The future of the Russian online travel market
Currently, the tourism industry is at a crossroads. There are two types of players on the market that can “turn” the market movement - tour operators and aggregators. Their actions are directly opposed to the impact on the market - so the one who wins the battle for the customer will determine the movement of the market.
The forecast was written in the fall of 2014. And now we can draw some conclusions about its reasonableness. But it must be borne in mind that at that time there were no problems with Egypt and Turkey in Russia. As well as all the innovations related to personal data, thanks to which, apparently, AirBnB has already left Russia.
The main trends in the tourism industry in the world.
For Russia, the most important is:
')
The most anticipated key events in the foreseeable future in the world in terms of their impact on the tourism industry.
Tour operators (no matter how they would like to be flexible and dynamic) - because of the tendencies towards market enlargement, they have become clumsy and cannot follow the changes in the market. They are engaged in the formation of the online tourist market to a small extent, since they are strongly influenced by economic and political processes. The only way to keep the market is to reduce costs and maintain product prices below the minimum price at which the same product can assemble a travel agency or aggregator. In tour operator companies there are no strong groups that influence marketing, which allows to increase the value of the product except for the brand of the companies themselves. Therefore, tour operators can only work with the cost of the product.
Aggregators are the other side, which at the moment may affect the development of the market. The aggregator cannot radically influence the cost of the product in any way - only in the amount of its commission, and the aggregators have a small one. Therefore, the only way is to increase the cost of the product at the expense of various intangible services that do not require financial expenses for each unit of tourist product sold.
If tour operators win, then relatively stable prices are waiting for the customer, but the market stagnates. The travel agent market will continue. In any case, it will be a short period - 2-3 years, until the key events about which are written above occur and the client goes online, and online social networks. In this case, in 2-3 years a very sharp redistribution of the market will occur - Russian tour operators will not be ready for this. The market will not just go to the aggregators - the most powerful aggregators will also remain out of work. Absolutely new aggregators will come that will work through social networks as virtual advisors.
If aggregators win now, then the market is waiting for the fast departure of tour operators to the b2b market and the complete loss of influence on the client market. The travel agent market will quickly disappear, and those that remain will go to narrow specialized niches and VIP-tourism. The most promising aggregators at the moment will begin to vigorously develop the market - primarily to educate clients in the field of tourism, develop new search tools to customize it and adapt tools to work with large data arrays to develop an individual approach to the client. Integrators will invest significant resources (and they will have them, as there will be a massive outflow of customers online) in the development of customers. The growth in the number of customers who have no fear when paying online and increasing influence in social networks will be smooth. The transition to virtual work with clients will not be massive, but in any case it will happen - only 3-5 years later, because the online aggregators will make every effort to ensure that customers do not go to the social network.
It was a look at “tomorrow”. The trends described at the beginning of the text are already quickly mastered by Western players, where there is no strong layer of tour operators. None of the tour operators now have enough resources to become leaders in the above trends - so trying to do something yourself will be a waste of time and money. It is necessary to keep abreast of and quickly integrate with the most successful tools. But this will not allow those who are right now to remain in the lead.
To maintain leadership and reach a new level, you need to look at the “day after tomorrow”.
And the “day after tomorrow” we are waiting for the following trends related to the key events described at the beginning of the text:
From understanding these trends, we can formulate what needs to be done next.
As an example - the user went to the news site and looked through the travel-section about France, a week later, when he went to the aggregator's site, if he decided to call the call-center - he would be shown a number with a special extension number, after which the operator would see all impersonalized to the categories of travel-history of the client's adventures on the Internet and will be able to make an offer from which the client will not be able to refuse - starting with batch products and ending with products of individual tourism. Such a scenario can now be implemented.
And now we need to start developing tools to ensure the work of virtual advisers in social networks. This requires developments in the field of artificial intelligence and neural networks, as well as very tight integration with social networks. An example scenario might look like this - social networks are scanned to find potential customers. Using neural network algorithms, users are identified who are likely to be buying a tourist product at the moment. The special account of the virtual adviser is activated and performs actions that will persuade the user to enter into communication with him. In this case, the profile is dynamically changed in such a way as to please the user. After the user starts communicating with the bot, the bot classifies the needs and prepares the person for the purchase, demonstrating materials that are interesting to the user. With the help of special services, an expert employee monitors the bots and interferes with communication if the bot is not able to continue the conversation adequately - thereby teaching the bot. It is likely that one expert will be able to control hundreds of bots communicating with potential customers. In the future, such a bot can become a permanent user advisor and the user will contact him already for any questions related to tourism products. Or the bot will redirect the user to a real person in difficult cases. The next step will be the top of the bots, where a person can choose a virtual adviser and follow his advice for a long time.
These are, in my opinion, the prospects for the development of the tourism market - and its participants will inevitably have to build up competence in the areas of knowledge management, AI, neural networks and the impact on users through UI / UX.
In 2014, I was asked to describe the main criteria for a successful hotel booking service, and this is what was written then:
And now, in 2017, we can say that market leaders such as booking.com have implemented almost all of the items. I have now virtually no doubt that the aggregators will win this game in Russia because of the crisis and various political events. They are more flexible and do not have a huge tour operator back-end, hampering development.
And this trend is encouraging, because for ordinary buyers of tourism products new interesting options will constantly appear in online services that enhance the quality of the buying process.
All pleasant travel and new experiences.
PS Such a large percentage of abstentions. Comment on any of the abstentions - what other item is missing?
The forecast was written in the fall of 2014. And now we can draw some conclusions about its reasonableness. But it must be borne in mind that at that time there were no problems with Egypt and Turkey in Russia. As well as all the innovations related to personal data, thanks to which, apparently, AirBnB has already left Russia.
The main trends in the tourism industry in the world.
- Stabilization and consolidation of the air ticket sales market.
- Segmentation of standard offers of the hotel market.
- Intensive seizure by aggregators of individual rental housing markets.
- Accumulation of data on user interests and attempts to work with large amounts of data on user behavior to accurately determine the best offers for a particular user.
- Strengthening the impact of recommendation services.
- Integration of customer acquisition channels.
For Russia, the most important is:
')
- Increasing the number of users with a positive online shopping experience.
- Consolidation of the tour operator market.
The most anticipated key events in the foreseeable future in the world in terms of their impact on the tourism industry.
- The arrival of buyers to the market, which in 2004-2006 was 7 years old. These are children who received the first Internet experience after the emergence of social networks. In 2015-2016, they will be 18 and they will start buying tourist products.
- Standardization in the minds of buyers of the very notion of “tourist product”.
- The emergence of advanced visual presentation of information.
Tour operators (no matter how they would like to be flexible and dynamic) - because of the tendencies towards market enlargement, they have become clumsy and cannot follow the changes in the market. They are engaged in the formation of the online tourist market to a small extent, since they are strongly influenced by economic and political processes. The only way to keep the market is to reduce costs and maintain product prices below the minimum price at which the same product can assemble a travel agency or aggregator. In tour operator companies there are no strong groups that influence marketing, which allows to increase the value of the product except for the brand of the companies themselves. Therefore, tour operators can only work with the cost of the product.
Aggregators are the other side, which at the moment may affect the development of the market. The aggregator cannot radically influence the cost of the product in any way - only in the amount of its commission, and the aggregators have a small one. Therefore, the only way is to increase the cost of the product at the expense of various intangible services that do not require financial expenses for each unit of tourist product sold.
If tour operators win, then relatively stable prices are waiting for the customer, but the market stagnates. The travel agent market will continue. In any case, it will be a short period - 2-3 years, until the key events about which are written above occur and the client goes online, and online social networks. In this case, in 2-3 years a very sharp redistribution of the market will occur - Russian tour operators will not be ready for this. The market will not just go to the aggregators - the most powerful aggregators will also remain out of work. Absolutely new aggregators will come that will work through social networks as virtual advisors.
If aggregators win now, then the market is waiting for the fast departure of tour operators to the b2b market and the complete loss of influence on the client market. The travel agent market will quickly disappear, and those that remain will go to narrow specialized niches and VIP-tourism. The most promising aggregators at the moment will begin to vigorously develop the market - primarily to educate clients in the field of tourism, develop new search tools to customize it and adapt tools to work with large data arrays to develop an individual approach to the client. Integrators will invest significant resources (and they will have them, as there will be a massive outflow of customers online) in the development of customers. The growth in the number of customers who have no fear when paying online and increasing influence in social networks will be smooth. The transition to virtual work with clients will not be massive, but in any case it will happen - only 3-5 years later, because the online aggregators will make every effort to ensure that customers do not go to the social network.
It was a look at “tomorrow”. The trends described at the beginning of the text are already quickly mastered by Western players, where there is no strong layer of tour operators. None of the tour operators now have enough resources to become leaders in the above trends - so trying to do something yourself will be a waste of time and money. It is necessary to keep abreast of and quickly integrate with the most successful tools. But this will not allow those who are right now to remain in the lead.
To maintain leadership and reach a new level, you need to look at the “day after tomorrow”.
And the “day after tomorrow” we are waiting for the following trends related to the key events described at the beginning of the text:
- People will less and less be guided by the fact that they will be able to see something new for themselves. The emergence of fairly cheap tools for shooting high-quality video, the emergence of the Internet in hard-to-reach places and 3D-models will lead to the fact that customers no longer focus exclusively on the visual component when choosing a tourist product. Important will be getting new sensations (cooking, spa, extreme, training), participation in exciting events (event-tourism), tourism + work, tourism + study, tourism as a lifestyle.
- Customers will clearly know what the product and its quality criteria should consist of.
- Clients will receive information about the tourism product from social networks and they will not leave social networks. Everything will happen within networks.
From understanding these trends, we can formulate what needs to be done next.
- Actively integrate and gain expert experience in the use of all successful travel services currently being developed by the leading aggregators.
- Integration with major suppliers of tourist products.
- Integration with suppliers of products for individual tourism - operators of private housing, transfer companies, services for finding individual guides, excursion services.
- Very tight integration of advisory services such as tophotels, TripAdvizor.
- Integration with services that have gained experience working with big data - Yandex, Google.
- Integration with social networks, question-answer services, dating services, news services, popular messengers.
As an example - the user went to the news site and looked through the travel-section about France, a week later, when he went to the aggregator's site, if he decided to call the call-center - he would be shown a number with a special extension number, after which the operator would see all impersonalized to the categories of travel-history of the client's adventures on the Internet and will be able to make an offer from which the client will not be able to refuse - starting with batch products and ending with products of individual tourism. Such a scenario can now be implemented.
And now we need to start developing tools to ensure the work of virtual advisers in social networks. This requires developments in the field of artificial intelligence and neural networks, as well as very tight integration with social networks. An example scenario might look like this - social networks are scanned to find potential customers. Using neural network algorithms, users are identified who are likely to be buying a tourist product at the moment. The special account of the virtual adviser is activated and performs actions that will persuade the user to enter into communication with him. In this case, the profile is dynamically changed in such a way as to please the user. After the user starts communicating with the bot, the bot classifies the needs and prepares the person for the purchase, demonstrating materials that are interesting to the user. With the help of special services, an expert employee monitors the bots and interferes with communication if the bot is not able to continue the conversation adequately - thereby teaching the bot. It is likely that one expert will be able to control hundreds of bots communicating with potential customers. In the future, such a bot can become a permanent user advisor and the user will contact him already for any questions related to tourism products. Or the bot will redirect the user to a real person in difficult cases. The next step will be the top of the bots, where a person can choose a virtual adviser and follow his advice for a long time.
These are, in my opinion, the prospects for the development of the tourism market - and its participants will inevitably have to build up competence in the areas of knowledge management, AI, neural networks and the impact on users through UI / UX.
In 2014, I was asked to describe the main criteria for a successful hotel booking service, and this is what was written then:
- The search should move from criteria that are understandable to professionals of the tourist market to criteria of interest to the client - for example, “I want to find hotels on 1 line, with the best reviews about the staff, with a large territory of their own, fresh renovation, reviews about the hotel’s kitchen above average which were interested in young couples” get a description of the hotels, adapted to his request with an emphasis on the compliance of the requested parameters - that is, the individual issue of information.
- All user actions should be memorized, their profile should be built, and then sentences suitable for the profile created should be displayed, taking into account searches of other users with similar profiles.
- There should be a filter for filtering offers by hotels that will allow you to manage the display of prices and with a strong change in price (the appearance of very interesting offers for the price) - show only registered users with a graduation by status. This will encourage users to register and leave information about themselves accordingly.
- It is very desirable schedule of low prices, which can be built on information about the search for other users with the help of "smart" cache.
- It is also possible to make the service “Wait for a good price and inform me” and “Offer the hotel your price”.
- Segment hotels by categories understandable to ordinary people (possibly based on user reviews) - for example, “Excellent Tour”, “Best Beach”, “Great Food”, “Nightlife”, “Recommended by family tourists”.
And now, in 2017, we can say that market leaders such as booking.com have implemented almost all of the items. I have now virtually no doubt that the aggregators will win this game in Russia because of the crisis and various political events. They are more flexible and do not have a huge tour operator back-end, hampering development.
And this trend is encouraging, because for ordinary buyers of tourism products new interesting options will constantly appear in online services that enhance the quality of the buying process.
All pleasant travel and new experiences.
PS Such a large percentage of abstentions. Comment on any of the abstentions - what other item is missing?
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/326478/
All Articles