WiFi for outbound travel: a small but big business

When traveling, taking a few photos and posting them on Weibo to share the excitement of the journey has become a common thing for people.

However, when traveling abroad, many people have to stop such normal behavior, because the sky-high data traffic fees charged by operators make it difficult for many people to afford it.

In the lobby of the Hyatt Hotel in Washington, USA, a group of people were standing or sitting in the lobby. Most of them had mobile phones in their hands and looked down at the screen. It turned out that there was free WiFi in the lobby of the Hyatt Hotel, so many people from tour groups came here to use the internet.

In fact, these scenes are not isolated phenomena. As the opportunities for Chinese people to travel abroad increase, this group of people need WiFi at airports, in hotels, and even ask for free WiFi passwords before eating in restaurants.

Obviously, being able to access the Internet has become a very strong demand among outbound tourists. And behind this strong demand, a huge business opportunity for outbound travel WiFi has naturally emerged.

Strong demand: market size reaches billions of yuan

People who have traveled abroad have complained that it is inconvenient to access the Internet. Since domestic operators charge too high prices for international roaming traffic and also limit the traffic, many users can only choose to log on to free WiFi networks in hotels and coffee shops.

However, even in the United States and Europe where the communication industry is relatively developed, there is not free WiFi network everywhere. Based on this demand, a cheap and portable wireless WiFi demand came into being.

On Taobao, there are many merchants who provide mobile phone cards or rental WiFi equipment for the United States, Europe and other places at cheap rates. Users only need to pay more than 200 yuan to use unlimited traffic abroad for about 7 days.

This is very attractive to some business people who are traveling abroad or on short-term business trips, because if you activate mobile data roaming, the daily fee may reach about 70 yuan, and the available data is only about 100M.

The China Tourism Academy predicts that the number of domestic outbound tourists will reach 114 million this year, a year-on-year increase of 16%. If about 10% of people will pay for overseas Internet access and the fee is estimated at 150 yuan per person, the annual market size of overseas Internet access services will reach about 1.7 billion yuan.

Currently, surfing the Internet overseas has become a very strong demand, and in the future the entire market size will increase significantly with the increase in the number of outbound tourists.

Perhaps realizing the potential of this market, some companies have begun to seriously treat overseas WiFi as a big business.

Skyroam: Dream of turning roaming into a global business

In 2005, Liu Jing started his second business. This business project was to cooperate with BlackBerry to reduce the international long-distance call charges of large and medium-sized enterprises through VoIP technology. During the cooperation process, Liu Jing found that the pain point of users was not the long-distance call charges, but the roaming charges.

To solve the problem of high roaming fees, users have few options: either pay expensive roaming fees or join a local communication network. For users, due to different policies of operators in different regions, joining their networks in the short term may face a series of restrictions, and it is not easy to successfully obtain services.

How to solve the roaming problem became the key to Liu Jing's thinking. Finally, in 2008, he led his team to find a solution to the problem - using a "virtual SIM card" technology to achieve roaming around the world without changing the card.

In 2009, Liu Jing returned to China to start a new business and founded Skyroam, which received investments from Jinshajiang Venture Capital and Broadband Capital. In March this year, the "Roaming Treasure" developed by Skyroam was officially put into commercial use, and its service was positioned as outbound WiFi Internet access.

After users purchase a "Roaming Treasure" terminal (which can also be rented through cooperating travel agencies), they can connect to local communication networks in various parts of the world and access the Internet without worrying about any charges or traffic issues. The cost of Internet access per day is only more than 30 yuan, the cost of a cup of coffee.

In the Beijing office, Skyroam CEO Liu Jing told Sina Technology, "For the price of a cup of coffee a day, users can access the Internet anytime, anywhere. Skyroam hopes to make outbound travel WiFi simple and convenient."

Skyroam has established a platform and then cooperated with operators in various places to get them to join the platform. After users use the traffic, the operator will get a certain share. Of course, for some operators who do not accept the share, Skyroam will cooperate with them by purchasing traffic.

Skyroam's "Roaming Treasure" currently covers 45 countries and regions, and will cover more than 100 countries next year. Although this product currently mainly serves Chinese users, Skyroam plans to make outbound travel WiFi a global business, not just for Chinese consumers.

"Although we were established in China, our services are not limited to domestic customers. We will also provide roaming services to consumers in other countries." Liu Jing pointed out that the United States is the first market that Skyroam needs to gain access to, and that "Roaming Treasure" will soon be sold through channels such as Best Buy , Amazon , and airports.

In the domestic market, Skyroam currently mainly cooperates with travel service companies to promote its business, but in the second half of this year it will sell directly to individuals and launch different traffic packages.

Liu Jing revealed that Skyroam has served more than hundreds of thousands of people, and the traffic consumed by users has increased by more than 100% every month. Although Skyroam is not profitable yet, Liu Jing does not seem to be worried about its future potential. He told Sina Technology: "There are now 700 million people traveling abroad every year."

Global Roaming: The Entry Business of WiFi

Unlike Skyroam's "Roaming Treasure" which uses virtual card technology to achieve global roaming, Global Roaming's business model is more common. If you want to travel to a certain country, they still rent a WiFi device or mobile phone with a local phone card to the user.

The business model is a bit simple, but it is not an easy task to raise the Internet access fee to more than 40 yuan per day with unlimited traffic.

Sun Dehuo, vice president of Global Roaming, said that Global Roaming usually negotiates a large data traffic pool agreement with operators, and then redesigns the packages and sells them separately. However, the specific cooperation model will be different for different operators.

Global Roaming first started outbound mobile phone rentals at the Capital Airport, but later found that Internet access was the biggest need for many outbound tourists, compared to making phone calls. Therefore, it started wireless WiFi rental business in 2011. The company's wireless WiFi equipment is popular among outbound users at airports in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and other places.

Sun Dehuo told Sina Technology: Although the demand for wireless WiFi for traveling abroad is relatively rigid and growing rapidly, it is not easy to make money from it. Because there are many individual online stores on Taobao that provide similar services, the price competition is very fierce. "Global Roaming is actually making money from outlets and services." Sun Dehuo said.

In order to facilitate users to retrieve and return wireless WiFi devices, Global Roaming has continuously expanded its outlets at airports. At the same time, the company has also opened a 400 telephone number to provide 24-hour Chinese support services for users who rent WiFi. This, to a certain extent, has allowed Global Roaming to avoid the harassment of some price wars.

Currently, Global Roaming has achieved profitability through leasing wireless WiFi equipment and mobile phones, and selling mobile phone cards. However, as it foresees a trend of gradually lowering overseas communication charges, the company still hopes to generate revenue through other services.

Sun Dehuo revealed that Global Roaming is developing some travel magazine products, hoping to obtain new sources of profit through advertising investment or coupon cooperation, and by then the company's WiFi rental and other services may become an entry point.

In Sun Dehuo's view, leasing WiFi equipment and selling mobile phone cards will help the company acquire more accurate users, and advertising may be the company's new way of making profits.

Sun Dehuo said that all companies providing outbound WiFi services are paying attention to the consumption that may be generated after leaving the country, and the imagination space for this business opportunity will be greater. He believes that in the future, providing consumption services to outbound travelers at their destination will be a bigger business.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.