Online travel platform Ctrip immediately removed the hotel after the Xuexiang incident, saying it has a “zero tolerance” policy for fraud and other behaviors that harm consumers. However, some netizens are still not convinced. Some netizens believe that Ctrip’s action is “wise after the event”, because it failed to provide consumers with a safe and comfortable parent-child trip in advance, and no measures after the event can make up for the harm to consumers. In fact, in the xuexiang incident, Ctrip’s attitude to solve the problem is good, but online parent-child travel market hidden criticism too much.
Parent-child swim fire, drew wolves to eat
Year after year, as more and more young people become parents, the concept of “take your baby and travel” has become the norm. In recent years, parent-child travel is particularly prominent in the way of outbound travel. According to the 2015 China Online parent-child Travel Market Research Report, the transaction scale of China’s parent-child travel market reached 6.51 billion yuan in 2014, and is expected to reach nearly 50 billion yuan in 2018. In addition, ctrip also released a report showing that during the 2017 National Day holiday, family tourists are expected to account for 32% of the total number of tourists, an increase of more than 50% compared with the 2016 National Day holiday.
The huge blue ocean market has attracted a group of tourism brands such as tongcheng Tourism, Donkey Mama and Ctrip to enter the field of parent-child tourism. For example, Tongcheng Tourism established the community brand of “Tongcheng Good Mother”; Donkey mother tourism network is the main push “donkey yue parent-child”; Industry giant Ctrip also accelerated the pace to enter the parent-child tour of the battle, released parent-child tour brand – become parent-child…… Major tourism platforms began to make full efforts in the parent-child tourism market.
Among them, after ctrip established the “Zhen Parent-child” brand, it not only created the “hotel + scenic spots” parent-child package products, but also launched the “cruise parent-child summer camp” project. Similarly, “donkey yue parent-child” launch many hot springs around the theme park and build parent-child swimming “hotel +” products, such as: 1 night hangzhou songcheng eternal love theme “hotel (west lake) + swim songcheng + view emotion through the ages”, “stay 1 night in changzhou universal dinosaur town metropark international hotel + play China dinosaur park” and so on.
In the major online tourism platforms vigorously enter the “parent-child” market, launched a variety of customized services, attracted a large number of parent-child families. It is reported that Ctrip’s cruise project is extremely hot, the reservation of the relevant route increased by 600%. In addition, “Donkey Yue parent-child” under a number of parent-child travel products have also entered the annual best-selling list of peripheral travel top 10. However, many users who have experienced online parent-child travel have complained about the publicity and services of online travel platforms.
Recently, there are a lot of netizens on the network exposure of online parent-child travel experience. According to a netizen surnamed Li, she booked ctrip royal Caribbean International cruise for 6 days and 5 nights, but found that the “standard family suite room for 5” she booked was only a single bed made into a double bed, which was not consistent with the promotion of family tour products. Similarly, @FixEffect described how the online parent-child tour she booked didn’t live up to the hype. During the journey, there are unreasonable schedule design, unhealthy meals, poor accommodation conditions, tour guides, drivers and other poor services.
It can be seen that although the customized parent-child tour launched by various platforms is very attractive to consumers, the hotel business and services of many platforms obviously cannot meet the requirements of consumers, and there are serious false information and other situations. However, the quality of parent-child travel services provided by major parent-child travel platforms is not guaranteed, which not only brings serious damage to families who travel with their children, but also tarnies their own brand reputation.
Why online parent-child travel complaints frequent cases?
In the context of the increasing personalized needs of consumers, more and more parent-child families are not satisfied with a single scenic spot for sightseeing, and they hope to add more parent-child interaction links in the process of tourism. The Research Report on The Operation Situation and Investment Strategy of China’s Parent-child Tourism Industry 2016-2021 also points out that the proportion of “parent-child tourism” trips, mainly for families of three, has exceeded 70%, and the proportion has exceeded 20% by the end of 2016. The market transaction scale and online penetration rate of “parent-child tourism” will also continue to improve.
In fact, online parent-child tourism market data continues to climb, seemingly smooth, but in fact, complaints. According to the 315 complaints platform of People’s Daily Online, 113 effective complaints were received in February 2017, up 68.7% from the previous month. Among online travel companies, Ctrip and Qunar received the most complaints, each accounting for 25.4 percent of the total. Thus, online parent-child swim hot behind the pain point is still difficult to hide…
First of all, the theme, route and mode of parent-child tourism are basically the same, but the routine is consistent and lacks innovation. From the perspective of product innovation, most of the online tourism platforms can not get around the hotel theme, amusement park theme, seaside theme, children’S IP theme and other old product themes, and most of the products are still around the scenic spots of the airport + wine + tickets. In addition, the surrounding one-day camp and summer camp products generally lack innovation. For example, after Lvmama launched summer camp and “one-day camp” and other products, Ctrip also launched “cruise parent-child summer camp”.
Secondly, the so-called family activities are just sightseeing, and high-quality family travel products are extremely lacking. The ultimate purpose of parent-child travel is to achieve the purpose of parent-child, so paying attention to parent-child relationship and experience is the basic condition of “parent-child travel” project. However, some tourism products on the online tourism platform are simply changed into the current parent-child tour, which is actually lack of parent-child interaction. The nameless “family tour” not only dampened consumers’ consumption impulse and enthusiasm for family tour, but also reduced consumers’ satisfaction and intention to order again.
In addition, compared with ordinary tourism, parent-child tourism has higher requirements for service. As is known to all, the service object of “parent-child tour” is a family group with children and the elderly. For the elderly and children who need special services, more strict service standards should be implemented, but the country has not issued the corresponding “parent-child tour” standards. At present, online parent-child tourism platforms more rely on their own understanding of the positioning of parent-child tourism to formulate “parent-child tourism” service standards, which has resulted in domestic parent-child tourism services of good and bad. Due to the lack of management standards in the industry market, it is difficult for consumers to protect their rights and interests during the journey.
Finally, online parent-child tourism platforms are also confronted with operational problems of product innovation. Although people’s consumption level is gradually improving with the upgrading of consumption, as parents, they also pay much attention to the cost performance of the products when choosing parent-child travel products. The homogenized parent-child tourism market, once the pursuit of scale, product quality will be greatly reduced, and if the pursuit of high quality, there will be no advantage in the price. How to create cost-effective parent-child travel projects, online tourism platforms are facing difficulties.
In general, behind the prosperity of online parent-child travel market, there are many pain points that need to be solved. On the one hand, parent-child tourism projects have poor travel experience and inadequate parent-child services, which make many consumers disappointed. On the other hand, it is nothing new that parent-child tourism products have poor innovation ability and are seriously criticized for their homogeneity, and the lack of parent-child elements is also a big problem faced by existing tourism products.
Parent-child travel upgrade service is the key to victory
According to the 2017 White Paper on Donkey Mother parent-child Tourism, the parent-child tourism market has experienced explosive growth in recent years. It is estimated that by the end of 2018, China’s parent-child users will reach 286 million, and the market size will reach 50 billion. At the same time, under the background of consumption upgrading, the IP, educational and technological development of parent-child projects have also become the direction of expanding parent-child products, and the market prospect of parent-child tourism is promising.
It can be seen from the current situation of online parent-child travel complaints, the domestic parent-child travel market still has a long way to go. In the context of frequent complaints from users, how can online travel platforms put things right and the online travel market flourish all the way?
Firstly, compared with other areas of the tourism industry, parent-child tourism has just started and has not formed a dominant market pattern. Moreover, the products and concepts of parent-child tourism are still in the basic stage, so it will attract more and more capitalists with a keen sense of smell to share the pie in the future. In this context, parent-child tourism platforms need to develop new parent-child models, marketing models and profit models to get a third acre of land for themselves.
Second, the seamless connection between mobile Internet and online travel greatly stimulates consumer demand and promotes the development of online travel booking market. In this context, parent-child travel has become popular rapidly, but the defect is that parent-child travel service has been unsatisfactory. Therefore, parent-child tourism platforms still need to upgrade their refined service standards, so as to develop new products with more experience and interaction to meet the diversified needs of the market. With the further standardization of online travel market, the introduction of new laws and regulations and the transformation and upgrading of industry competition.
On the whole, compared with other tourism markets, parent-child tourism puts forward higher requirements for enterprises’ operation and service capabilities. In addition, the domestic major tourism platforms launched parent-child tour brands and the continuous influx of entrepreneurs, the market presents a blooming pattern of a hundred flowers. This also means that the competition in the field of parent-child tourism will become more and more fierce in the future, and user complaints for online tourism platforms may be both a “driving force” and a “whip” to spur platforms to further optimize their services.
Liu Kuang, meditation on the Internet, wechat official account: Liukuang110