90% Chinese Brand Hotels Develop New Competitive Strategies Through Small Program Drainage.

As a low margin industry, hotel brands are looking for traffic dividends from social applications.

"In China, 90% of hotel brands are connected to WeChat's small program or public subscription, and each brand has its own way of selling WeChat direct sales." Recently, in the WeChat open class held in Shanghai, Berrygao, WeChat's hotel industry team, told the twenty-first Century economic news reporter that this is equivalent to letting hotels directly bypass middlemen, directly communicating with consumers, and not having any connection after the booking is completed.

At the same time, with the full promotion of WeChat and flying pigs in the "credit exemption", some small and medium-sized hotels, such as Hanting and home, no longer receive a deposit. Conway, vice president of the Asian market, told reporters in an interview with the economic news reporters in twenty-first Century that at present, the WeChat small program accounted for the first place in the central channel orders of the Asian market. As of November 11, 2019, the total number of registered users exceeded 400 thousand. "WeChat platform has brought us into touch with many non core users. They used to be between 28 and 35 years old, but WeChat has brought more and more 95 users."

All along, the high cost of obtaining customers, the slow response of service and the rising cost of manpower have become the pain points of Tradition Hotel and tourism industry. With the help of social networking platform, booking, voucher and membership card become the most direct and cost saving application of the hotel. However, when looking for new sources of traffic, the hotel industry itself still needs to break through the competition of pluralism and high threshold.

WeChat has become an important channel for hotel industry to book rooms. - Song Wenhui diagram

Low cost drainage

WeChat has become an important channel for hotel industry to book rooms. In terms of intelligent direct selling in the hotel industry, it covers six major tools, including small program reservation, WeChat payment, brush payment, search optimization, etc. in terms of smart services, WeChat payment provides the way to brush, live, sweep, live and live.

In addition, in the tourism industry, WeChat payment also launched a scan code purchase, smart scenic spot business, destination tourism and other small programs. Since 2015, overseas Chinese town has also launched the WeChat garden service system, public number, face lockers and scenic spots through code, small program tickets, and so on, to promote the volume of tourists. In October this year, WeChat reached a partnership with Wanda hotels and resorts, which is the first application of payment in the hotel industry.

It is reported that the two sides have reformed the service and the digital marketing capabilities of hotels and resorts based on WeChat's ability to pay products, thus enhancing the operating efficiency of Wanda hotels and resorts and bringing about sales growth. This cooperation has begun to produce effects.

Wang Xin, general manager of Wanda Hotel and resort brand, member center, Wanda hotels and resorts WeChat small program bookings grew by more than 110%. In 2019 double 11 marketing activities, WeChat's total sales volume exceeded 8 million, up 370% over 2018. "Small program is the lowest cost in all of our channels, and the technical cost of investment is sustainable. The cost of our investment in other platforms is difficult to translate into our own orders or sales."

At present, the function of WeChat applet is increasingly replacing its own APP for hotels, especially high-end hotel brands. Conway further said that the difference between the small program and other platforms is that "the user purpose of the small program is very strong, and the actual conversion rate is very high. It is not like walking around on some OTA (online tourism) platforms. As far as the booking business is concerned, the focus of our operation will be on this."

Multi channel complementarity

For the transformation brought by WeChat direct sales, WeChat team made a calculation: laying the front scan code for Jinjiang We Hotel, for example, there are 100 thousand rooms per day through a small program, of which 60 thousand are walkin guests through the scan code, 40 thousand from the guests second times to enter the small program independently. After analysis, we found that the use of small programs brought about 25% of the repeat purchase rate, while the walkin customers who did not use the small program to repeat the purchase rate was about 10%.

Small programs have also become the standard of BAT, WeChat small programs focus on games and e-commerce transactions, Alipay small programs attach importance to life services, Baidu small programs are mainly distributed with mobile video and life services. Byte jumps are also announced on the small video of the volcano online small program. Just in the past November, InterContinental Hotel group announced that its guest loyalty award scheme IHG excellent Yue on-line Alipay small program became the first international hotel group to enter Alipay's small program platform. At the same time, InterContinental Hotel group has launched the corresponding membership matching and upgrading plan for all level members of Alipay.

According to the data released by the third party data analysis institution QuestMobile in October, 23.3% of the top 30 of the top 30 subscribers in the monthly activity were tourism services, ranking the first among all the typical application industries, and second of travel services and life services (20%).

For the entire hotel and tourism industry, low cost drainage is important, but the offline market can not be ignored.

In an interview with the twenty-first Century economic report reporter, Zhang Dandan, director of Huacheng group's orange tourism management, said that WeChat's garden system and traditional services are complementary. Take the tour guide as an example, you may go to WeChat to see some routes and strategies. If you want to see the specific project information, most tourists will choose the tour guide map at the park site. As a scenic spot, it will give visitors a choice.

She also revealed that at present, if the number of people using WeChat gardens alone is calculated, about 30% of the people will choose online services. For Wanda Group, multi channel parallel is also very necessary. Wang Xin said frankly, OTA is also one of the channels. It will find a balance between direct selling and distribution. At the moment, there is still much room for direct selling, and it is more convenient to establish its own membership system.

Expand diversification

From diversion and reservation to member operation, the hotel industry is also actively exploring cross-border activities to expand more revenue channels.

"WeChat is more of a platform to connect real-time interaction between B terminal merchants and C end users, not the order platform, but after the completion of the booking action, the relationship between the two sides is over." WeChat team responsible person explained to the twenty-first Century economic news reporter, after booking, WeChat can match and meet the needs of the hotel side and the guest in real time, which is different from the connection between OTA and the hotel.

This is also the biggest difference between small program and OTA ecosystem. Conway believes that WeChat provides an overall service closed loop, "if the guests initiate complaints in OTA, we can not immediately get in touch with him, with the help of WeChat ecosystem can better understand the problems and remedies."

The mode of service is becoming more and more perfect. Take Yunnan Province as an example, under the traditional tourism mode, tourist complaints still need to call the complaint hotline number. However, due to the large number of access points and the lengthy complaints process, the complaint has not formed a mechanism, which has seriously affected the user experience. After building a mobile phone tour to Yunnan, the tourism system was quickly reformed, so that complaints could be effectively touched to the relevant enterprises in a short time.

Li Hao, a professor at Yunnan University, said in an interview with the twenty-first Century economic report reporter that traditional business processes still cannot be done on top of the existing technology. "Through technology empowerment, we have completed the business process reengineering of the tourism industry, including government, enterprises, tourists and so on."

Some subtle changes also directly enhance the user experience and indirectly change the industry. Conway called this trend "long-term doctrine". What are the long-term needs of travelers? According to Maslow's needs, structural analysis can be summarized as safety, health, quality sleep, friendliness and community.

"Ya Duo" every hotel has a bamboo residence, which has an average of 2000 books for free loan. To 430 hotels to calculate, that is, 860 thousand books, if the average price of 25 yuan to calculate, it needs about 20000000 yuan investment, there is no flat effect, it does not have a business model. Conway disclosed that by the end of November this year, more than 960 thousand awards were received through this service.

In the hotel industry, there is still a lot of services available outside the social networking platform, such as catering, entertainment and other non residential services. It can enhance hotel reservation, customer experience and user experience, and expand diversified revenue sources.