Who is using online travel products? Analysis of different types of tourists

Recently, a data chart jointly translated by SocialBeta and Tushuo titled "Socialized Tourism VS Traditional Tourism" has been widely circulated on Weibo. The chart compares the differences between socialized tourism users and traditional tourists in terms of travel methods, preferences, etc.

As a non-enthusiastic backpacker, I travel alone at least once a year. In the field of social sciences, there are many research results on tourism, and I am happy to share some content related to this interesting topic with you. In this article, we will sort out the characteristics of different types of tourists and their needs, and then conduct a simple analysis of users of different Internet travel products.

Categories of tourists

Tourists are not a completely homogeneous group, but a collection of individuals with different social and cultural backgrounds and personality traits. This collection can be divided into smaller types according to different standards. Each type of tourist will show different travel motivations and behavioral characteristics during the travel process.

In fact, in English, different words related to "tourist" have different connotations. In the first half of the 19th century, the distinction between traveler and tourist began to emerge. The latter has a certain derogatory connotation and is used to refer to those who participate in standardized all-inclusive tourism (group tours). Travelers represent the high-quality culture of the upper class, while tourists are labeled as low-taste. In addition, we combine Cohen * (1972)'s classification of tourist roles to distinguish a category that is different from tourists and travelers, namely Explorer. Next, we will explain the differences between the three types of tourists from several aspects, such as travel purpose, travel method and personality traits.

Travel Purpose

The purpose of tourists' travel is often just to have a holiday, relax, or visit famous destinations and enjoy high-quality material life such as food and accommodation during the trip. Travelers are more concerned about experiencing the authenticity of the destination, hoping to understand and experience the natural scenery and social culture of other places through the process of travel. Explorers are in pursuit of spiritual satisfaction, hoping to better understand themselves and seek the meaning of life during the travel process.

Travel Method

The way tourists travel is itself a process of consuming mass tourism products, including transportation, accommodation, commercial attraction tickets, shopping in tourist destinations, etc. Therefore, it can be said that tourists are people who buy tourism products, and these tourism products are provided by travel agencies and other tourism institutions. Since tourism products are obviously fictitious, it can be said that they are just a series of false tourism events arranged by tourism agencies. In this process, tourists always hide in a set safe environment and are relatively isolated from the lives of local people. Therefore, tourists are considered to be people who participate in the lowest level, ordinary, general tourism activities.

Before traveling, travelers will learn about the destination in advance. After understanding the local natural, cultural and social conditions, they will arrange the itinerary according to their own preferences and needs, and have a lot of autonomy during the trip. They hope to interact with local people, follow local customs, taste local food, and communicate with local people.

Explorers prefer adventurous travel, like to go to remote and unusual places, and enjoy the various challenges encountered during the journey. They will try to escape from the familiar environment and atmosphere to gain the greatest degree of novelty. And during the travel, they will try their best to integrate into the lives of local people and experience different cultures and lifestyles.

Personality traits

Tourists desire material enjoyment and pursue shallow leisure and entertainment experiences; they are afraid of loneliness and being in an unfamiliar cultural environment. Leaving the familiar environment will make them feel insecure. There is always a safe area in their hearts that cannot be broken. Under the constraints of a safe "environmental cover", they have little interest in expanding their horizons. In contrast, travelers are open-minded and willing to accept new things. They are eager to pursue quality experiences during their journeys, so they prefer art, culture, and novel destinations. Explorers have a strong curiosity about new things, have an adventurous spirit, and seek emotional peak experiences. At the same time, explorers often have higher spiritual pursuits. They desire freedom and independence and hope to have the opportunity to experience a new life.

The following table summarizes the above three points:

User segmentation is one of the most basic methods in user research. However, each user type is just an "ideal type". Each label has a single and fixed role, and perhaps no one can completely belong to any of these categories. From the perspective of tourism, people may play multiple tourism roles at the same time, and at different times people may have different travel motivations and take different travel methods. However, the establishment of an "ideal type" is very helpful for us to analyze problems, especially when doing product segmentation to determine the target population. Such typological processing can help us better grasp the characteristics of the audience.

What do tourists need?

Due to the differences in travel purposes, travel methods and behaviors of different types of tourists, their needs during the travel process will also be different. Here we will roughly describe the different needs of the three types of tourists based on the above content.

First of all, for the first type of tourists , they are similar to the traditional tourists mentioned in the data chart at the beginning of the article. They travel only to consume tourism products. For them, traveling is just a vacation to kill time, just for sightseeing and entertainment, so the most worry-free way is to join a tour group, and the travel agency will take care of all the arrangements such as food, drink, entertainment and sleep. Or slightly less extreme ones will order accommodation, scenic spot tickets and other services during the tour. But their travel style is essentially no different from that of tourists who travel with a group. They all seek comfortable material experiences. The content of the tour is mainly "staying in a hotel, visiting scenic spots and buying specialties". They hardly have contact with local people and have no intention to actively understand local culture.

Secondly, for the second category, Travellers , they often do a lot of preparation before traveling, by reading various guides, consulting and checking information related to the destination, and then arranging the travel route according to their needs, so they have a strong demand for travel information. Because they hope to have a high-quality experience during the trip and hope to have greater autonomy, they have a greater motivation to make careful preparations. In addition, during the trip, they hope to experience not only those fictitious tourism products packaged by merchants, but also an authentic experience. Therefore, they are willing to take the initiative to contact local people and learn about local customs and habits to further understand the local lifestyle.

The last category is Explorers . Most backpackers belong to this category. They tend to be out for longer periods of time, and are more casual during their trips, with few clear plans and arrangements. Explorers also have relatively small material needs, and they value spiritual satisfaction more. Compared with luxury hotels and famous attractions, the challenges of the journey, the local social culture, and the like-minded friends they meet during the journey are more attractive to them. Their resting places are generally youth hostels, small hotels, or sofas in local people's homes. Wandering around the local area, or discovering some unknown beautiful scenery, local folk customs, or the people they meet along the way, these may give them a deep feeling and evoke their reflection on their own lives. When experiencing different scenery, they will use words or photos to record the wonderful journey.

User analysis of tourism products

According to the "2007 Baidu Top List Tourism Industry Report", online travel service providers are divided into two categories: one is travel booking websites, and the other is travel information websites. The former includes Lvmama, Tongcheng, Tuniu, etc., and the latter includes Qyer, Baidu Travel, and Yiqiyou under Tongcheng.com. In addition, with the development of social media, another category needs to be added, which is travel social networking websites, including Guluyu, Tukequan, Fengche.com, etc.

Combined with the analysis of tourists' needs in the previous section, we can easily determine the main users of various tourism products.

In general, tourists are not the main customers of Internet tourism products . Since this group of people is often older (over 40 years old), many of them do not often use the Internet, so they are more willing to patronize travel agencies. Others in this group (often the younger part of this group) will become users of travel booking websites, because such websites provide comprehensive travel products (including group tours), and the prices of products are much more favorable than those of travel agencies.

Travelers are often the main users of travel booking websites and travel information websites. This group is relatively younger (mainly those born in the 1980s and 1990s), and because they have to arrange their own itineraries, they will search for a lot of guide information on travel information websites. Since young people have relatively low income levels, after completing their itineraries, they will order cheap hotels and scenic spot tickets on travel booking websites. And they are also willing to share their travel experiences. After returning from a trip, they will summarize their experiences on the trip and then publish their own guides on travel information websites, hoping to help other tourists.

Explorers are quite different from the first two types of tourists. The consumption of tourism products during their trip does not occupy a major part. And their travel arrangements are more casual, and they will not read a lot of guides to arrange the itinerary before departure. However, the biggest feature of this group is that they pay more attention to spiritual satisfaction and will have more ideas and insights during the trip. In addition, their journeys are often more exciting, they can see more different scenery, and more stories happen in the process of communicating with people, so they have more exciting content to share on travel information websites. And they share more travel notes and travel insights, rather than guides or travel guides.

Finally, let's talk about travel social networking sites. They are quite different from the first two types of sites and are not as instrumental. As a vertical interest graph social networking site, the main function of travel social networking sites is to help users record and share travel experiences and make friends with common travel interests. The audience of social media is mainly young people. In addition, in the early stages of the development of travel social networking sites, users are relatively high-end, often with higher education and better professional backgrounds, which are very similar to the demographic characteristics of travelers and explorers. They also have a stronger need to make friends, and finding users with common interests with them is very attractive to them. And according to the author's previous analysis of a travel social product, this type of website often has a very convenient information release mechanism, which allows users to smoothly publish photos and insights from their travels. As mentioned above, travelers and explorers have a lot of travel experiences to share with others, and this feature of travel social networking sites just meets their needs in this regard.

The following table summarizes the contents of this section, summarizing the business, target users and representative websites of the three types of tourism products.

* Erik Cohen was the first sociologist to conduct research on tourist roles. His classification of tourist roles was based on the "familiarity-strangeness continuum". Based on their preferences for familiar and unfamiliar environments, tourists were divided into organized mass tourists, independent mass tourists, explorers and wanderers.

References:

[1] Wang Ning (Weibo), Liu Danping, Ma Ling, et al., eds. Tourism Sociology. Tianjin: Nankai University Press, 2008

[2] Baidu Data Research Center. 2007 Baidu Top Tourism Industry Report, 2008

About the Author:

@颜小东Kay is a master student at a university in Guangzhou. He was once obsessed with social media and worked with friends on cloud computing. He loves the Internet and is keen on experiencing various Internet products. He is now working with friends on an independent blog related to user experience, "UE Vertical Coordinate"

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