Let's talk about the relevant strategies for operating tourism product channels from three dimensions: industry analysis, functional framework, and channel operation.

Based on the "Theme Tour" channel in the travel module of the Ctrip app, this article will explore the relevant strategies for operating tourism product channels from three dimensions: tourism industry analysis, product function framework, and channel operation methods .

1. Industry analysis

Generally speaking, tourism involves six major aspects: food, accommodation, transportation, sightseeing, shopping and entertainment. This is an extremely large trillion-dollar industry that covers a very wide market range. This is also a field that pays great attention to user experience. Users choose to travel in order to relax, have fun, and have fun. Therefore, their expectations for the pleasure brought by travel are much higher than their requirements for other industries.

The tourism industry generally goes through four stages of development: sightseeing tours, leisure tours, vacation tours, and high-end experience tours. Research by the World Tourism Organization shows that the core factor affecting these development stages is the level of per capita GDP. When the per capita GDP reaches US$1,000, sightseeing tourism will increase dramatically; when the per capita GDP reaches US$2,000, leisure tourism will develop rapidly; when the per capita GDP reaches US$3,000, there will be explosive demand for tourism, and the tourism form will enter a period of vacation tourism as the main form; when the per capita GDP reaches US$5,000, it will enter a mature vacation tourism economy, with increasing leisure demand and consumption capacity and a trend of diversification, and a strong demand for personalized, high-end customized tourism.

According to statistics, China's per capita GDP exceeded US$8,800 in 2016, which means that with the improvement of people's living standards and the surplus of economic capabilities, China's tourism industry has long had the foundation to develop in the direction of vertical segmentation. The tourism model that is personalized and customized according to the different needs of different people has been secretly preparing for an explosion.

Theme tours, as a way to gain an in-depth understanding and experience of a certain topic or destination, are one of the new favorites that have emerged in response to the market trend of tourism upgrading. They are mainly travel activities organized for the middle class based on their interests and hobbies.

"Theme tour" tourism product and service providers need to tailor travel routes and experiences for tourists based on their different identities, personal needs, unique experiences, and consumer psychology.

By industry, there are skiing, golf, diving, hiking, horseback riding, photography, yachting, red wine, etc. If divided by psychological appeal, there are various themes such as spirituality, pilgrimage, and health preservation.

Theme tourism takes unique natural environment, resources, products, history and culture, customs, religion, art, etc. as clues, and combines, packages and plans them to form a wide variety of colorful tourism activities.

Ctrip’s “Theme Tour” channel also basically designs its products based on this classification dimension.

2. “Theme Tour” Channel Framework

Theme tour channel page (picture from Ctrip app)

Ctrip Theme Tour Channel Framework

From the mind map above, we can clearly see that the framework of Ctrip’s “Theme Tour” channel is relatively simple. For travel products such as Ctrip, in addition to providing a vast amount of booking resources, a deeper role is to help users make decisions, which is actually one of the main directions of channel operations.

From the perspective of the product framework alone, apart from the search box where users purposefully search for related products, other functions such as banners, guide bars, popular areas and topic selections are all "recommendation" functions, which are used to promote the products that Ctrip hopes users will buy and to help users make choices and decisions.

So next, I will talk about how to operate channels for this type of tourism products from the two dimensions of content operation and data operation .

3. Channel operation methods and strategies

3.1 Content Operation

Online booking channels like "Theme Tours" actually direct online customers to offline travel agencies. When a user first experiences a travel route and the services of a travel agency, since he has no prior knowledge of the relevant services, his only channel for obtaining information can be said to be Ctrip. Therefore, it is crucial to accurately convey effective information to the user at this time. This link can be mainly divided into static content presentation and dynamic content recommendation.

3.1.1 Content presentation

The so-called static content presentation, as its literal meaning is, is to display the relevant pictures, introductions, prices and other information of a route in the correct position according to its importance.

How do you define whether information is important?

One is our understanding of users based on our own experience. For example, if we ourselves are tourists, the information we generally care about would be: whether the scenic spot is beautiful, whether the journey is safe, how is the travel experience, and how about the price. A more accurate method is to use tracking points to see how users click and stay on each piece of information, so as to determine which information they value more. After understanding the users’ pain points, we can place the information that users care about in the right place and present it to them better by beautifying pictures of scenic spots, pinning high-quality reviews, optimizing copywriting , adjusting the content presentation position, etc.

3.1.2 Content Recommendation

As mentioned before, there are so many products within the channel. If users are really allowed to make their own choices, once they encounter difficulties in making a choice, due to human laziness, they may simply leave. Therefore, for channel operations, one of our important tasks is to help users make choices and reduce their decision-making costs.

The "Theme Tour" channel has already taken into account the addition of a content recommendation mechanism in its functional design.

Click on the "Theme Tour" channel interface for the first time

When a user clicks on the "Theme Tour" channel for the first time, an interface will pop up asking them to "select a theme of interest". After the user makes the relevant selection, targeted recommendations can be made to them later, thereby increasing the user's conversion rate .

In addition, I think operators can also recommend content in this channel through two ways. One is the use of the two modules of popular areas and theme selections; the other is the use of the banner bar, which is mainly used to display various daily activity planning . After all, the activity itself is a kind of recommendation and attraction to users.

When it comes to content recommendation, a concept we must implement is "dynamic execution".

In recommendation modules such as popular areas and theme selections, the ranking of each tourist route is not fixed. We must base it on data feedback: for example, the sales of a certain tourist route are very impressive, but its ranking is not very high, while the tourist routes with higher rankings do not bring sales corresponding to their position. At this time, it is necessary for us to try to swap the positions of the two to see if the effect will be better.

The concept of "dynamic execution" should exist in all aspects of our operations, including event planning and channel promotion . After the event officially starts, we need to monitor its progress in real time. If the initial results of the event are better than our expectations, it is necessary to consider whether to increase the investment in this event. If the progress of the event is far below our expectations, we may need to re-evaluate the results of the event. If the expected results are not optimistic, it is necessary to reduce investment and retain resources for the next event.

3.2 Data Operation

The “theme tour” channel can actually be defined as an e-commerce product. However, the products it sells are different from the clothes, home furnishings, and digital products on Taobao and JD.com . Instead, it sells travel products. For this type of product, the ultimate operating goal must not be separated from GMV. There are two main factors that affect GMV: one is the number of buyers, and the other is the average order value.

As a channel operator, the factor we can influence is mainly the number of purchasers. The formula for determining the number of purchasers is simple:

Number of buyers = traffic * conversion rate

Based on this formula, the focus of our operations is actually to increase traffic volume and improve conversion rates. Let’s first look at how to improve our conversion rate.

3.2.1 Improve conversion rate

When it comes to improving conversion rates, our basic idea is actually to identify problems and take targeted measures. That is to say, find out the reasons for the low conversion rate and make targeted adjustments. In the process of discovering the causes, we have to use the funnel model.

E-commerce shopping process funnel model (picture borrowed from "Ocean's Laughter")

This e-commerce shopping funnel model is also applicable to the operation of our "theme tour" channel. In terms of methods to improve conversion rate, we mainly use the comparison method, which includes external comparison and internal comparison.

External comparison: Compare with competitors. Even in the same link, the conversion rates of various products are definitely different. At this time, we need to have enough understanding of competitors, and understand the conversion rates of various competitors through friends in the industry or some industry analysis reports. If their conversion rates are much higher than ours, we need to study their product positioning settings and copywriting styles carefully, learn from their strengths and weaknesses, and improve our own conversion rates.

Internal comparison: Compare all aspects of your own product. It can be the vertical time dimension or the horizontal user dimension.

1) Vertical:

• In terms of time, the main comparison is made on a month-on-month basis. For example, through real-time data monitoring, we find that the conversion rate of a certain link today is much lower than yesterday. At this time, we need to check whether there is a bug in the system or it is caused by the removal of a certain activity yesterday;
• From the process perspective: Taking the above picture as an example, the click-through rate and visit conversion rate are both relatively normal values, such as 30%, but the order conversion rate has dropped to 1%. At this time, we need to conduct special research on this link to see if there is a problem with the payment system, which prevents some users from making successful payments.

2) Horizontal:

We can mainly make a comparison through user portraits . For example, although they enter the same interface, the conversion rate of Type A users is higher than that of Type B users. At this time, we can analyze Category A and Category B users to see where their differences lie, and ultimately smooth out these differences through operational means.

For example, it is possible that Type A users are attracted through travel forums, while Type B users are attracted through mother and baby communities. Then, we can increase the investment in promotional resources for travel forums and reduce investment in maternal and child communities, thereby improving ROI.

3.2.2 Increase flow

The increase in traffic mainly depends on channel exposure, especially before we launch an activity, we need to detonate multiple channels to prepare for the subsequent activity effects.

Generally speaking, the commonly used channels for operation can be divided into the following three types:

• Internal channels: banners of “theme tour channels” and self-media
• Cooperation channels: Ctrip’s other brother products: for example, other travel channels
• External channels: cooperative media, products matching other user groups

For internal channels and cooperative channels, since they are basically Ctrip’s existing users, it is difficult to see explosive growth in traffic. For this, we may need to rely more on external channels for exposure through joint activities. In the selection of external channels, generally speaking, we need to follow three principles:

1. If resources can be exchanged, try not to pay for cooperation. After all, the budget for each activity is limited, so you should use the best resources where they are needed most.
2. When choosing products for joint activities, make sure they match in terms of user groups. Generally speaking, you can choose products on the same supply and demand chain. For example, by cooperating with tourism communities and travel products, matching user groups can often bring relatively impressive conversion rates.
3. Do a good job of channel data monitoring. You can have long-term cooperation with good channels, and you only need to experience bad channels once.

In addition, there is another point that we must pay attention to. That is, after each activity, we must review it through the PDCA model so that we can make corrections if there are any mistakes in the next activity.

The above is the author’s interpretation of channel operation methods and strategies from the two dimensions of content operation and data operation. In summary, in our daily operations we need to: present important information to users and help them make choices based on their pain points and needs; select high-quality channels to increase the exposure of activities and gain traffic; and based on the funnel model, improve user conversion rates through data analysis and be responsible for the final GMV.

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising

This article was compiled and published by @糖愫尔 (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting! Site Map