2021-02-11
Wu Zhengyuan
Senior Director of Public Affairs Department of Meituan
Abstract: The popularization and development of mobile Internet make people feel convenient in information acquisition, transportation, trading environment and other aspects. The aim is to promote the development of healthy tourism with a wider range of participants and more convenient ways of participation. As an Internet enterprise, Meituan responded to the development model and trend of tourism facilitation and actively created some products suitable for the needs of consumers and businesses..
How the mobile Internet era facilitates healthy tourism?
Healthy tourism is beneficial to the people’s livelihood, the community and the economy. healthy tourism embodies the participation of more people and trading behaviors. Only when more and more people participate in tourism activities in more and more convenient ways can the role of healthy tourism be better played. From this point of view, facilitation should be a special focus for healthy tourism.
Traditionally, tourism facilitation may place more emphasis on the facilitation of international tourism including visas, transportation and customs clearance. Entering the era of mass tourism, tourists have a stronger demand for the convenience of information acquisition, transaction and sightseeing. Through the provision of more convenient services through Internet technology, tourists will be more convenient to travel and enterprises will be more convenient to operate, thus making healthy tourism more effective.
Now is the era of mobile Internet. Since the birth of the first iPhone in 2007, and with the development of mobile technology, mobile phones have become the main way of surfing the Internet at home and abroad. According to the data released by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), the number of domestic Internet users is 940 million, of which 932 million are mobile Internet users, accounting for more than 99%. At present, among all ways of Internet access, people prefer to use mobile phones to surf the Internet instead of the PC.
Mobile Internet has natural advantages. It has a large number of native users, who are not PC Internet users before. Like users under the age of 20, there are a large number of users who have not been through the era of PC Internet users and have directly entered the era of mobile Internet. The new demand for mobile Internet by these people cannot be replaced by the original PC Internet. At the same time, mobile Internet has its own natural advantages.
First, information travels fast. The speed of accessing the Internet of the mobile phone has obvious advantages over that of the computer.
Second, it is convenient to carry. Mobile Internet can be accessed anytime and anywhere. A mobile phone in a pocket can realize the demand for Internet at any time.
Third, the functions are more comprehensive and integrated. Compared with PC Internet, mobile Internet also has integrated functions such as photographing and payment. Therefore, from these three points of view, mobile Internet has natural advantages over the PC Internet.
For a long time, a trip without hesitation may be a good wish of everyone. In the era of mobile Internet, this possibility has become a reality for us. In the era of mobile Internet, there is a closed loop system. From obtaining information, transaction process, to the offline travel process and evaluation process,everything can be completed on mobile Internet. The era of mobile Internet has remarkable characteristics. For example, in terms of information, it has changed the original mode of obtaining information on tourism destinations and tourism products. Before, a lot of information was obtained through paper media, but now it has basically changed to electronic media. The original mode of information display may be relatively loose, such as a certain place or a certain product. Now, more comprehensive display is carried out on one platform, and the platform has multi-product and multi-destination comprehensive display forms.
The transaction can form a complete closed loop from reservation to payment, and there is no need to go through unnecessary links. From the selection of a product to the final completion of the transaction, it can be completely completed on the mobile Internet. In the process of offline activities, the mobile Internet obviously improves the convenience of tourists. Like admission and check-in, it is obvious that people now generally feel that to visit a scenic spot, they may no longer need to queue up to buy tickets and check tickets, and they can directly enter the park through mobile phone QR codes or ID cards. When visiting scenic spots, navigation information, scenic spots and every product of scenic spots can be obtained on the Internet, making the tour more targeted. Statistics indicated that this helped reduce the waiting time of a tourist by 20 minutes on average.
In terms of post-tour evaluation, it used to be more about word of mouth, but in the era of mobile Internet, tourists share their feelings and experiences more instantly through mobile Internet. For example, if I am satisfied or dissatisfied with a certain product, I may take out my mobile phone and used it to make comments at any time. A significant change is that mobile Internet evaluation comes in various forms, without being limited to texts. With the development of 4G and 5G, pictures and short videos have become the mainstream forms for young people to make comments.
From the perspective of digital technology, in the era of mobile Internet, from the acquisition of online transaction information to the completion of final evaluation, tourism behavior has formed a complete closed loop, thus realizing the travel you want and become a reality possibility.
Seeing from Internet platforms, digitalization of supply-side industries is a prominent feature, and individual tourists on demand-side are even more prominent. In the middle of the two, a platform between enterprises and consumers has been set up. As a platform trend for Internet enterprises, it is of comprehensive and cross-border operation and is no longer limited to the operation of a single product.
At present, the online operation of the entire tourism industry is not that pervasive. In terms of tourism elements, online air tickets and train tickets business are relatively large-scale and effective due to the governance of the state. The online trading of air tickets and train tickets is basically dominant. According to statistics, more than 80% of the transactions of air tickets and train tickets are conducted online. However, only about 37% of hotel booking is done online, and more than 60% of reservation and consumption are completed directly offline. The online admission percentage of scenic spots is even lower. Preliminary estimations show that the online admission is about 18% of total admission. More than 80% of the people are used to buy scenic spots’ paper-based admission tickets offline.
From the perspective of users, in June 2019, the online travel reservation was 418 million, accounting for 48.9% of the total number of netizen reservation in the country, ranking second in the comsumption of netizens, following online physical shopping, equivalent to the scale of online car booking and online take-out. This year’s data may slump due to the epidemic.
As a new comer in the Internet industry, Meituan was born in 2010. At present, more than 99.7% of users are utilizing the app of mobile phones, with few users on the PC side. When it went public in Hong Kong in 2018, the first person our boss thanked was Steve Jobs. He believed that Jobs had changed this era and the popularization of mobile Internet was a prerequisite for the rise of Internet companies.
Everyone thinks that Meituan is a relatively low-end enterprise focusing on food delivery. Perhaps everyone knows more about its take-out business and not see it as a high-tech company. In fact, our hotel business has become the second largest business of Meituan, with the second largest turnover. It is the most profitable business of our company. We are not only a take-out company, but a tourism company too.
Meituan now has 460 million active users and 6.3 million active businesses, covering more than 2,800 cities, counties and districts across the country, with nearly 4 million delivery people in total, 800,000 of whom are active ones on a daily basis. The number of hotel transaction and ticket sales have achieved the first place in the industry. Last year, hotel transaction volume exceeded 392 million. Although the total transaction value is still behind the industry leaders, the volume ranks top in the industry.
In response to the development model and trend to facilitate tourism, Meituan has created new products. Integrating consumer needs with the advantages of the Internet and making products appealing for consumers and businesses are what we have been working hard on. For B-end products, we have launched flagship store products, which are mainly targeted at hotels and scenic spots, and can be used for private domain flow management.
There is also a one-stop display function, which can display all information all at once. During the epidemic, we developed a series of live-at-ease and happy-to-play products. Through Internet technology, businesses can timely publicize their own epidemic prevention information and information that tourists care about in real time. Thus, seamless connection between consumers and businesses is realized and business operations are facilitated.
In terms of C-end products, some products such as Flash Park Entering, Cloud Queuing and Ranking List have been introduced. Flash Park Entering and Cloud Queuing can solve the problems of entrance queuing and activity queuing. Originally, some projects may require queuing for two hours only to experience for two minutes. Now we have introduced a cloud queuing app on the mobile phone, which greatly saves the waiting time, so that you can participate in more activities and satisfy consumers’ demand for more tourism-related products.
We have also made a lot of lists. You may have heard the so-called “black pearls”, must-visit and must-stay lists. They are generated based on tourist evaluation to provide a guide for consumers during their visit. Statistics show that for businesses on the must-visit list, must-eat list, must-stay list, the average transaction exceeds those not on the list by 40%.
Before the launch of the live-at-ease products, people may have a need for accommodation in hotels due to the resumption of work, but there is a concern about hygiene. To minimize the concerns, we demand the hotel test body temperature, check health status of employees, implement disinfection for each guest room and public areas, and disclose information in real time online, so that consumers can see the status of the hotel at any time. By doing so, the sense of safety for tourists increases and the people flow in is elevated.
Meituan is also actively responding to the call of the World Tourism Alliance to boost poverty reduction and alleviation through tourism.
In terms of digitization, the level of digitization for tourism practitioners in impoverished western region is very low, and there is a strong demand for hardware or software. In 2019, our platform provided catering, accommodation and tourism businesses with online services, achieving a transaction value of more than 26 billion yuan.
When it comes to employee training, digital talents are the industry backbone. Tourism companies need talents for the development of digital products. Meituan courses are adopted to help the industry’s digital talent training. Currently, it has covered more than 70,000 hotels across the country and totally certified more than 300,000 people. In addition, we have also carried out kindness matters campaigns for poor children and left-behind children in some poor areas, living up to our social responsibility as an Internet enterprise, and benefiting more areas with our development.
Of course, for Meituan, as a platform, all its development models are based on the establishment of offline product models. We only use Internet technology to make the tourism business more convenient. It is hoped that through the development of mobile Internet, more assistance can be provided for fair-price tourism, so that tourists can enjoy the pleasure of traveling, destinations can benefit from the development of tourism, and tourism companies can profit from tourism business.