Whether OTA finally ushered in the dawn of victory or fell into a new predicament, everything has not yet been determined.

Editor’s note: This article is from the micro-channel public number “Mantis Finance” (ID: TanglangFin) , Author: Easy No two.

Affected by the epidemic, in the first half of 2020, people’s yearning for poetry and the distant place is confined to the living room and kitchen, making the entire OTA industry suffer a sharp drop in orders.

Starting from the second half of the year, the entire industry has begun to show a trend of recovery under the self-rescue measures of better domestic epidemic control and live broadcasts of various OTAs. While OTAs are struggling to survive the slow recovery of the darkest moment, many social platforms rely on the advantages of traffic and content to take advantage of the reshuffle situation brought about by the epidemic, and they have launched their liquor travel ticket business and have become the gateway to the online tourism industry. “Barbarians”.

Looking back at the whole of 2020, the haze of the online travel industry’s epidemic has not yet dissipated, and the basics of OTAs have been eyed. What will happen to this industry that has almost been reshaped by the epidemic?

Although the darkness has passed, the haze has not cleared

In the first half of 2020, revenue shrinking, performance losses, and bankruptcies have become the norm that OTAs have to face.

Analysis data shows that in the first half of 2020, the transaction scale of China’s online travel market was 152.97 billion yuan , A sharp drop of 71.2% year-on-year. Among them, the total turnover of the hotel industry was 39.6 billion yuan, a decrease of 58% from the 93.8 billion yuan in the same period last year.

Reflected in the financial report, we can see that OTAs such as Ctrip, Meituan, Yilong, Tuniu, etc. have been in a crisis of declining performance in the first half of the year.

As the leader of the OTA industry, Ctrip bears the brunt. In the second quarter of 2020, Ctrip achieved operating income of 3.159 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 63.65%; income from accommodation booking, transportation ticketing, tourism vacation and business travel management were 1.3 billion yuan and 12 million yuan respectively.100 million yuan, 100 million yuan and 100 million yuan, the year-on-year decline was 63%, 66%, 88% and 47% respectively.

In the first half of the year, Meituan, which has a local life advantage business, saw its in-store, hotel and travel business revenues fell by 21.6% year-on-year to 7.639 billion yuan; the operating profit of in-store, hotel and travel businesses fell 31.2% year-on-year to 2.572 billion yuan yuan.

Tuniu, whose performance has been under pressure, was even worse when it encountered the epidemic. During the period from 2014 to 2019, Tuniu’s net loss attributable to the parent totaled 5.978 billion yuan. In the second quarter of 2020, Tuniu, whose performance has deteriorated due to the epidemic, responded with a net loss of 148 million yuan.

There is still room for salvation due to declining performance and losses. There are also some OTA agencies that have fallen forever under the epidemic.

According to the “Report on China’s Online Tourism Market Data in 2020 (Part 1)” released by the NetEconomics and E-Commerce Research Center, in the first half of 2020, the number of OTAs closed as high as 16.

Fortunately, the epidemic will not last indefinitely.

In the second half of the year, with the arrival of the tourist season and favorable policies, the domestic tourism market has been further stimulated and the recovery has accelerated. Companies that survived the reshuffle period in the first half of the year have ushered in a moment of respite.

In the third quarter of 2020, Ctrip, Meituan, Tongcheng Yilong, Tuniu, horse nest and other OTAs , The performance of the third quarter has a good performance. Among them, Ctrip’s sales in the third quarter were 5.5 billion yuan, an increase of 73% from the previous quarter, and its net profit reached 1.6 billion yuan, achieving profit in the first quarter since the outbreak of the epidemic.

But this does not mean that the epidemic haze over the OTA has been completely cleared.

In the third-quarter financial reports of all OTAs, they all focused on the keyword “single-over-quarter growth”, which means that although they have gone through the most difficultHowever, revenue and profit have not fully recovered. For example, Tuniu’s net revenue fell 85.5% year-on-year……

After all, compared with other consumer industries, the tourism industry has a longer decision-making chain. In addition, the epidemic has been repeated and the haze has not cleared. For OTAs who have come out of the darkest moments, they need to continue to fight for a long time. Preparation.

They walked into the live broadcast room?

To analyze how OTAs survived the darkest moments, in addition to the external reasons for the better environment, it is also inseparable from the internal reasons that OTAs strive to save themselves by means of live broadcasting.

During the boom of e-commerce live broadcasts, the online travel industry has also set off a wave of live broadcasts. Among them, the most typical ones are Ctrip, which is broadcast by the president, Fliggy, which is broadcast by merchants, and Mafengwo, which is broadcast by Daren. These three companies represent two different live broadcast directions of PGC and UGC.

Since Liang Jianzhang played Cosplay in the live broadcast, Ctrip’s live broadcast was also the most out of the circle. Since then, although Ctrip’s live broadcast has become regular and regular, it has always been dominated by the PGC content of the platform planning theme, and the purpose of bringing goods is also stronger. “Products are all in the form of live broadcast pre-sales. You can lock in discounts in advance and arrange travel later. If you don’t arrange travel, you can return them without loss. So this kind of product is particularly suitable for live broadcast at this time, and it can be very Promote future consumption.”

Compared with Ctrip’s PGC live broadcast direction, Fliggy, which has stronger platform attributes, is both PGC and UGC. At the same time, Fliggy’s live broadcast also has the most e-commerce characteristics.

In terms of PGC content, Fliggy combines offline live broadcasting, professional anchor explanations, popular science lectures and other forms to lead users to travel together during the epidemic; in terms of UGC content, with the help of Taobao live broadcast resources, Fliggy businesses can Choose self-broadcasting or cooperate with Taobao anchors to plant grass on travel routes or directly bring goods.

Hornet’s Nest, which has been relying on content to gain a foothold in the travel market, its live broadcast is mainly based on UGC content that has been planted by experts. It combines travel experts, scenic spots and businesses to show users “cloud travel” through live broadcast. Have fun experience. For the previous content formats mainly based on graphics and short videos, live broadcast can be a new channel for reaching users.

From the perspective of market performance, as of mid-December, Ctrip’s live broadcast matrix GMV has exceeded 2.4 billion yuan, with more than 170 million viewers; 80% of Fliggy’s content is self-broadcasted by merchants, while 97 % Of core businesses have opened or plan to open travel live broadcast.

In other words, live broadcast has driven the recovery of the tourism industry to a certain extent. In the future, as live broadcast becomes more mature, it may become the industry standard.

But the industry standard does not mean that OTA can be like the e-commerce industry