A few days after the closing of the Summit Forum, the “Free Travel” section business took the lead in launching on Taobao Qunar.
Independent travel is relatively simple. The organizational work required by Makino Technology and Taobao is relatively easy. After the resource integration is completed, you can go online directly. However, group travel is much more troublesome. Just the recruitment and training of the tour guide team will take a while. .
Moreover, group tours generally have a larger number of people, and resource coordination is more troublesome than independent travel, so at least a month of preparation is needed.
However, free travel can help Taobao Qunar start its business, so Li Mu put a lot of effort into promoting Taobao Qunar as soon as he started.
YY and Weibo Twitter began to promote Taobao free travel ads in first-tier cities in China and several major cities in California.
Of course, Li Mu's focus is to lure Americans to come to China, not to send Chinese people to the United States.
This is not because he is petty, but because he has fully calculated the consumption levels and tourism costs of the two countries and found that no matter how cheap it is to go to the United States, it is still very luxurious for the Chinese people at this stage;
However, the cost of traveling to China is unimaginably low for most Americans.
Netizens in California discovered that YY and Weibo Twitter began to promote a travel advertisement called "Travel to China" to them. The advertisement said that for only $1,599, you can fly to the other side of the earth in six days. In five nights, we will travel to China, an ancient civilization with a history of 5,000 years.
$1599? Users in the United States could hardly believe it.
These days, a trip to Europe costs more than that, right
Many people subconsciously click on the promotion link, and the page jumps directly to the English version of Taobao Qunar, and it is directly the details page of the independent travel service.
There are more than ten levels to choose from when traveling from California to China, with the lowest level being US$1,599 per person.
However, even the lowest gear is already very exciting.
Because it contains:
1. Direct flights from San Francisco or Los Angeles to Yanjing, China;
2. Accommodation for three consecutive nights in a four-star hotel in Yanjing (including breakfast);
3. Car use for the whole journey in Yanjing, simple car translation service;
4. Tickets for Yanjing Great Wall, Forbidden City, Summer Palace, Old Summer Palace and other tourist attractions;
5. Direct air tickets from Yanjing to Shanghai;
6. Accommodation in a four-star hotel in Shanghai for two consecutive nights (breakfast included);
7. Full car use in Shanghai and simple car translation services;
8. Tickets for multiple tourist attractions in Shanghai;
9. Direct flights from Shanghai to San Francisco or Los Angeles;
If the user customizes such an itinerary, it will cost at least US$1,300 for three air tickets, at least US$300 for five nights of accommodation, at least US$200 for ticket services, US$300 for six-day car service, and US$200 for six-day car and translation service. U.S. dollars, combined, would cost at least $2,300.
And the most important thing is that the 2,300 US dollars is very tiring to spend, because all the links need to be done personally, looking for communication bit by bit, and even bearing the cost of trial and error.
But on Taobao Qunar, purchasing this full set of services only costs US$1,599, which is US$700 cheaper, which is equivalent to a 62% discount.
Moreover, Taobao Qunar will help users coordinate everything. From the moment tourists land, they will be greeted at the airport by drivers and translators, and until they leave Shanghai, they will also be sent to the airport by local drivers and translators.
Airlines and hotels have negotiated discounted prices with Makino Technology. Li Mu’s acquisition cost is naturally much lower than the market price. The combined cost of other agencies is about US$1,250, but Li Mu’s actual cost is about Around $1,000;
As for the car service, he cooperates with the local regular taxi company, and the taxi company assigns a taxi to follow the entire journey. The agreed price is 300 yuan per day, 1,800 yuan for six days, which is equivalent to about 220 yuan in US dollars.
On-board translation service, Li Mu noted on the details page that it is only a simple English translation, not the kind of high-end, expert translation that can come at any time. For tourists, college students who have passed CET-4 in a regular university can actually do it. To meet their translation needs, Li Mu directly cooperates with 3321. On 3321, students who have passed CET-4 are assigned orders, allowing them to consider whether to accept the order based on their own situation and time schedule. If they accept the order, they will be paid every day. Salary is RMB 200.
At present, the average monthly salary per person is only more than 1,000 yuan. If a college student works part-time as a car translator, this income is already considered very high.
This part, converted into US dollars, is about 140 yuan.
For tourist attraction ticket services, Li Mu directly obtained a discount on the group price from the state-owned tourism company. All tickets for several major attractions were included, and the cost price was only US$50.
In this way, the converted direct cost is 1000+220+140+50=1410 US dollars.
In addition, Taobao Qunar's platform development, operation, promotion costs, coordination and arrangement for each user and other labor costs add up to about US$100, so combined, we give a price of US$1,599. There is about 90 US dollars in profit margin, but Li Mu is not going to earn this money, but is going to take it out and return it to users in other forms.
If the user has more than one person and travels in even numbers, the price per person can be reduced by US$100, and the price reaches US$1,499 per person. Of course, this is on the premise that two people live in the same room for the whole trip.
This price is extremely cheap for the United States, where labor costs and service costs are extremely high.
In the United States, it costs hundreds of dollars to hire a car for a day, and one to two hundred dollars a day to hire a bad translator. The cost of the car and translator alone adds up to more than $2,000 for six days.
But in the hands of China and Li Mu, the cost can be low enough.
If you are a couple traveling to China together, six days and five nights in Yanjing and Shanghai will only cost you US$2,998 in total...
This price is incredibly cheap for people in California!
Not only that!
Makino Technology also provides a very awesome subsidy activity.
If a user purchases a travel product from Taobao Qunar and successfully completes the trip, he or she will receive a $100 reward by compiling travel experiences and photos that meet the requirements.
In other words, if two people spend 2,998 US dollars to go to China for six days and five nights, and each of them writes a travelogue after they come back, they can also get a reward of 200 US dollars from Makino Technology. After all, they have gone out to play a lot. , it only cost $2,798.
It's a steal.
As a result, on the day the event went online, more than 4,000 free travel packages of different levels were sold throughout California.
Among the more than 4,000 people, about one-third had valid Chinese visas, and the remaining two-thirds did not have visas. However, they were afraid of missing this good opportunity, so they purchased the service as soon as possible. After all, Taobao went to We promise that if the visa issuance fails, a full refund will be given.
What Li Mu didn't expect was that more than 2,000 copies of the California independent travel project launched in China's four first-tier cities of Yanjing, Shanghai, Yangcheng and Shenzhen had been sold.
The lowest-end package of Taobao Qunar’s California Free Travel is similar to the 1599 package of China Free Travel. It also flies directly from a city in China to Los Angeles, then from Los Angeles to San Francisco, and finally returns to China from San Francisco.
There are also six days and five nights in between. However, because the service cost in the United States is too high, the full car service and translation service are not required. After all, compulsory education in China will all learn some English. Those who can go abroad, the most basic There is no problem communicating in English, so there is no in-car translator as standard here.
If users traveling to the United States for free travel need to charter a car or hire a translator, Taobao Qunar will give priority to contacting Chinese car dealerships and Chinese overseas students to provide services. This move can also bring about a slight improvement in the income of some Chinese in California.
This package without a chartered car or translator includes round-trip direct flights, five nights in a four-star hotel including breakfast, and tickets to famous attractions. After full cost accounting, it is equivalent to RMB 8,600 per person.
In this era, 8,600 yuan is enough to buy a daily round-trip direct flight ticket including tax, so the price/performance ratio is still very high.
However, if the consumer's economic level is high enough, the top space of the independent travel package is also large enough. For example, if the consumer chooses luxury first class, the round-trip air ticket alone will cost more than 70,000 yuan. If he chooses a five-star hotel, how much will the price be? Double growth.
The price of free travel in China ranges from US$1,599 per person, to a maximum of US$38,888 per person, while in the United States, the price of free travel ranges from RMB 8,600 per person, to a maximum of RMB 188,000 per person. However, judging from the sales situation, users who purchase the lowest tier account for at least More than half.
It seems that cost-effectiveness is still what users care about most.
…
On the second day of online sales, more than 7,000 American users purchased the package, and this number is still growing.
After Taobao Qunar went on sale, users with visas and time have basically begun to prepare for their recent travels.
According to statistics, there are more than 800 users who have decided to travel from California to China in the next week alone.
The number of Chinese users purchasing packages has also exceeded the 5,000 mark, and more than 600 people are expected to depart from the three cities of Yanjing, Shanghai and Yangcheng in the next week to start their own independent travel in the United States.
The airline's route occupancy rate has increased significantly, and this is only the initial stage of Taobao Qunar's efforts. As Li Mu said when he presented the cake to Sino-US travel companies, as the subsequent promotion spreads across China and the United States, there will definitely be A large number of users from other cities and other states choose to start from the three first-tier cities in Yanjing, or choose to start from the two big cities in California to participate in the highly cost-effective Taobao Qunar. As a result, they have always been dissatisfied. It is very likely that the routes will be fully loaded soon.
Schwarzenegger was so excited that he heard the news that at least 600 tourists would travel to California in the coming week.
Don't underestimate the number of more than 600. This is equivalent to Li Mu sending two charter tour groups to California every week. After all, the full load capacity of a wide-body passenger plane is only more than 300 people.
If this development continues, I believe that the number of 10,000 Chinese tourists per week will soon be reached!
(End of chapter)