of Beijing Second Foreign Studies University, believes that after years of development, it is very difficult for OTA enterprises to obtain new traffic. Live with goods to better meet the current marketing development of a new situation, it can attract new consumers, but also can make old members active.

Feng Rao also admitted that the tourism platform has a strong tool attribute, not a huge traffic platform in the traditional sense. The cost of traffic is indeed higher and higher, which is the status quo of the whole industry.

Transform into marketing platform

In the outline of Liang Jianzhang, the deep cultivation of content finally settled in "marketing". Therefore, Ctrip should transform from a simple trading platform to a marketing trading platform.

"Ctrip's marginal growth rate is very difficult to tap in the domestic market." Wu Liyun believes that Ctrip relies on its existing traffic to do marketing, which is more about developing new business and realizing the growth of its commercial profit.

Li Qian, general manager of marketing center of Ctrip group, said, "Ctrip has built two major traffic engines, namely, public domain and private domain, obtaining traffic in public domain, completing transformation in private domain, sharing user value with partners, and realizing sustainable commercial liquidity." According to the data disclosed, at present, Ctrip has 250 million + Ctrip users, with an average daily traffic of 5000 + public domain.

One of the important contents of "Chuang Cheng's" is the content driven by the evolution of the content. "The new vertical and horizontal ecology will take the three dimensions of flow, content and scene as the core marketing field, break the flow barrier, deeply cultivate the content value, stimulate the scene touch, and multi-dimensional integration will help partners win the goal." According to Sun Bo's introduction, Ctrip's vertical and horizontal platform connects the head media API data with the whole field of vision traffic; the three major content production engines drive the transformation of private domain traffic; in addition, it helps the brand establish a more immersive scene resonance with users during the journey.

Opening is the basic "routine" of the realization of Ctrip's traffic. Sun Bo said that in the future, Ctrip will open private domain traffic and external traffic of some partners to business partners, including businesses can operate their own content numbers and live broadcasting on Ctrip platform. According to the data provided by Ctrip, hotels and suppliers that have participated in the content opening program can get an average traffic increase of 42%.

Comparatively speaking, Ctrip's open strategy is similar to that of Ma honeycomb. "At present, Ma honeycomb's travel notes, strategy and other long content, notes, short video and other short content, and even the new live channel launched this year, are all open to businesses, scenic spots, hotels, B & B, destinations, etc. with content production capacity." According to Feng Rao, two major channels have been opened on the platform for b-end content production, such as destination tourism bureaus and hotels. One is that the creators open the platform to individuals such as travel talents, or b-end partners and users such as destination tourism bureaus and hotels can directly produce content, and b-end can also invite talents to produce content through task claim People experience travel and play products, and then produce content. The other is the honeycomb POI management system specially open to b-end users.

Although Ctrip does not emphasize the driving force of content construction on marketing, it is undeniable that the use of content diversion is common. "Good content can not only attract users' attention, but also interact with users, attracting tourists interested in products to the flow pool of private traffic." Feng Rao said. Poor travel, which started with content sharing, is also a similar operational logic. According to Cui Li, from the perspective of revenue, in the mature business model of "content + transaction" and "content + marketing", the proportion of "content + transaction" and "content + marketing" is about 4:6, but "content + marketing" brings more profits.

"It is built in an ecological circle." Wu Liyun believes that when the content provided is more and more abundant, more consumers will be left on the platform. At the same time, different dimensions of products have synergistic effect, which will promote the transformation between products and improve the flow conversion rate.

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