The concept of the metaverse has cooled down, but the domestic "first private travel agency" believes in tourism and does not believe in evil, aiming at the metaverse of cultural tourism.
On July 21, U2GO Travel released the U2GO cultural travel digital platform. In addition to the digital collection "U2 Cultural Travel Energy Card", it also created an exclusive virtual space in the metaverse platform "Infinity Box".
Launching the most fashionable "two-piece suit" in Yuanverse, Zhongxin Tourism used this as a starting point to accelerate digital transformation. This relatively traditional travel service company had to take this step.
Affected by the epidemic, Zhongxin Tourism’s revenue has shrunk sharply in the past three years, from 12.622 billion yuan in 2019 to 501 million yuan last year, with a cumulative loss of more than 2 billion yuan in three years. This year, the tourism economy has recovered strongly, and Zhongxin Tourism is expected to turn losses into profits in the second quarter.
However, there are not many competitors in the online travel service provider market. Ctrip, Fliggy and other giants have been at the top for a long time, and the growth space for other players is getting smaller and smaller. If Zhongxin Tourism wants to stay on the poker table, it needs to expand the traffic entrance and keep customers in its own hands.
In the metaverse, Zhongxin Tourism needs to use this move to build its own traffic pool, so as to pinch the pulse of tourism recovery.
"The first share of private travel agencies" playing with Shuzang + Metaverse
After the major technology giants tossed the metaverse to no avail, the market generally believed that the era of the metaverse would not come until several years later. The concept of the metaverse has subsided, and the listed company, "the first private travel agency" Zhongxin Tourism Group bucked the trend at this time, and stubbornly launched a series of metaverse products.
On July 21, U2GO Travel held a press conference on the U2GO cultural tourism digital platform in Beijing. The cultural tourism digital collection and the metaverse platform were the focus of this conference.
U2GO Cultural Tourism Digital Platform Press Conference Site
It is reported that based on the relevant technical services provided by YeePay, Zhongxin Tourism has launched a new digital collection series "U2 Cultural Tourism Energy Card", and launched the U2 Genesis Blind Box, U2POLAR Polar Series Emperor Penguin Energy Card and Unix Digital Nomad Community "Wonderful List" series of universal energy cards.
The above-mentioned energy cards will be released on the U2 Cultural Tourism digital platform in the form of digital collections. Holding an energy card means becoming an energy partner of the U2GO platform and owning a series of rights and interests of the U2GO digital ecology.
Take the "Emperor Penguin Energy Card" as an example. The design inspiration of this card is based on the products of Zhongxin Tourism Polar Cruise Ship. "Many people yearn for the North and South Poles, but they don't necessarily have the money or leisure to play in person, and the U2GO energy card provides an opportunity." Li Kailiang, general manager of Zhongxin Digital Culture, said that there will be a follow-up around the emperor penguin energy card. A series of marketing activities will eventually give out a super prize. This unannounced super prize is also an easter egg in the press conference. Many people speculate that the follow-up Zhongxin Tourism will draw a lucky person for Antarctic tour from the holders of the "Emperor Penguin Energy Card".
The reason why its digital collections are named energy cards is that Zhongxin Travel cooperates with airlines, hotels, scenic spots, and cultural and tourism bureaus and other "energy partners" to provide discounts, convenient services and other rights and interests, which is equivalent to directly injecting "energy cards" into digital collection cards. Energy", to give cardholders a more direct and practical cultural travel experience, and the travel company that connects the two is responsible for focusing on services.
Designing digital collections in the form of "issuing cards" is a significant difference between the U2GO cultural tourism digital platform and other IP and art digital collections. Combining its own resource accumulation and experience in the tourism industry, Zhongxin Tourism wants to make digital collections more "useful", that is, in addition to appreciation and collection value, it also adds rights and interests directly related to cultural tourism experience. Li Kailiang introduced that the U2 cultural tourism digital platform has co-creation, voting, paradise, consensus rankings and other playing methods.
Another major digital move of Zhongxin Tourism is the release of "U2GO Earth Energy Base". At the press conference, Li Kailiang demonstrated the use of virtual avatars to tour in this virtual space. The "Energy Base" is built in the "Infinity Box", a virtual digital commercial complex of Metaverse under Tiandi Online. At present, the tunnel is not yet open, and the digital cultural tourism content that users can experience is still relatively limited.
In fact, online travel service platforms have already explored the metaverse early.
On September 24, 2021, in Ctrip Group’s unaudited financial performance report for the second quarter, content value marketing was included in the financial report for the first time, and the content version “Metaverse” was constructed through the “Planet”. On June 13, 2022, AR company Liangfengtai signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Ctrip to explore the value and application of the tourism universe, and let AR/AI innovative technology deeply empower the tourism industry. In June this year, Ctrip Group also incubated the first NFT series "Trekki".
Another online travel service company, Fliggy, will also launch a museum AR tour service in early 2022. Through AR and other digital technologies, it will bring tourists a functional experience combining virtual reality, such as AR special effects, digital sand tables, map guides, and virtual tour guides. During the "May 1st" period, Fliggy also launched an NFT digital collection of tickets for the Badaling Great Wall scenic spot.
Compared with many companies that pursued the Yuan Universe one or two years ago, Zhongxin Travel is a little slower. However, after the concept of metaverse cools down, the entry has more meaning of "layout".
Feng Bin, chairman of Zhongxin Tourism Group, believes that scientific and technological progress has profoundly changed people's lifestyles, and has also changed the appearance of the cultural tourism industry. "The birth of the U2GO cultural tourism digital platform is a product of our active response to this era, and it is one of the important practices of our digital transformation strategy."
Tourism industry recovers, online platforms fight for traffic again
A series of digital actions of Zhongxin Tourism took place at a special time node-the post-epidemic era, which is a critical period for the recovery and growth of the tourism industry. As we all know, from 2020 to 2022, the tourism industry will be hit hard by the epidemic, and Zhongxin Tourism, which went public in 2014, has also been involved.
The financial report shows that before the epidemic, Zhongxin Travel’s tourism service revenue has grown steadily from 4.2 billion yuan in the year it went public in 2014 to 12.581 billion yuan in 2019. In the two years since the epidemic lasted, the revenue of Zhongxin Tourism has declined significantly. From 2019 to 2021, the operating income of Zhongxin Tourism will be 12.622 billion yuan, 1.561 billion yuan, and 684 million yuan, respectively, a year-on-year increase of 3.64% and -87.63%. , -56.19%; the net profit attributable to the parent was 68 million yuan, -1.480 billion yuan, and -464 million yuan respectively. In 2022, the operating income of Zhongxin Tourism will drop to 501 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 26.83%, and the annual loss will be about 221 million yuan.
Zhongxin Tourism's revenue has continued to decline in the past four years
Entering 2023, the "gloom" has finally dissipated. According to the domestic tourism data for the first half of 2023 recently released by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the total number of domestic tourists in the first half of 2023 was 2.384 billion, an increase of 929 million or 63.9% over the same period of the previous year. In the first half of the year, domestic tourism revenue (total tourism expenditure) was 2.30 trillion yuan, an increase of 1.12 trillion yuan or 95.9% over the previous year.
Zhongxin Tourism finally breathed a sigh of relief. According to its 2023 semi-annual performance forecast released on July 14, it is estimated that Zhongxin Travel will have a net loss of 31-36 million yuan attributable to its parent in the first half of the year, a year-on-year loss reduction of 55.47%-61.66%. Among them, in the second quarter of this year, the net profit of Zhongxin Tourism is expected to be 1.5-6.5 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 106.28%-115.06%, and it will achieve a year-on-year turnaround.
However, this result is not impressive. In contrast, CYTS on the same track is expected to have a net profit of 108 million yuan in the first half of the year, turning losses into profits year-on-year, and deducting non-net profits of 102 million yuan.
Despite the overall recovery of the tourism industry, the competitive pressure faced by Zhongxin Tourism is also increasing. Compared with Ctrip, Fliggy, Qunar and other online travel platforms that naturally have Internet genes, Zhongxin Travel, which started as a "travel agency", is more inclined to the traditional camp. In recent years, online travel platforms have continued to expand and seize traffic, which has drastically changed the competitive landscape of the tourism industry. More traditional platforms such as Zhongxin Travel can only create differentiated products in overseas travel, polar travel, etc. to seek room for growth.
Seeing that traffic continues to be eroded by online travel giants, digital transformation has become a top priority for Zhongxin Travel. Li Kailiang revealed that during the three years of the epidemic, the company has been sorting out and exploring business models internally, thinking about how to use better ways to carry out digital transformation, and use new digital applications to drive growth.
Judging from specific actions, Zhongxin Tourism has made many attempts. In June 2020, the company invested in the establishment of the MCN organization Zhongxin Ark. In addition to regular businesses such as internet celebrity incubation, live broadcasting, and short videos, an important function is to provide new online traffic portals for various businesses of Zhongxin Tourism Group. Promote Zhongxin Tourism to accelerate digital transformation and upgrading. In the first half of 2022 alone, the cumulative number of live broadcasts on the Zhongxin travel e-commerce platform exceeded 406, and the number of live broadcast travel products sold was nearly 4,000 sets.
Last year, when it was inconvenient for consumers to go out, Zhongxin Tourism also established Zhongxin Digital Culture (Hainan) Co., Ltd. to explore the "Cultural Tourism Digital Tibetan Universe". At that time, U2GO Travel put forward the digital platform layout of "U2NFT+U2META", and the newly launched U2GO cultural tourism digital platform was the official launch of its related digital products.
In fact, whether it is live broadcasting, or the layout of digital collections and metaverses, the ultimate intention of Zhongxin Travel is to build its own traffic pool through digital marketing and new gameplay to cope with the huge impact of online travel applications.
Under the pressure of unprecedented competition, the cooled metaverse has become a test field for Zhongxin Travel, and it is also one of the cut-off points for this travel agency company to accelerate digital selection. The transformation may not be immediate, but if you don't make the transformation, you will definitely face elimination. As its helmsman Feng Bin said, the face of the cultural tourism industry is changing, and Zhongxin Tourism must adapt.