Still familiar with subsidies.
Editor’s note: micro-channel public number article from the “Global Travel Weekly” (ID: Traveldaily) , Author: Yan Na.
Pin Duoduo has reached further in the tourism industry.
Recently, Pinduoduo has quietly launched its ticket business. Like train tickets and travel services, the entrance to ticket booking is not obvious. It is not on the Pinduoduo homepage but on the page of its recharge center. In addition, Global Travel News found that at present, Pinduoduo only sells domestic air tickets, and it is not yet possible to provide bookings for Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan and international air tickets.
Pin Duoduo App recharge page
From the perspective of airfare prices, Pinduoduo flights on the same date and time period are cheaper than Ctrip and Airline ’s official website. This may be due to the fact that Pinduoduo provides a small amount of subsidies for new businesses.
From left to right are: Pinduoduo, Ctrip, China Southern’s small program page
It may have been a good idea for Pinduoduo to arrange the ticket business. In April this year, 51BOOK, an air travel B2B trading platform, announced a strategic partnership with Pinduoduo. Both parties will fully share products, freight rates, technical resources and supply chains. 51BOOK will provide Pinduoduo with a one-stop, full-process online ticket booking solution. It is understood that the air ticket business of Pinduoduo will be officially launched on 6.18 E-commerce Day.
It is reported that 51BOOK is also Ctrip and several other OTA ticket providers. It has also helped JD.com, Donkey Mom, Tenpay, 12580, and Number One to launch ticket services and provide agency services on multiple platforms.
Time goes furtherPush forward. In September last year, Global Travel News reported on In an interview with Global Travel News , said,“ In the past, we have repeatedly proved that in the travel industry, air tickets are the real entrance, and the hotel is not. “In fact, Meituan, Ali and other cross-borders have set up a travel industry, and they have also launched the air ticket business. Among them, Meituan acquired Kuxun and bought shares in airway information; while Ali Travel, the predecessor of Flying Pig, acquired international ticket distribution Platform Aslan.
But neither train tickets nor air tickets are profitable businesses. It is understood that there is almost no entry threshold for the train ticket business. Most platforms use the railway company’s only official ticketing platform 12306 to capture flight and fare information, but cannot obtain commissions. They can only make profits by bundling sales insurance or collecting ticket grabbing service fees. In terms of air ticket business, the commission rate is not high at around 2 to 3 points due to the impact of various regulations such as adjustments to the airline ’s commission policy, refunds and changes, and product tying. It can be said that the layout of large traffic is not a profitable business.
The challenge for Pinduoduo to do a good job in air ticket business is not just not to make money on air tickets.
First of all, platforms such as Ctrip, Qunar, and Feizhu have already occupied an absolute market share in the field of air ticket booking. Analysys Analysys released the “Quarterly Monitoring and Analysis of China ’s Online Air Ticket Booking Market, Q1 2019”. In Q1, Ctrip, Qunar and Feizhu’s online ticket booking market share reached 73.84%. It is not easy for cross-borderers to take a slice of the soup. Because Ctrip can provide one-stop travel services, consumers may be more accustomed to using the well-known OTA to make reservations in consumer perception. Pinduoduo’s ticket booking entrance is relatively hidden, and it has not yet been seen that it is engaged in related marketing efforts. It is not known how many users it can use.
Secondly, for Pinduoduo’s ticket business, the most important thing is brand recognition, not subsidies. Zhang Chuan, senior vice president of Meituan Dianping and president of Xindaodian Business Group, once mentioned in an article in Caijing that “low-frequency demand depends on advertising and high-frequency demand depends on subsidies.” Zhang Chuan also believes that it is difficult for the platform Drive the low frequency, but can do a lot of low-frequency business to aggregate and form user perception. “High frequencies can’t drive low frequencies, but high frequencies should be used to move intermediate frequencies, and then the low frequencies should be continuously developed to form a larger platform.”
Once again, users of Pinduoduo are mostly distributed in low-tier cities, and the unit price of customers is not high. According to Pinduoduo ’s financial report, the unit price of their customers in 2019 is about 51 yuan, and the unit price of customers in 2017 and 2018 is 33 yuan, 42 yuan. The air ticket business is relatively high-frequency and just-needed for business travelers, and the price of air tickets is also relatively high. Industry insiders said that “the user groups of the two seem to be not so coincident.”
Finally, the layout of new fields by cross-borderers often requires the construction of core advantages. For example, Qunar.com occupies a place in the market by virtue of the vertical search price comparison platform; while Ctrip reserves a lot of expert opportunitiesFor ticket business talents, their international ticket business is based on technology to win. For the newly entered Pinduoduo, only a 51BOOK is connected, and there are still challenges to break the game. However, Pinduoduo is also constantly exploring and polishing new products. Global Travel News has noticed that Pinduoduo has recently recruited travel-related Post, it seems that I want to use this to optimize the products of the train ticket and ticket business.
Previously, there were rumors that Pinduoduo would lay out the air ticket and car-hailing areas. Now its ticket business has been launched. As a car-hailing car that connects scenic spots, hotels, airports, train stations and other scenes, it is used in travel It is indispensable here, whether or not Pinduoduo will be laid out here and when in the future, Global Travel News will keep a close eye on it.