Tang Lan, Senior Vice President Of Ctrip

This year, the sudden outbreak of the epidemic has had a huge impact on the domestic tourism industry, with the hotel industry bearing the brunt. Although the epidemic situation has been controlled to a certain extent, consumer behavior is changing significantly in the post epidemic era. Insight into this behavior change has become a required course for hotel practitioners. On December 18, Tang Lan, senior vice president of Ctrip, analyzed Hotel inventory and consumer booking behavior at the 21st century accommodation Summit Forum (2020) sponsored by 21st century economic report, and summarized the opportunities in the hotel industry.

"Although the first half of this year ushered in a dark moment, but as the epidemic eased, the whole industry is recovering." Tang Lan thinks.

Booking behavior tends to "go as you go"

One manifestation of the huge impact of the epidemic on the hotel industry is that many hotels are leaving the market. This can be seen from the changes in inventory data of the hotel industry.

According to the statistics of the inventory of star hotels in September of Ctrip, the overall inventory of domestic hotel industry decreased significantly year on year due to the impact of the closure tide of low star hotels.

"Since the beginning of this year, the number of low star hotels has been closed, which is a great blow to the whole industry." Tang Lan said.

However, there are also changes in the consumption behavior of the hotel industry in the post epidemic era.

"There is a growing demand for" just go and live if you want to. " Tang Lan thinks. Ctrip hotel reservation data confirmed this phenomenon. According to the data from April to September of the platform, 77% of the hotel bookings were "on the same day" or "one day in advance", while only 8% were "more than a week in advance". At the same time, when more temporary orders appear, the signs of early morning orders increase are also very prominent. Data show that orders in the early morning accounted for 2.1%, higher than the market data of 48%.

It is worth mentioning that when seeing the increase of temporary order demand, Ctrip seized the opportunity of this consumer behavior change by launching "midnight room" in early September this year.

It is reported that within a few days of the launch of the product, the average night order of the platform has increased by 67%. Among them, young people aged 25 to 35 are the main consumers, and the demand for "midnight room" is very high in airports, high-speed rail stations, bar streets, food streets, hospitals, CBD, university campuses and Internet companies.

In the post epidemic era, diversified demand has given birth to the emergence of alternative Hotel consumption.

With the normalization of the epidemic prevention and control, the recovery of travel demand has led to an increase in the proportion of business travel hotels, which has become an expected phenomenon. But this year, consumers' pursuit of two special types of accommodation products is surprising.

"This year is more hot, one is the e-sports Hotel, the other is the characteristic B & B." Tang Lan analyzed that since the summer vacation in June this year, the proportion of orders for these two types of accommodation has changed greatly, and the growth rate of Gmv on a year-on-year basis far exceeds the overall trend.

"E-sports hotels are basically distributed within 3 km around the University. Consumers spend at least 48 hours in the e-sports Hotel, and all the time is in the hotel." Tang Lan said that this has also become a representative phenomenon of changes in consumer behavior in the post epidemic era.

Pay attention to the potential of hotel cross marketing

There is no doubt that the domestic tourism industry is gradually recovering. However, as practitioners, whether there will be new opportunities in the hotel industry in the post epidemic era should become a common issue.

Tang Lan believes that "four days before the national day of Ctrip, compared with this year's May Day Gmv, increased by 300%. It can be seen from this that the recovery of the whole industry is progressing gradually. If it is not for the occasional outbreak of epidemic cases in some areas behind, it may be even better. "

For Ctrip itself, the Gmv of high-frequency and high loyalty platform users increased significantly year-on-year during the national day, showing it the space to continue to tap the consumption potential of existing users. These high-frequency users may represent a large number of outbound tourists who need to return. When they can't travel abroad, they transfer their consumption intention to the domestic tourism destination, and then burst out the novel Hotel consumption demand.

"Everyone is an in-depth experiencer, and" small and beautiful "hotels and other boutique entertainment projects have become a new trend of new year's Day travel." Tang Lan said that great changes have taken place in tourism after the epidemic, and tourists are looking forward to experiencing the beauty of China more deeply than ever before. More high-end users are willing to spend more time and money to explore deep destinations, choose "small and beautiful" hotels from their interests, and experience the unusual accommodation experience.

In addition, the return of consumption demand for outbound tourism has also contributed to the strong growth of high star hotel orders.

However, whether it is a "small and beautiful" hotel or a high-star hotel, Ctrip will package it through "boss live" this year to increase its exposure and gain more consumers.

"Now we see a gratifying phenomenon, many consumers book hotels first, and then book relevant air tickets in turn. This may be the impact of our pre-sale. " Tang Lan believes that this consumption phenomenon shows that the hotel innovation marketing potential is very huge.

According to the statistics of Ctrip, more than half of the hotels participating in Ctrip live broadcasting and pre-sale this year are from three to five-star core hotels. In terms of traffic, the traffic of these hotels in September this year increased compared with that of last year.

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