It is no longer news when a leading travel agency closes a large number of stores, is riddled with lawsuits, is heavily in debt, lays off employees in large numbers, and is even on the verge of death. All that is left of this humble traditional industry is the breath that cannot be swallowed, and the long wait...
01
Another leading travel agency is in trouble.
Shandong Jiahua Culture International Travel Service Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Shandong Jiahua Culture") encountered the "darkest moment" after struggling for two years.
This is one of the largest travel agencies in Shandong. According to Qilu Evening News, before the epidemic, it had more than 200 offline stores and more than 1,000 employees. In 2019, it received more than 1 million domestic and foreign tourists and generated revenue of more than 1 billion yuan.
Today, almost all stores of this travel agency in the province are closed. There is only one direct store out of more than 50 in Jinan. The number of employees has dropped sharply to 50, and the office space has shrunk from 3,000 square meters to 300 square meters.
Shandong Jiahua Culture is also entangled in lawsuits, involving 28 court announcements; 56 pieces of information were enforced by the court for failing to perform legal obligations on time; the amount of enforcement was more than 16.2 million; the company was listed by the court as a high consumer of restrictions companies, major shareholder Zhang Ming and many senior executives have become targets of consumption restrictions.
Well-known travel company, heavily in debt, involved in lawsuits, massive layoffs, store closures...
No matter from which angle you look at it, this is considered "breaking news". Unexpectedly, after the poor situation of Shandong Jiahua Culture was exposed, there were very few people discussing it and the circle was quiet.
It’s not that people don’t pay attention to this news, but that there have been too many such news in the past two years, and both inside and outside the industry have become somewhat numb, and they have lost interest in even eating melons. An inventory of Jinlijun found that since last year, there are many travel agency giants who have been exposed to operating difficulties or even bankruptcy due to the epidemic:
In October 2021, the financial situation of Heping International Travel, a long-established travel agency in Guangdong, was deteriorating day by day, and it was difficult to even barely maintain it, and it went bankrupt and liquidated;
8 2021 In June 2021, Guangdong travel agency giant Nanhu International Travel Service was exposed to be in a business crisis. It was accused of debt collection for defaulting on payments to all parties;
In June 2021, private travel agency giant Zhongxin Travel announced that it would sell out due to continuous losses.
In February 2020, the well-known private travel agency Baicheng Travel Network announced bankruptcy and liquidation;
...
Small and medium-sized travel agencies suffered even more heavy losses, and there are rumors that more than 10,000 of them have gone bankrupt. Last year, when Jinlvjun reported "Four consecutive years of losses and the impact of the epidemic, China Travel Service Beijing announced a suspension of work and production", some readers in the industry joked that you can keep this title, and you only need to change the name of the travel agency in the future, and you can report the same news several times .
Although it was a joke, it turned out to be a prophecy. The loneliness of an industry is probably nothing more than this.
02
There have been a lot of news about travel agency bankruptcy and liquidation this year. A large part of the reason is that the remaining hope of the practitioners has been completely extinguished. Travel agencies are a typical industry that depends on "the sky" for food. However, for two years, God has shown no sign of rewarding it:
As for outbound tourism, it is well known that it supports most of China's tourism industry.
China Tourism Academy recently released the " China Outbound Tourism Development Annual Report 2021", which shows that the number of Chinese outbound tourists is predicted to only recover to 17% in 2021 compared to 2019, and will only increase by 27% compared to 2020.
To put it bluntly, outbound travel is still at a standstill.
Although the China Tourism Academy cautiously predicts "great uncertainty" for outbound travel in 2022, a recent piece of news has dashed travel agencies' 2022 hopes. On November 26, the World Health Organization disclosed the latest highest-level "variant strain of high concern" of the new coronavirus - Omicron.
In recent times, this new coronavirus variant has spread rapidly by air and entered several countries unexpectedly, triggering global alert. Countries such as Japan, the United Kingdom, and Israel have successively closed their borders. The fragile outbound tourism industry has been hit hard again, and it is difficult to recover in the short term. sign.
In terms of domestic tourism, local epidemics continued to break out, travel agencies were severely damaged, and the number of domestic tourists received fell sharply in Q3.
Although it is not one-size-fits-all, it makes tourists even more afraid to go out, and travel agencies are also confused as to whether they should do it or not.
Silence and waiting seem to be the only answer.
03
It’s not like travel agencies have never thought about saving themselves.
Unfortunately, judging from the interviews with Jinlvjun, there are few successful cases. Travel agencies generally have several directions to help themselves:
engage in side business.
At the beginning of the epidemic, side business became the most common way for travel agencies to help themselves, and social e-commerce was the most popular.
Some travel agencies that engage in outbound business also personally search for suitable sources of goods overseas and build their own social e-commerce platforms through business channels established in the past. Travel agencies that are unable to organize supply of goods are actively joining social e-commerce platforms owned by domestic e-commerce giants and striving to earn dividends as agents.
For a while, travel advertisements in WeChat Moments were replaced by various product advertisements. The whole industry was selling and shouting at the so-called "private traffic" day and night, which was extremely lively.
However, this prosperous scene died down in less than half a year. According to Qilu Evening News, Shandong Jiahua Culture launched the Destination Selection Mall in February last year to sell local specialties and commodities from overseas and domestic tourist destinations. It was suspended across the board in July. Zhang Ming, founder of Shandong Jiahua Culture, said frankly that the products sold are not unique and the prices are not advantageous, so this road is destined to fail.
Many people told Jinlv Jun that the biggest original intention of developing social e-commerce was to seek a business transition during the epidemic and not to make money. Unexpectedly, the epidemic has continued until now. The further social e-commerce goes, the more useless it becomes. It is a pity to abandon it if it is tasteless.
cultivates new business.
The Yangtze River high-end river cruise vacation product is a typical case. A group of former overseas cruise and European river cruise professionals have transplanted overseas high-end vacation product styles and strategies to the Yangtze River Cruises. Through transformation of concepts, services, routes, catering, etc., they hope to take advantage of the current new situation. Create high-end river cruise vacation products on the Yangtze River in China.
They firmly believe that the high-value consumer groups represented by the domestic middle class still have strong demand overseas. Domestic products need to be replaced by products of the same or even higher quality. There is a huge market space here.
Frankly speaking, this new product was an almost immediate success. A new batch of high-end Yangtze River cruise vacation products will be launched in 2021. They have received unanimous praise from both the channel side and the tourist side, and sales have gradually increased.
However, new travel product training requires one key factor: time.
The low-frequency consumption characteristics of travel products are destined to take longer to cultivate new products than fast-moving consumer products, and require more patience. Frequent outbreaks of local epidemics in the country did not give these innovators more time. After being severely hit by the epidemic in the summer and November, high-end river cruise vacation products on the Yangtze River entered the off-season of tourism, and ended the 2021 operating season ahead of schedule due to the impact of the epidemic. Although
cannot be said to have failed, the losses were real.
In 2022, whether and how to develop high-end river cruise vacation products on the Yangtze River are yet to be determined.
sells himself.
This is a company's last resort to save itself.
Looking at the past two years, there are only a handful of travel agencies that have successfully sold themselves to save themselves during the epidemic. The most famous one is UX Travel.
In June this year, Uoxin Travel, a listed private travel agency company, announced that it would sell itself to its competitor, Caesar Travel , which is also a listed private travel agency company.
The biggest concern in the travel agency industry about this deal is how did Uoxin Travel convince Caesars Travel to acquire itself?
Founder of Zhongxin Travel Feng Bin said bluntly last year that he was not optimistic about the integration of travel agencies through capital means after the epidemic.
"The most terrible thing about travel agencies is that their models are too light." Feng Bin believes that all the business of travel agencies are related to travel services. As long as travel services are impacted, the value will plummet. The question now is whether travel agencies have the opportunity to generate interest in investment and mergers and acquisitions from others.
Feng Bin even predicts that it is unlikely that the travel agency field will be favored by capital within five years.
Although Feng Bin successfully sold Utour Travel to Caesar Travel, the outside world interpreted the merger and acquisition as a "cooperation between brothers in need". The two private travel agency giants have continued to suffer significant losses. In only the first half of the year, Utrust Travel Loss of 123 million yuan, Caesars Travel lost 169 million yuan.
A travel agency practitioner joked to Jinlvjun: "Now I envy those colleagues who went out of business early and left the market early."
He said that he struggled for a year last year, including social e-commerce, peripheral travel, and The travel product, at the end of the year, ended up with a loss of 1 million, and was also involved in a lawsuit due to triangular debt . On the other hand, another friend in the travel agency industry closed the travel agency early after the epidemic and laid off its employees. At the end of the year, when the accounts were settled, at least there was still a sum of money saved in the account, which was enough to support the family and to wait for an opportunity to return to the industry.
is speechless and helpless.
04
Regarding the difficult situation of the travel agency industry, the country has actually introduced a number of measures to support it.
Refund and postpone the travel agency's deposit payment.
At the beginning of the epidemic, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism issued a notice that in just over a month, 3.462 billion yuan of travel agency deposits would be refunded. Taking into account the impact of this year's epidemic, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism issued a document in October requiring travel agencies to temporarily refund 80% of the deposit, and the deadline to make up the deposit was extended to December 31, 2022. If a travel agency enjoys the temporary 80% deposit refund policy and meets the conditions specified in Article 17 of the " Travel Agency Regulations ", it can further reduce the deposit by 50% in accordance with the law.
The Ministry of Culture and Tourism recently issued a reply approving the pilot work of Zhejiang, Shanghai, and Anhui on using insurance to pay tourism service quality deposits.
encourages party building and official activities to be entrusted to travel agencies.
html On June 2, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism issued the "Notice on Strengthening Policy Support to Further Support the Development of Travel Agencies", which encourages state agencies, enterprises, institutions, and social groups at all levels to carry out party-building activities and official activities, and entrust travel agencies to arrange transportation, accommodation, Catering, conferences, etc.This can be regarded as an official “partiality” to the travel agency industry.
Cash subsidies and subsidies from local cultural and tourism authorities.
The Shaanxi Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism recently issued the "Announcement on Relief and Subsidies for Tourism-Related Enterprises", announcing that the province's top 30 travel agencies and 1,123 full-time foreign language tour guides will receive inbound foreign tourists in 2019. , 39 tourism performing arts programs, and 26 four-star and five-star tourist hotels that undertake the reception tasks of the 14th National Games and the Special Olympics Paralympic Games will receive cash subsidies, with a total amount of special subsidies of 9.996 million yuan.
Since this is a rare cash subsidy for enterprises by provincial cultural and tourism authorities, the Shaanxi Department of Culture and Tourism has gained a lot of reputation.
Although the state and industry authorities have spared no effort to support travel agencies, the industry generally reflects that many measures are short-term incentives and have extremely limited real help to enterprises.
"One of the objective reasons why many travel agencies were able to survive last year was that the overall cost of the enterprise was low."
A travel agency practitioner analyzed to Jinglvjun that this was due to the large number and intensity of various national support policies last year, coupled with the combination of travel agencies Massive layoffs and lower operating costs. Since the beginning of this year, many of the country’s preferential policies have actually been gradually cancelled, the most obvious of which is the preferential tax policy. In the first half of this year, in view of the improvement of the general environment, the travel agency increased its operating costs accordingly. Although the business has improved to a certain extent, after doing the calculation, it was found that:
profits have not increased significantly.
This has fallen into a strange circle. This year, travel agencies have been very busy and worked hard to resume work and production, but the final result is not as much as the profits they made after last year's layoff.
The enthusiasm of many travel agency practitioners has been dampened by this, and their confidence has hit rock bottom.
Although Zhang Ming, the founder of Shandong Jiahua Culture, still maintained an optimistic attitude in the face of the media, saying that as long as the team retains the fire, it can wait until the spring comes and the flowers bloom and return to its peak.
But there is still one month left in 2021, and the vast majority of travel agency practitioners have already taken advantage of the arrival of the off-season, and their business is in a semi-suspended state.
Everyone has no idea about the upcoming year 2022, so we have to take it one step at a time.
It is no longer news that a leading travel agency is "on the verge of death". Perhaps, staying alive is the only real desire of the silent majority.
