Since Li Mu's Gubeishui Town project and the film and television base project both cooperated with the state-owned tourism group, the state-owned tourism group also attached great importance to Li Mu's promotion of outbound tourism in the four first-tier cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Yangzhou, and Shenzhen, as well as in California. Not only did they fully participate in the project, but they also arranged for three senior consultants to participate in the planning of the summit forum.
The reason why they had to come up with a plan before the forum started was because Li Mu's idea was to first come up with some general plans for the Summit Forum, just like how travel apps were customized for free travel or group travel. Then, he would bring these plans to the Summit Forum and let both parties choose one of them. Otherwise, he would mess up the elements and put them together again.
If both parties were to talk freely, everyone's situations were different, and they did not know each other well enough, they might not be able to come up with a feasible plan even after three to five days.
Therefore, Li Mu felt that when he talked to both parties, he could not talk about A's way of doing things, nor could he talk about B's way of doing things. He had to talk about his own way of doing things and let both parties adapt to him. After all, he was the father who was paying and pushing everything behind the scenes.
If he wanted to promote cross-tourism between two groups with different cultures, different economic development, and different consumption concepts, the first thing he had to do was to seek common ground while reserving differences.
What was common ground? It was nothing more than the pursuit of quality-price ratio, which included lower prices, better services, and better experiences.
The price was easy to solve. If Li Mu were to be the exclusive distributor for the airlines and hotel groups, he would be prepared to subsidize some money in the early stages. Even if he did not pay a single cent, he would still be able to fight for a wholesale price for the users, and the price advantage would naturally increase.
However, Li Mu was doing it online, after all, and travel was essentially an offline activity. No one could turn on a computer and let users "travel in the cloud". Therefore, in this part, he had to have offline companies cooperate with him and work together to serve both parties' customers.
First of all, he had to establish a perfect customer service mechanism for users who bought free travel services.
Whether it was Hua Xia people coming to the United States or Americans coming to Hua Xia, no matter how good their language skills were, they would definitely encounter some problems that were difficult to solve or that they didn't know how to solve. At this time, if someone could provide services in their mother tongue, it would be a much better experience for the users.
After 2010, the American travel companies became very sneaky. They sold the service of traveling around Asia to their own people, and then in order to save costs, they placed the 24-hour customer service in India. This was because the cost of labor in India was very low, and India itself had been colonized by the British for many years, so English was very common. Although these people spoke English with a very obvious accent, the actual communication problems were not very big.
It felt like a northerner listening to a southerner speak Mandarin. Although the pronunciation might not be very accurate, it was not a big problem to communicate.
However, this kind of thing was very nonsensical. An American came to Hua Xia to travel, encountered an emergency, and called customer service in India …
Li Mu felt that since the free travel service was sold by Taobao, and the tourism resources sold by Taobao were integrated from the market by Makino Technology, he had to be responsible for the users. Therefore, he had to open a 24-hour English service hotline and a 24-hour Chinese service hotline.
It was not necessary for him to place the English service in India. He wanted to place the customer service centers of each language in the other country, which meant that the Chinese customer service center would be placed in the United States, and the English service center would be placed in Hua Xia.
A big reason for doing this was that he felt that when a person from Hua Xia went to Los Angeles and encountered a problem that he did not understand, he could call back and ask a customer service person who worked somewhere in Hua Xia. This did not seem to be much more reliable than placing the customer service center in India.
It was better to directly hire a Chinese person from California who was fluent in both Chinese and English. He did not need a high degree, as long as he had a good understanding of the local situation. He could even directly place the customer service center in Chinatown, so that the Chinese could go to work.
As for the English customer service center in China, it was not very feasible to hire an American who understood the local situation. After all, Hua Xia was not a country of immigrants. However, it was not so difficult to hire a person from Hua Xia who spoke good English.
The customer service center was established to respond to all kinds of problems and emergencies that the users might encounter. In this way, the biggest obstacle of international free travel, the language barrier, would be solved.
In addition, the tourism groups of both China and the United States must connect all their resources to the customer service center. This would make it more convenient to provide services to free travel customers.
For example, if a Chinese couple arrived in Los Angeles and decided to rent a car and hire a tour guide, they could inform the customer service directly, and the customer service would place an order with the local tourism company in Los Angeles. After receiving the order, they would immediately respond to the order. Not only would they serve the users, but they would also create profits for them.
The best solution was actually to directly import all the resources of the tourism group into the Taobao platform. The users could buy directly according to their actual needs. However, this year, the mobile Internet had not started yet. Without the support of the mobile terminal, the effect of such a platform would be greatly reduced.
The consultants of the tourism companies all agreed with this model. In the past, it was difficult for them to make money from free travel customers. However, once there was a platform that connected them with free travel customers, they would have the opportunity to sell their services to the free travel customers.
As for group tours, this was actually the main source of income for the tourism companies. It was also the first choice for most travel customers.
Combined with the many scandals of the tourism companies he had heard in his previous life, Li Mu put forward his own requirements in this solution.
"In the future, group tours sold through Taobao must be supervised by Taobao, and the tourism companies that accept group tours must be given a credit score. Once the number of complaints from customers exceeds the limit, the tourism company will immediately be punished or even taken off the shelves."
The senior consultants of the state-owned tourism group expressed their opinions one after another. "Mr. Li, this requirement is too harsh for the tourism group. The tourism group itself is the actual provider of the service in this cooperation. The online platform built by your company and the tourism group should have a sales relationship. As long as there is a disclaimer on your platform, in the future, all kinds of problems arising from the service with the users will be solved by us privately."
Li Mu waved his hand and said, "That won't do. I want to do this business not because I want to help you sell the service and earn the price difference, but because I want to make high-quality overseas travel a business card. Therefore, the cooperation model between us in this area is that I provide you with the users. You are responsible for me, and I am responsible for the users. If the users have any dissatisfaction, they can directly hold me responsible. If I determine that it is your problem, then I will hold you responsible on behalf of the users."
The other party originally just wanted to fight for more benefits and initiative for themselves, but they did not expect Li Mu to be so tough on this matter. So one of them said to Li Mu, "Li Zong, as a consultant, we are here to help you find and solve problems. Therefore, in this business, I really think that you should maximize the profits and minimize the responsibility."
Speaking up to this point, the other party explained in detail, "You see, the tourism group itself is a very complicated industry, and there are many pitfalls in it. The birth of a tourism group product is actually no different from the birth of an insurance product. Every step of the product needs to be calculated, and the actual cost of the product needs to be checked repeatedly, such as air tickets, hotel accommodation, tickets, labor fees, and risk costs. Then, the hidden gray income in the product is calculated. In this way, it will be very difficult to reduce the problem of customer complaints to a very low level. For you, the best choice is actually to determine a percentage of the commission with us, and then hang out the disclaimer clause. Then, you can get rid of the responsibility."
Li Mu said, "You have to understand that now is a traffic-oriented society. The core of all industries will gradually converge to the traffic-oriented center. In other words, whoever has the traffic-oriented hands is the first party."
As he said this, Li Mu paused and said, "In our cooperation, I am the one with the traffic-oriented hands. I am the first party."
"If you are a flour mill, according to the business model of the planned economy decades ago, you are indeed the first party, and all the distributors are begging to sell your goods. But times have changed. Now there are giants like Wal-Mart. In the retail market, they are the center of the traffic-oriented hands. If you want to sell your goods here, you have to listen to them. If they say they want you to bet your money, they can bet your money. If they say they want you to give up profits to their customers, you have to obediently give up profits to their customers."
"And what I want to be is the Wal-Mart of the tourism industry. I am not selling goods for you. I am purchasing goods from you and then selling them to my customers. For me, the customers are the most important. As for whose flour I am selling, it is actually not important. As long as I have flour here, it is enough."
Li Mu's words were very clear. It was just that it was difficult for today's tourism groups to understand the future business model. But it did not matter. Since he was leading a new way of playing, these companies naturally had to follow his own rules of the game.
In the future, more and more young people chose to buy tours on online platforms. It was not only because it was more convenient to buy online, but also because it was easier to defend their rights on online platforms. Once there was a problem with the services bought from Ctrip, whether it was self-operated or not, they could look for Ctrip to defend their rights. Although Ctrip's rights protection might not be the best, it was definitely much better than a certain travel company or travel agency.
Therefore, this was also why the customer base of offline travel agencies was becoming narrower and narrower. Those who really understood tourism and had the ability to spend money on tourism would spend it online. These offline travel agencies could only fool middle-aged and elderly people and set up low-cost shopping groups. If these shopping group travel agencies wanted to make money, they had to desperately hide their dirty deeds. In the end, they fell into a vicious cycle of getting worse and worse, making themselves notorious …
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