What public outrage did Ctrip, which everyone shouted, offend?

In the past 20 18 years, Ctrip became the first GMV in the global OTA industry, reaching 690 billion yuan; But in the Internet industry, paper can't hold fire, and Ctrip's reputation has plummeted, and it is becoming as hot as Baidu.

For example, on 20 18 and 12, Zhang Xiaobo, president of Phoenix Linkage Company, sued Ctrip for price fraud and issued a notice prohibiting Ctrip within the company; Ctrip.com was suspected of data fraud in Japan and was exposed by NHK TV, which caused public condemnation.

20 15 10, after Ctrip. And Baidu and where to go. Through complex equity swap transactions, where Ctrip Holdings goes, Baidu shares in Ctrip.

Looking back now, this transaction is the beginning of a series of bad stories in the next three years.

Due to the annexation of Qunar.com, the biggest competitor at that time, Ctrip returned to the dominance of OTA, and founder Liang Jianzhang also turned his eyes from competing with competitors and pleasing users to making profits with users. Bundle sales, high-priced refund and signing, and big data killing, these three "profit magic weapons" are carefully buried in the consumption experience of Ctrip users, which makes people hard to prevent.

Ctrip.com was founded by 1999, led by Liang Jianzhang. Together with well-known enterprises such as Alibaba, Tencent and Sina, it was the first batch of "veterans" of the Internet in China.

Among the founders of these enterprises, except English teacher Ma Yun, most of the other founders have IT technical background, that is, the legendary "science man". Liang Jianzhang is such a typical science man.

The Shanghainese developed his first computer program at the age of 14. He entered the juvenile class of Fudan University before graduating from junior high school, and then went to Georgia Institute of Technology to study abroad. He was only 20 years old when he got his master's degree. After working in Silicon Valley for 10 years, he returned to Shanghai from the United States to establish Ctrip. It took him another five years to bring Ctrip back to the United States and land on Nasdaq earlier than BAT.

"Profit" is also the label of Ctrip's first step. Ctrip has never worried about the "profit model" since its establishment.

Ctrip has built a network intermediary platform for the hotel and air ticket industry to sell standardized product information. People book air tickets and hotels through this platform, and Ctrip collects commissions from hotels and airlines, which belongs to the mode of middlemen earning the difference.

Alifei Pig, which also arranges online travel, adopts a platform model, that is, by attracting merchants and users, it establishes ecology and then seeks to realize it. In contrast, the Ctrip model requires every single business to make money and pursue gross profit margin in the transaction.

Obviously, Ctrip is simpler, more direct and straightforward, which is in line with Liang Jianzhang's original idea. He has an extremely pragmatic and intelligent brain and started a seemingly smooth life without exception.

This sleek gene has made Ctrip rarely see the crisis in the past 20 years. Liang Jianzhang also stepped down as CEO twice in 2006 and 20 16, and transformed into a scholar studying population issues. After the outbreak of public opinion crisis such as bundling, the attitude of many executives inside Ctrip is that "these storms are not very serious problems and will soon pass."

However, the most fatal problem is precisely that they feel that this storm that seriously stifles corporate reputation is not a problem.

This arrogance of belittling the crisis is based on Ctrip's super profitability, but the crisis will come sooner or later.

Facts have proved that whenever Liang Jianzhang is far away from Ctrip, this enterprise can't play. And when he returns, Ctrip will become the "overbearing president" in the industry.

Liang Jianzhang's long-sleeved capital operation and ambition to win the world, from "mouse+cement" to "thumb+cement", has built a one-stop platform for Ctrip, which includes consumer travel, landing accommodation and ticketing consumption, and can be called an online empire.

But the establishment of this network empire has paid a huge price and must be recovered.

From 2006 to 20 12, it was the first time that Liang Jianzhang left the company. In the meantime, E Long. Com, Tongcheng. Com, Tujia. Com and qunar.com. Com has been eating into this market. They either developed better application software and found a lower-priced cooperation mode, or created a more subdivided gameplay. Liang Jianzhang received a phone call from an old friend at the end of 20 12. The other party bluntly said that their mobile phone software is easier to use, and the airfare and hotel prices are indeed cheaper than yours.

He had to return, and immediately set off a rectification movement within the company, reorganizing the pyramid management structure into a business division system, and each business division hatched more project teams; Externally, it started a bloody price war and took out $500 million to seriously fight its opponents.

After this war, Ctrip suffered a big bleeding-profits fell by 39%. However, Liang Jianzhang's wishful thinking lies not in this, but in killing his opponent-E Long's profit margin plummeted by 98%, and he suffered internal injuries wherever he went. During the two-year war, Ctrip owned more than 20 companies with shares or holding shares, and finally annexed the most threatening competitors, eLong.com and Qunar.com, in 20 15.

In 20 18, there were nearly 50 Ctrip companies, including: OTA website Tongcheng, Tuniu, Yilong, and where to go; Travel car rental, easy to get to, mobike, Tang people; Hotels and reservation brands include Tujia, Yingmo Tourism, Youjia B&B and Join-Cheer hotel chains; Overseas-oriented travel platforms, such as Travelfusion, MakeMyTrip, Skyscanner and Trip.com. In addition, it also penetrated into insurance, finance, immigration services, aviation, medical care, catering and other business fields.

At this point, Ctrip's online empire has taken on a new look.

The online business map has gradually stabilized. In order to recover the cost, Ctrip's "magic" side has been revealed offline.

Ctrip is an established Internet company, but many people subconsciously don't regard it as a pure Internet company.

The reason is that Ctrip has never sought the whimsical Internet thinking of Internet entrepreneurs. The most important connotation of this kind of thinking is the "online light asset model". Liang Jianzhang personally said: "Tourism is a material industry and cannot be completely virtualized." Ctrip's so-called "mouse+cement" or "thumb+cement" model is actually the "online+offline" online to offline.

When Liang Jianzhang left Ctrip for the first time in 2006, he had already set up a framework of "online information platform+offline call center+push team" for the enterprise, and said that "no competitors in the industry can be seen with binoculars".

Intense marketing to obtain BD resources, crazy free card issuance to obtain user traffic, and rapid occupation of the market in exchange for capital investment … let Ctrip firmly occupy that wild time. After many years, many online game players with "Internet thinking" still can't understand the mystery. When the seemingly perfect business model meets offline stores and consumers, it will be a chicken feather.

Because for the internet industry, it is easier to do light than to do heavy. But Ctrip has mastered this set of things very early.

Success is Xiao He, failure is me. The barbaric growth under the line not only gave Ctrip a market opportunity, but also planted contradictory seeds at the beginning. In the final analysis, Ctrip's business model belongs to the service industry, and there is no essential difference with beauty shops, restaurants and real estate agents. The essence of this "diligence" in the service industry lies in "putting down your body to please guests"

This is exactly what Ctrip is neither good at nor willing to do. How can a wealthy Liang Jianzhang degrade herself to please her guests?

At the beginning, I chose the online travel agency industry precisely because hotels and air tickets are standardized products, and I don't need to rack my brains to please anyone. He is committed to building an extremely simple and magical business system, which makes capital get exaggerated returns.

This design naturally conflicts with the meticulous and trouble-free service spirit.

It is a disaster for everyone that a person without service spirit engages in the service industry. What is even more frightening is that Ctrip's genes are so powerful. The founders of the top three hotel groups in China: Home Inn, Platinum and Zhu Hua are all from Ctrip.

Qi Ji, one of Ctrip's co-founders, founded Home Inns and Zhu Hua, and Home Inns later merged into BTG. Zheng Nanyan, former vice president of marketing for Ctrip, founded Platinum Group, which was later merged into Jinjiang, a subsidiary of Shanghai State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission.

Ordinary consumers may know that they are at home, but they are not familiar with Zhu Hua and Platinum. In fact, Zhu Hua is the parent company of Hanting Hotel and Platinum is the parent company of 7 Days Hotel. These three hotel companies are almost synonymous with domestic budget hotels, and they also contain genes similar to Ctrip-making good use of capital to do large-scale projects quickly, being good at calculating business formulas, and giving low priority to customer service.

The results of the "Monitoring Report on Online Word-of-mouth of Top Ten Economy Hotel Chain Brands (20 17)" released by the third-party public opinion monitoring organization at the weekend of rule of law show that in terms of brand word-of-mouth, Home Inns performed the worst, followed by Hanting and Qitian.

Endless online business layout and penetrating offline layout make Ctrip an excellent company from the perspective of profitability.

However, from 20 15, this kind of Excellence lacks an important link, that is, kindness and care for users. In the eyes of many entrepreneurs who believe in the law of the jungle, this is a link that has nothing to do with success or failure, but it essentially determines whether a company is really excellent.

This is the real headache for Liang Jianzhang, and it also determines why the smooth Ctrip has been uneven in "traffic" after 20 15. Service-oriented enterprises have problems with the values of customer service. How do they gather popularity?

In the competition with Meituan, Ctrip is losing ground, and the biggest killer for Meituan to beat Ctrip is traffic.

Meituan cuts into user service with scenes, and users have the habit of booking scenes, and scenes are the entrance of traffic.

Compared with Ctrip, Meituan has richer offline scenes and consumer resources, and reduces the cost of intermediate channels through the synergistic effect of various product lines, allowing users to switch from high-frequency consumption such as ordering food and karaoke to low-frequency consumption such as tourism and hotels; And the latter's channel sinks even more. In many third-and fourth-tier cities, Ctrip has almost no competitive advantage.

What about Ctrip's traffic portal? In the past, relying on a huge push team, now we have added such pervasive TV advertisements as "Ctrip is in hand, just leave" to attract traffic. Even if it is not profitable, even if it is negative, it will not give up the old ticket booking entrance. However, this means, which obviously lags behind this era, is not enough for Ctrip to sit back and relax.

What is even more impressive is that Ali's traffic has flying pigs, and Meituan's traffic has Meituan wine tour. At that time, Baidu's traffic also increased where to go. But when I arrived in Ctrip, Liang Jianzhang couldn't find the traffic. The pain of traffic and Ctrip's out-of-control treatment of users are mutually causal-no traffic can be found, only users can be taken; The user suffered a loss and did not come again.

Liang Jianzhang is a business genius, but Ctrip under his rule has neither goodwill nor creativity, only irritating malice.

These details are enough to prove once again that no service spirit is a disaster for everyone engaged in the service industry.

(Author Guo Liang is a corporate history and biographer and has published bestsellers such as Sound and Cycle: 60 Years of Business in China).

References:

Entrepreneurs in China: Public Enemy Ctrip.

Tiger sniffing network: Ctrip is dangerous

Caijing Tianxia Weekly: Liang Jianzhang: See through the population and can't hold people's hearts.

Wu Xiaobo Channel: Ctrip's "Global Game"

Rule of law weekend: "Home Inn's brand image needs to be improved in 7 days, and negative public opinion has been repeatedly banned."