The hottest topic among workers right now is: Should we go home or play during the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holidays?

According to the "Mid-Autumn HE Tuber Festival and National Day Tourism Forecast Report" released by Ctrip, on November 1 this year, domestic inter-provincial travel orders accounted for 73%, a year-on-year increase of 10%; outbound travel orders increased nearly 20 times year-on-year, and the entire wine and travel market showed a thriving recovery. scene.

But this year’s Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holidays are no longer an exclusive “carnival” for OTA platforms (Online Travel Agency, translated as “Online Travel Agency” in Chinese).

In Kuaishou, a batch of officially subsidized National Day local tour group purchase products are on sale, such as 2 tickets to the Forbidden City plus a one-night stay at a hotel in Dongdan. The original price is 1,980 yuan. The Kuaishou platform subsidizes 559 yuan, and the actual price is 1,421 yuan.

On Douyin, the platform has launched a special page for the National Day Food, Drinks and Fun Festival, and a number of group purchase products from scenic spots and hotels are promoted at subsidized prices. Taking the Hong Kong Disneyland package as an example, the group purchase provides two two-day adult tickets to Disneyland, one two-day child ticket, and one night's accommodation in an official Disney hotel. The group purchase price has been reduced from 8,998 yuan to 2,999 yuan. So far, more than 1,000 copies of the group purchase have been sold.

The above is just a microcosm of the fierce battle between old and new platforms in the current wine and travel market. Content platforms are competing for the wine and travel cake of OTA platforms. According to this development momentum, short video platforms will sooner or later enter the ticketing market and compete with OTAs for air tickets and high-speed rail tickets during peak periods.

So, who is the main attacker in this war?

Since the beginning of this year, content platforms, represented by Douyin, are showing off their trade platforms in the tourism market.

In July this year, Douyin upgraded its hotel and tourism business to a first-level department, parallel to its in-store catering and in-store comprehensive businesses. Xiang Wentian, the person in charge of the wine and tourism segment, reports directly to Zhu Shiyu, president of Douyin Life Services. In the same month, Chengdu Haikuo Sky Travel Agency Co., Ltd., which was ultimately controlled by Douyin, was established. This means that Douyin may test a series of self-operated tourism products, including independently designing tourism products, receiving tourists and providing offline services.

Kuaishou and Xiaohongshu are also competing for the share of the wine and travel market. In the second quarter of this year, Kuaishou expanded its local lifestyle business to include hotels, wine and travel, tickets and other fields. As of September 14 this year, Kuaishou and Tongcheng reached a cooperation. Cheng provides Kuaishou with tickets and other products for local scenic spots.

Xiaohongshu has focused its breakthrough on emerging travel methods represented by camping. Since last year, Xiaohongshu has begun to build self-operated camping bases, established travel companies and launched self-operated stores for outdoor products. The series strives to become the standard setter and dominant player on the camping circuit.

From exporting traffic to competing for traffic, the relationship between content platforms and OTA platforms is undergoing subtle changes.

In the 1.0 stage, the content platform is the traffic entrance of the OTA platform.

As early as 2018, Douyin cooperated with Ctrip to create a short video challenge. Meituan and Tongcheng also used Douyin to divert traffic for their own travel products. By setting up embedded mini programs in Douyin, Douyin became an OTA platform. Provide value for user traffic. This attribute reached its peak during the epidemic. In March 2020, Liang Jianzhang, chairman of the board of directors of Ctrip, completed his first "Super BOSS Live Broadcast Day" on Douyin and attracted 510,000 viewers. The following month, Ctrip Liang Jianzhang and Qunar CEO Chen Gang promoted travel products in the Kuaishou live broadcast room. Among them, Chen Gang's first live broadcast achieved a transaction volume of 16.05 million.

At this stage, content platforms rely on their influence on C-end users to gain the qualifications to cooperate with OTAs. Merchants and products are still in the hands of OTA platforms, and content platforms appear more as marketing solution providers, earning advertising fees from the publicity needs of OTA platforms.

In the 2.0 era, content platforms began to invade OTA’s home base.

2020 is a turning point in the relationship between the two parties. Under the impact of the epidemic, the wine and travel industry has fallen into multiple crises in passenger flow and cash flow, and the demand for relief by leveraging the traffic advantages of short video platforms has grown rapidly. At this stage, Douyin provides ticket and hotel booking functions on the personal homepages of wine and travel merchants, and produces Douyin’s own travel lists, accommodation lists and other products. In 2021, Douyin briefly launched the mini program "Mangosteen Travel" within the product to sell group buying products provided by Douyin store merchants.

During this period, hotels, attractions and other wine and tourism companies quickly poured into Douyin. According to Douyin’s disclosure, as of the end of March 2023, Douyin’s hotel accommodation, business travel ticketing agency and tourist attraction account numbers have achieved year-on-year growth of 61.5%, 46.0% and 35.5% respectively.

For example, on May 30 this year, Douyin released the calendar room function to further strengthen Douyin’s OTA attributes. In the past, consumers who bought hotel group-buying products on Douyin could write off the products at any time, but the actual write-off was inconvenient as it depended on whether the hotel had remaining rooms. The biggest feature of the calendar room is that it is booked immediately after purchase. Like Meituan, Tongcheng, and Ctrip, "tickets are issued on the spot" and the itinerary is locked.

This makes Douyin closer in function to traditional OTA platforms. For upstream hotels, Douyin has begun to directly affect merchant inventory and has become an emerging channel that must be paid attention to; for downstream consumers, calendar rooms have greatly shortened the group purchase write-off cycle and optimized the consumer experience; for Douyin, the platform The identity has changed from marketer to distributor, the income attribute has shifted from advertising to commission, and the platform has begun to have a deeper impact on the business strategy of merchants.