Who is the death knell for?
Editor’s note: This article is from the micro-channel public number “ TravelDaily ” (ID: Traveldaily), author Li Jialu, Huang Yanan, Ren Zikai.
The world’s first travel agency Thomas Cook Bankruptcy reorganization, “This news is uncomfortable in my heart” is the idea of most travel agency practitioners. This travel agency, which has appeared in the teaching materials of the Tourism College and has been in business for 178 years, has gone from stormy to stormy.
On September 23, Thomas Cook applied for “compulsory liquidation” and immediately took effect. The external responsible person will take over the company and gradually close its business. The services purchased by 150,000 British tourists abroad will be suspended and the British government will be repatriated. .
This was a global travel group with annual sales of 9 billion pounds, serving 19 million customers per year and having 34 aircraft and 22,000 employees worldwide. As the British media said, “This is a wide-ranging travel agency. Even competitors are not willing to watch it fall.”
According to media reports, the money that was not discussed on September 22 was the last straw overwhelming Thomas Cook. In addition to the capital chain rupture, due to the changes in the market brought about by the evolution of digital technology and social media and the changes in the way consumers travel, the Brexit can be attributed to its poor management.
This incident has sounded a wake-up call to the global travel agency industry, once again causing concern for traditional travel agencies in trouble. Coincidentally, the old Indian travel agency group Cox and Kings is also experiencing tremendous pressure on business and debt. The two travel companies Tempo Holidays and Benturs have recently ceased operations.
Four years ago, a travel article by Global Travel News on traditional travel agencies caused discussion among many industry people, both reflective and self-protected. And the problems revealed at that time seem to have no medicine so far..
Recently, Global Travel News once again looked for people in the industry to talk about this topic. The traditional travel agency rivers and rivers are already the general trend. Are there any changes in their transformation and outlets today? Involved in the discussion, there are traditional travel agencies that are being affected, as well as the forces that have impacted them, as well as those who are jumping out of traditional travel agencies and are in transition.
What does Thomas Cook teach us?
Zhou Weihong, deputy general manager of Spring and Autumn Tourism, described the collapse of Thomas Cook with “an insurmountable substantive disaster in the development process”. Zhou Weihong believes that Thomas Cook’s main business is still based on the charter business many years ago, which is decoupled from the times and is very fragile.
Thomas Cook’s 2018 financial report shows that the company’s main business income is mainly divided into travel agencies and aviation business. Among them, aviation business income was 3.519 billion pounds, accounting for 32.4% of total revenue.
In addition, Thomas Cook has a large number of heavy assets in the hotel sector, but the overall output ratio is not satisfactory; and the choice of holiday destinations is relatively small, when there are irresistible factors such as tsunami, terrorist attacks, etc. It will directly lead to a rapid decline in hotel business. Its 2018 financial report shows that the company had 186 private brands and resorts at the time. In the same year, Thomas Cook closed nine hotels with poor performance.
“Thomas Cook deserves to be studied by Chinese peers in terms of quality, but needs to balance the benefits. Otherwise, companies can’t make a profit, and it doesn’t make sense to talk about high quality.” Zhou Weihong said.
Reviewing Thomas Cook’s road to business, he has also tried and helped himself in transition. In 2006, it spent huge sums of money to sign a system integrator agreement with IBM to develop a multi-channel unified reservation platform; in 2010, it also set up an intention to transform the OTA, and appointed the former executives of Expedia to operate, but the OTA project and its own business generated Competition is also bound. As the new CEO took office, he began to focus on the main business, clarifying that “no longer intend to become an OTA.”
But the online market has always been the most anxious and helpless part of traditional travel agencies like Thomas Cook. Since 2013, Thomas Cook has increased its investment in the IT field, intending to use the digital transformation as a means to buffer the Internet. The impact.
Domestic travel agencies have tried similar changes, but the domestic travel agency industry ecology is obviously more complicated than abroad. In fact, compared with foreign OTAs, airlines and hotels are the main business. In addition to air tickets and hotels, domestic OTAs have a strong penetration rate of travel products. Therefore, offline travel agencies want to take advantage of OTA, which is quite difficult.
Domestic travel agencies are not only bound by vested interests, they are difficult to change; the outside also suffers from a more distinct OTA online offensive;