Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Tech Planet exclusively learned that Douyin has opened up the eligibility of platform service providers for transportation and travel services. At present, there are car-hailing / ride-hailing, ride-sharing / ride-sharing, taxi and so on. T3, as the head platform of travel services, launched the "T3 car-hailing" Mini Program in Douyin App this month. In addition, including Yichi Hitchhiker and a number of local travel service platforms have also entered Douyin in the form of Mini Program.

Photo Note: screenshot of Douyin open platform. There is no doubt that Douyin is becoming another major traffic portal for travel service providers, and Douyin will also build its own travel business ecology through the entry of third-party travel service providers. In fact, Douyin has long become the traffic and business window that travel service providers rely on, but previously, due to the limitations of the Douyin platform, travel service providers did not launch taxi-hailing services in Douyin, but launched jump ads in Douyin. Users can click on the ads to jump to the travel service provider's App or WeChat ride-hailing Mini Program, or mainly sell ride-hailing coupons. Tech found that in some stores, many users are buying travel coupons, and the monthly sales of some goods even exceed 10,000 pieces. This time, after Douyin platform opens up the residency qualifications for travel service providers, it will remove obstacles for service providers' travel services to settle on Douyin, and at the same time, it may make Douyin become a third-party travel service aggregation platform similar to Gaode and Wechat. After e-commerce and local life services, Douyin has expanded its business into the field of transportation, and taking a taxi on Douyin may become a new choice for users to travel.

Douyin has taken a fancy to the taxi-hailing business of "clothing, food, housing and transportation", which has become the main rigid demand in everyone's life. Around these needs, Internet giants such as Meituan, ele.me, shell and Didi have been born. Many Internet platforms focus on these four rigid needs as an important direction of business layout.

Since the beginning of this year, Tencent, Huawei and other platforms have launched new taxi-hailing business, while the "Rocket Travel" incubated by Amap will also be launched, and a new round of competition in the travel market will begin again. And Douyin, which has been expanding new business in recent years, has also timely taken a fancy to the opportunities. This time, it will open up the residency qualifications of transport travel service providers, or in order to take advantage of Douyin's open platform and traffic, it will create a travel ecology through third-party travel service providers to provide Douyin users with travel services.

Tech Planet learned that Douyin's exploration of transportation services began in the first half of this year, but the head travel service platform did not respond positively, but some small local travel service providers took the lead in building Mini Program in Douyin, such as "Qiancheng Travel", "Pudu Travel" and so on, to promote the travel service through short videos.

Photo note: the taxi-hailing Mini Program mount short video interface in Douyin. At this time, the head travel platform on Douyin is still mainly selling taxi-hailing coupons, including DiDi and T3 travel and so on. An operator of a travel service provider told Tech Planet that they were ready to launch travel services in Douyin. After all, everyone wanted to take advantage of Douyin's huge user traffic to provide strong support for their own travel services, but at that time they were more waiting to see the relevant regulations and user needs of the platform, so they did not launch travel services directly in Douyin, but to sell taxi-hailing coupons to "look at the market".

Photo note: travel service providers sell taxi-hailing coupons on Douyin. This time, as a head travel platform, T3 travel and a ride ride have entered Douyin one after another, which means that Douyin has begun to be valued by the head travel platform and is becoming their key layout channel. Tech Planet has just entered Douyin's "T3 car-hailing" Mini Program, and found that the Mini Program should still be in the testing stage and can not achieve the normal taxi-hailing function, but users can enter the "money-saving center" to exchange or buy ride-hailing coupons through activities. And "a ride" Mini Program has been able to use the taxi-hailing function normally.

Photo note: T3 travel in Douyin Mini Program. At present, the travel functions in Douyin are presented in the form of Douyin Mini Program, and the entrance is relatively deep. There is no aggregation entrance similar to WeChat Nine Miyagi and Gaode. Users need to search Douyin Mini Program for "taxi", "travel" or travel service brand name to find the taxi-hailing Mini Program they need. Industry analysts believe that this may be due to the small number of travel service providers within Douyin, which has not yet been able to form a large-scale travel ecology, but as a large number of head-to-head travel services have been stationed on Douyin, it will prompt wait-and-see travel services to have the idea of doing a taxi-hailing function on Douyin, and as the scale increases, Douyin may, like group buying or takeout, create a travel business aggregation portal for these service providers.

Can you provide a taxi-hailing service in Douyin? The development and growth of any business is inseparable from user traffic. Douyin, with more than 600 million monthly active users, has expanded its business into many areas, such as e-commerce, local life, medicine, payment and so on. This has also made many industries begin to attach importance to Douyin, and even cooperate with Douyin. In August this year, Douyin and ele.me reached a cooperation with ele.me. Now, the "ele.me Douyin Mini Program" takeout mode has been opened for trial in Nanjing.

In the transportation industry, the flow of Douyin can also provide suitable development space for third-party travel service providers.

In fact, Douyin users pay considerable attention to the content of "trip". Tech Planet has been queried through a huge number of bytes. In Douyin, related topics such as "transportation trip", "trip" and "Didi driver" have all been viewed more than 100 million times in the past 30 days. This also reflects from the side that users pay high attention to travel needs. In addition, some travel service providers are using Douyin to promote travel-related knowledge, and then using short videos to achieve taxi-hailing coupons to carry goods.

In addition, "short video + travel" may become a new way for users to travel by taxi. With short video content as an important grip to attract users, attaching taxi-hailing Mini Program can become an important entrance for travel service providers.

At the Douyin open platform developer conference in September this year, Han Shangyou, vice president of Douyin, said that Douyin open platform is an application ecology with Douyin Mini Program as the main carrier, and has the advantages of Douyin initiative recommendation and video. On the one hand, the intuitive and vivid features of the video make users feel more immersive when watching, with strong recommendation ability and transformation ability; on the other hand, under the ecology with recommendation as the core, the Douyin open platform has the ability to push a variety of content and services to the users who need it most. And this is exactly what travel service providers need to meet the content marketing scenarios in which they get customers from Douyin, transform transactions, retain users, and then revisit to promote vitality.

In addition, some travel service providers have tried to launch short video ride-hailing coupons. Imagine that if Douyin users participate in similar taxi-hailing activities, they can not only get coupons, but also experience the new method of browsing short videos while waiting for a bus, so that they can spend the boring time while waiting for a bus, and can also enjoy travel discounts. It can be said that "short video + taxi" has a considerable implementation scene.

Of course, travel service providers not only stay in Douyin to launch taxi-hailing services, but also speed up the transformation of transactions by buying volume in Douyin. Starting from the second half of this year, Tech Planet Statistics found that a number of travel service providers, such as DiDi, inter-city travel, Hello, T3 travel and so on, put advertisements in Douyin. Moreover, there are new players to join the team to buy in Douyin, a travel service provider operator revealed that the future launch in Douyin will continue.

Photo note: taxi-hailing advertisements for travel service providers in Douyin App. At the bottom of these advertising windows, App and Douyin Mini Program of travel service providers are also mounted, further providing the possibility of traffic conversion for travel service providers in Douyin.

The new battle in the travel service market has opened a new round of competition since DiDi App was removed from the shelves last year.

Meituan took the lead in taking a taxi. After getting off the shelves in May 2019, two years later, on July 9, last year, he re-launched a new version of "Meituan car-hailing" App in major app stores, and launched a new Logo in yellow and black colors. Subsequently, Meituan began to recruit drivers and opened taxi-hailing services in more than 100 cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Zhengzhou, Hefei, Xi'an, Taiyuan, Changsha, Wuhan, Shenyang and Xiamen.

Subsequently, Amap also began to plan a new travel business, and planned to launch "Rocket Travel" App in December last year. According to a person familiar with the matter, "Rocket Travel" may adopt a business model similar to Meituan's car-hailing model, which is dominated by an aggregate ride-hailing mode, supplemented by self-operated ride-hailing services, such as joining the self-operated ride-hailing business. At present, the driver side App has been developed.

This year, Huawei, Tencent and others have also started the layout of travel business. Huawei uses a converged ride-hailing model similar to Gaode, and launched "Petal Travel" in its member center app, which is reported to be a ride-hailing app that brings together domestic high-quality ride-hailing suppliers. Currently, Petal Travel supports ride-hailing services in Beijing, Shenzhen and Nanjing. The connected ride-hailing platform includes Shouqi car-hailing platform and China chauffeured car, and the models include economy type, comfortable type, business 6-seat type and deluxe type.

On the other hand, Tencent has partnered with Ruqi Travel in some parts of Guangdong to launch a taxi-hailing service, and then began to connect more taxi-hailing service providers to the Tencent travel service in Wechat, and the number of cities that can take a taxi is also increasing. At present, users in Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan and other first-and second-tier cities can use the service.

Over the past year or so, from the new travel service providers who have entered one after another, we can see that most of them are still based on the service mode of aggregating taxi-hailing. This is because the aggregation platform has lower operating costs and lower risks than self-built ride-hailing services. Moreover, companies with huge traffic, such as Tencent and Huawei, can become connectors for ride-hailing service providers. That is, while becoming the interface of the online ride-hailing service provider, it can also provide services for its own platform users, and improve the order-taking efficiency of the driver side of the online ride-hailing service provider, increase the income for the driver, and the aggregation platform can also realize the traffic.

At present, through the situation that travel service providers enter Douyin in the form of Mini Program, Douyin may also build converged taxi-hailing entrances to provide stable traffic entrances for travel service providers within Douyin. However, now that the cost of getting passengers for online ride-hailing is rising, it remains to be seen whether the byte, which is cutting costs and increasing efficiency, will expand its travel business as vigorously as it does for e-commerce and local life services.

From the perspective of the entire domestic ride-hailing market, according to the "2021 Travel Industry Insight" report released by Wilson Automobile Intelligent decision, the size of China's ride-hailing market is expected to reach 434.1 billion yuan in 2025. According to the data released by the Ministry of Communications in November 2022, a total of 5.10 million car-hailing driver certificates and 2.064 million vehicle transport certificates have been issued, showing an upward trend. It can be seen that the travel service market, whether in terms of scale or industry personnel, has a huge space to rise.

Douyin, which entered the game on the curve at this time, like Tencent and Huawei, also took a fancy to the market opportunity after Didi was removed from the shelves. Whether Douyin can make use of its own traffic advantages to gather travel service providers and create a new travel service platform will attract much attention from the outside world.

This article is from the official account of Wechat: Tech (ID:tech618). By Chen Qiaohui.

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