This is the best team: from Ctrip to Home Inns, Hanting I

Chapter 16
With a better understanding of the company, Tang Yue knew that Chen Yalin, the major shareholder of Patel Touche, had lost confidence in the company's prospects, because he had only earned 8 yuan since its establishment a year ago, and Chen Yalin was about to sell it.So, Tang Yue went to discuss the details of the acquisition with Chen Yalin.Since one was willing to buy and the other was willing to sell, they quickly reached an agreement, and the purchase price was 800 million RMB.

However, when Tang Yue discussed the acquisition with Chen Yalin, eLong itself did not have much money, and the initial US$100 million was spent in January 2000.

Now that you have no money, how do you buy it?Tang Yue thought this way. While buying Patel, he was also looking for a buyer for eLong.He first told the other three founders about this idea.After hearing what he meant, the entrepreneurial partner said: As long as there is money to be made, Tang Yue can do whatever he wants.

After receiving the support of his entrepreneurial partners, this man, who was good at telling Eastern people the myths of the West and telling Westerners stories about the East, found a buyer very quickly.Mail.com, an American Internet company, decided to acquire eLong on March 2000, 3, with a purchase price of US$14 million.

After successfully selling eLong to Mail.com, Tang Yue certainly has the money to acquire Patel & Touche.In fact, the acquisition of Bai Deqin is of great help to eLong.Many years later, Tang Yue also admitted: Without this acquisition, eLong would never have entered the tourism industry, and without this acquisition, the company might have been doomed long ago.

But when he acquired Patel, Tang Yue did not pay attention to the business of this newly acquired company, because Mail.com had already drawn a super pie for eLong.

Mail.com is the third largest provider of free e-mail in the United States.Because it is doing e-mail business, so it has a lot of domain names.At that time, Mail.com saw that China.com was listed on Nasdaq under a single name and raised a lot of money. Mail.com feels that their domain names, such as JAPAN, USA, etc., will also become Internet companies worth hundreds of millions.

Therefore, Mail.com established a domain name asset incubation company World.com in order to develop and manage its huge domain name resources.At the same time, a new company, Asia.com, was established to conduct business as a subsidiary of World.com. With Elong.com as the core, Asia.com will establish local subsidiaries and provide B2B and C2C services in various countries and regions around Asia, including South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand.eLong's business in China will also expand from community life services to all aspects of e-commerce.

Tang Yue was fascinated by this vision. He believed that Asia.com could not only bring unparalleled brand recognition to consumers and business users in Asia, but also serve as a bridge for enterprises and consumers from all over the world to Asia.

However, in the following year, Tang Yue gradually discovered that this super pie was actually a beautiful trap.Therefore, in May 2001, during the low period of the Internet, Tang Yue repurchased eLong from Mail.com at a price of 5 million US dollars.

Regrettably, when Tang Yue decided to transfer his business to hotel reservations, Ctrip relied on the team brought by Wu Hai and Wang Shengli's development of the northern market, and had already taken the top spot as the largest hotel distributor in China.

Why did you lose to Ctrip?Tang Yue later concluded: We must admit that Ctrip is the first in the market, and eLong is the second in the market.Because Ctrip was positioned in the tourism industry from the very beginning of its business, it is an early entrant to the tourism industry.Also, when the Internet winter comes, it has enough "food" for the winter, and has more than 1000 million US dollars in cash.

04 Travel agencies cannot break through the bottleneck

Since eLong has taken many detours, the PK is no better than Ctrip, so what will happen to the traditional travel agency setting up a website?They have clear goals and abundant resources. Are they more competitive?

According to authoritative statistics, in 1999, the sales revenue of China's tourism industry was more than 4000 billion yuan, of which group tourism accounted for only 10%, while business individual tourists and family self-help tours accounted for 90%. Individual tourists have gradually become the mainstream of the tourism industry development trend.

Faced with such a result, Jiang Jianning, the boss of CYTS, the second largest travel agency in China, began to think of a way.He said: The profiteering era of Chinese travel agencies has come to an end, and the group tourism that travel agencies relied on in the past is being replaced by personalized and fragmented tourism consumption.People are no longer willing to join tour groups that wave small flags and make arrangements for going to the bathroom.Although travel agencies have made very personalized travel plans for consumers, almost none of their customers have made their itinerary completely according to the plan, and they all have to modify it by themselves.Now if travel agencies do not quickly transition to the era of personalized tourism with the help of network technology, then China's tourism industry is tantamount to "slow suicide".

Seeing this, in June 2000, China CYTS Holdings Co., Ltd. decided to introduce venture capital to establish a comprehensive tourism website "CYTS Online", and at the same time established a chain of travel agencies - CYTS Chain Store.

Then, CYTS merged CYTSonline and CYTSonline (www.CYTSonline.com) into China's first true "mouse and cement" network.

In this way, the chain stores all over the capital and the virtual website together form a sales network, whether you are in front of the computer or in the chain store on the street, you are all under the unified network service.For example, consumers of a chain store can not only enjoy online services such as online ticket booking and travel information, but also transmit various consumer needs to the relevant departments of CYTS through the virtual network, and then aggregate them back to the chain store.In short, the purpose of CYTS is to interact and communicate with consumers online and offline in real time, and finally reach the simplest and most effective travel plan.

Jiang Jianning is very confident in his idea. He said: You can enjoy network services without going online. This is the real Internet.At the same time, the industry is also quite optimistic.They all believe that "Youth Travel Online" breaks the traditional tourism business model and uses the Internet platform to carry out network marketing, while the travel agency is used as the background to engage in specific market research, product research and development, reception and other business links.As a result, a new model of tourism operation has been formed in which the tourism network and the travel agency business complement each other.

However, it was soon discovered that this was a beautiful mistake.When a travel agency builds a website, the resources it possesses are not wealth, but a burden.The more powerful the travel agency, the weaker its website will appear.

Its fatal point comes from the structure of traditional travel agencies.Large-scale travel agencies like CYTS have businesses all over the country, with strong strength and abundant resources.But in terms of business operations, all the business of CYTS is completed by companies scattered in various places.Since companies from all over the country have their own interest demands, it is impossible to promote a business in accordance with unified standards and consistent interest orientation within the nationwide 116 team.Therefore, the website has played a destructive role instead.

In the end, the establishment of CYTS Online did not achieve the expected results.For the tourism industry, an industry with very complex operations and increasingly demanding personalization, it is difficult to provide personalized services, and it only plays the role of providing information.

05 Unexpectedly, the landlord card died

Faced with this 4000 billion yuan tourism market, not only Jiang Jianning, the boss of CYTS Online, wants to use Internet technology to develop personalized tourism, but even Zhang Shengli is "salivating" about it.Because he saw another market demand: the room occupancy rate of tourist hotels and resorts is only about 50% all the year round, and FIT has gradually become the mainstream development trend of the tourism industry.Therefore, Zhang Shengli established a new enterprise - Beijing Xinlvwang Hotel Resort Investment Management Company, and launched a new tourism product - "landlord card".He wants to use e-commerce to provide travelers with personalized services.

Zhang Shengli's Xinlv.com is a company jointly invested by four companies including China National Travel Service Co., Ltd., starting from the timeshare model and using the hotel and resort network alliance as the operating platform to commercialize tourism services.

Zhang Shengli first borrowed the marketing model of foreign timeshare vacations, and then based on China's national conditions, he formed a network of interest alliances with a large number of hotels and resorts.This interest alliance does not change the original equity affiliation of online hotels and resorts. However, through network means, they can form a virtual "Xinlv.com general hotel-hotel production workshop" business model, so as to reach all online hotels. A win-win result of resource sharing and customer sharing.

For tourists, the "landlord card" of Xinlv.com is a "consumer right card".That is to say, the cardholder can have IC card within the denomination range (5-3 yuan) at any hotel or resort that joins Xinlv.com network alliance at any time during the validity period of the IC card (generally 8 years). Consumption rights and corresponding additional services.Customers can enter the e-commerce platform of the Xinlv.com website through the Internet to purchase cards, book rooms and consume inquiries online, and hold the card to enjoy the lowest price room accommodation in the cooperative hotels and resorts of Xinlv.com. The value remains unchanged, so that the "landlord card" has the function of preserving value.

Therefore, Xinlv.com is a big hotel, and all online hotels are like sub-departments, so that all customer resources and marketing facilities are shared by all hotels and resorts, so that all hotels and resorts can share the economies of scale of network operation; all hotels and resorts Resources are shared and even selected by all customers, thereby increasing the utility-to-money cost ratio of stay for all card-holding customers, which in turn increases potential customer resources for network alliances.

In addition, Xinlv.com's virtual "Xinlv.com main hotel-hotel production workshop" network operation model greatly eliminates the increase in unit management costs (diseconomies of scale) of real large hotels after the scale increases. Promoting the competition of enterprises in the network avoids the damage that the big hotel may bring to the vitality of the big hotel in terms of market monopoly, such as the so-called phenomenon of "big shop bullying customers".

In addition, the business model of Xinlv.com can integrate and package all the idle room assets of online hotels and resorts, and pre-sell them in batches in advance. In this way, Xinlv.com can negotiate for consumers and obtain more than any existing reservation center Low room settlement price; extremely favorable price, extremely wide choice of check-in time, region, and price, which is convenient for group and family consumers to control travel expenses in advance.

In this way, Zhang Shengli's "landlord card" can mobilize the idle assets of the resort, and at the same time give tourists the most favorable price.Can this card be popular with one card?

Zhang Shengli, the CEO of Xinlv.com, has certain reasons for launching the "landlord card" decisively.

He told the reporter who interviewed him: In the past two years, many domestic large-scale tourism enterprises have carried out a lot of exploration and practice in network chain operation and group scale operation, but none of them are satisfactory.Although it is said that network management can indeed achieve the goals of unified brand, resource sharing, and lower operating costs, but to achieve network management, the geographical distribution of member companies in the network must be reasonable and cannot be concentrated in one area. At the same time, innovative marketing techniques and Scientific management mode.In order to solve this problem, these tourism groups have also thought of many ways.For example, some want to solve the problem of geographical concentration of member companies through mergers, acquisitions and asset replacements, but due to the very difficult negotiations, there are many examples of failure.For example, Dongfang Hotel failed to acquire a hotel in Luoyang, and Jin Jiang Group failed to replace the assets of a hotel in Shanghai in a different place.Even a group that has solved the problem of geographical distribution, lacking innovative marketing technology and scientific management methods, cannot really unite the companies in the group to form a new competitive advantage.Therefore, at present, more than [-] tourist hotels in China are still operating in a single-soldier operation.

After analyzing a large number of examples of corporate mergers and acquisitions and corporate asset restructuring, and scientifically analyzing the characteristics of the tourist hotel industry, Zhang Shengli believes that it is not practical to integrate idle resources of hotels and resorts on a large scale through mergers and acquisitions. The key is to have a new concept. A new mode of operation.On the one hand, to explore potential market demand, on the other hand, it is necessary to change the existing single management mode of hotels and resorts. While changing the business model, improving service quality, and enabling consumers to enjoy more convenient and affordable services, it also allows the hotel and resorts to operate independently. Idle resources get 118. This is the best team to reconfigure.

Based on this idea, Zhang Shengli decided to intervene between the hotel resort and consumers as a third party through the use of modern network technology and a brand-new operation mode without changing the property rights of the existing hotel resort assets. Resorts and consumers are connected into a network to realize the reconfiguration of idle resources in hotels and resorts.He believes that this model can revitalize the idle assets of tourist hotels, improve asset quality, and realize real network operation.

Zhang Shengli has good reasons, but will the result be what Zhang Shengli envisioned?

Regrettably, after the "Landlord Card" was launched on April 2000, 4, the market did not respond very well within a few months.Many consumers find that in the short term, the hotel and resort resources that the network can provide cannot meet their higher requirements; there are still contradictions in the operation mode that the traditional settlement method is not compatible with the "landlord card" settlement; the technical service of the system still exists imperfections.

Later, the market practice proved that timeshare vacations in China were somewhat unacceptable. In terms of the average income level of Chinese residents at the present stage, timeshare vacation products, which are not considered luxurious in developed countries, have become luxury goods in China.In addition, the paid vacation system has not been widely implemented, and it is difficult for most families to determine in advance which week of the year they have time to travel, making it difficult to share vacation time.Moreover, the relevant national management departments have not yet made a clear definition of time-share vacations. After a dispute arises, consumers will fall into a passive position without legal support.

As a result, the "child" of the "landlord card" died without being brought up.

06 The reservation center cannot keep up with the times

Finally, let's take a look at the traditional reservation center.

It is undeniable that Modern Express and Shangzhixing were the first to discover the new market of hotel reservations. In 1997, they had launched a business model in China centered on call centers plus 800 free calls.Over the next few years, companies of various sizes continued to enter the market.However, all companies are facing a bottleneck: it is difficult to promote their business on a large scale, and they cannot make their companies grow rapidly. Because they are traditional companies, venture capital investors are not interested in them, and of course they have not raised funds to expand their scale. .Therefore, the traditional room reservation center can only do small things to earn a little money to support the family.

However, the heads of several reservation companies have realized the power of the Internet.Take Hyundai Express, for example, in November 1999, it also set up a website called "Future Express". However, a few months later, Wang Shengli discovered that this website was useless.On the one hand, it is because Modern Express does not have professional network promotion personnel to operate this website; on the other hand, the traditional room reservation center is small in scale and has a single tourism product. With its own capital accumulation, it is impossible to support the huge cost of a website.

After realizing that he had shortcomings that could not be lengthened, Wang Shengli finally decided to merge with Ctrip.The rest of the reservation centers must either find a good backer like Times Express, or hold on and compete with other big companies for food.For example, Li Zizheng, the boss of Golden Century Business Travel.com, told the reporter: We all face challenges every day, and develop and innovate every day.However, in the past few years of development, Golden Century has become the largest paid membership club in China.We focus on the quality of life needs of high-end people, and strive to build the most influential integrated life information platform in China, providing members with convenient, affordable and reliable inquiries, reservations and information on hotels, air tickets, golf, dining and entertainment, travel and vacation Transaction and other services, as well as a number of value-added services such as airport VIP access, car assistance, financial insurance, etc.We now have a domestic leading call center and a secretary-style senior account manager team.

Although Li Zi is looking forward to the prospects of his company.However, compared with Ctrip, Golden Century still has a gap between walking tractors and BMW.

Why, please read on!

What did Ctrip do right

01 Everyone is fighting for the route

If you ask, which year was the most intense competition and the most exciting competition among travel websites?To be precise, it should be the period from 1999 to 2000.

At the end of April 2000, after eLong announced its merger with Patel Touche, Zhang Ligang, CEO of eLong Company, came out and told the media: This merger has allowed eLong to make full use of Patek Touche's original customer resources and travel service network at home and abroad. We are planning to launch eLong Card and eLong-LoHoo Card at the same time. We believe that with the expansion of online business, LoHoo's tourism income will also be greatly increased, and it is expected to reach RMB 4 million by the end of the year.

(End of this chapter)