In order to ensure that every link could be achieved at the lowest cost, Li Mu required the travel companies in both China and the United States to give him the lowest price in the market, and forced them to sign a price guarantee agreement, promising not to supply the tourism resources in their hands to other third-party companies at a price lower than or equal to that of Makino Technology.
In other words, the negotiated price of Makino Technology's resources had to be the lowest.
At first, several American travel companies still had doubts about this "overbearing clause," so Li Mu took some time to gather them for a meeting.
At the meeting, Li Mu consulted these companies about their current doubts and found that their biggest concern was that the number of customers Taobao was not big enough.
In their opinion, if the number of customers was not enough, the market potential was naturally not enough. If they also promised the lowest price, it would be very difficult to deal with if more customers had objections.
The person in charge of the largest travel service company in California said to Li Mu, "Mr. Li, we are willing to give Makino Technology a sufficiently low service price, but you want us to guarantee the lowest price for Makino Technology, and to ensure that the other companies can't be lower than or equal to this price. This is indeed a bit harsh for us."
Li Mu asked him, "What do you think is harsh? You can tell me, and we can negotiate."
The person said, "We have fully studied the market situation and prospects of first-tier cities in Hua Xia going to the United States. Although we are also looking forward to the huge revenue growth that Hua Xia's tourists can bring to the United States, according to our analysis, the growth space of first-tier cities in Hua Xia to the United States is not particularly large in a short period of time. If we give you the exclusive lowest price at this time, it will be very harmful to our other customers."
Li Mu smiled and said, "At this stage, whether it is Americans traveling to Hua Xia or people from Hua Xia traveling to the United States, there are relatively few. But it is precisely because of this that the future development space is very huge."
As he spoke, Li Mu gave an example and said, "You see, this time we are nominally strengthening the tourism interaction between California and first-tier cities in Hua Xia, that is, Yan Jing, Shanghai, Yang City, and Shenzhen City. But do you know that in addition to the U.S. Embassy in Hua Xia in Yan Jing, there are U.S. Consulates General in Shanghai and Yang City? These two cities cover East China and South China. They are the most economically developed areas in Hua Xia. It can be said that the richest and highest per capita income cities in Hua Xia are all within their coverage. So, do you really think that behind this is only the business of four cities and California?"
After a pause, Li Mu continued, "We are all in the tourism business, so we are very clear about the basic elements of international air routes, especially for such a long flight from Hua Xia to the United States. The route can be said to be hub to hub. Now that I have the lowest air ticket price in the market and the lowest hotel price in the market, I am now asking you for the lowest price for other tourism resources in the market. If you cooperate with me, then the cost of the tourism products I design will be far lower than the normal level. In addition, I am not trying to make money at all. As long as I add operating costs to the cost, I don't need to take a cent more profit. In this way, the price I offer will be the lowest price in the market.
"If I provide a seven-day tour from Los Angeles to Yan Jing, the overall price is a few hundred dollars cheaper than other channels, I believe that people in other states around California will not hesitate to choose to depart from Los Angeles. It will only take slightly more than an hour to fly from Phoenix, Arizona to Los Angeles, and it will only cost a few tens of dollars.
"If the price I offer is a thousand dollars cheaper than other channels, not to mention the surrounding states, I believe that even New Yorkers on the East Coast will be willing to buy my service, and then spend a few hours to make a round trip to Los Angeles. I heard that the price of a flight from the East Coast to the West Coast is less than a hundred dollars all year round."
The participating travel companies all fell silent. What Li Mu said was indeed very attractive to them.
Everyone had more or less heard about the situation of Hua Xia. At present, there were not many hub airports in Hua Xia. Most of the hub airports for international flights were Yan Jing, Shanghai, and Yang City. It could even be said that at present, if most people in Hua Xia wanted to go to the United States, they had to go to one of these three airports from where they were, and then take an international flight to the United States.
In this way, it also meant that the people behind Li Mu's big plan did not only cover the citizens of the four first-tier cities, but also the people of the whole country, or at least half of the country.
It was very likely that in the future, when the people of Hua Xia considered traveling to the United States, they would consider where to go to Taobao to buy a free travel package, or directly go to Taobao to join a tour, and then set off from these three first-tier cities. In this way, the number of potential customers would greatly increase.
In the United States, there were many hub airports, and their distribution was relatively scattered. For example, New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and so on were all big airports that were ranked very high. In theory, there were direct flights from any of these hubs to Yan Jing or Shanghai.
However, the frequency of Americans taking planes was comparable to that of Hua Xia people taking trains. They would often fly here and there, and the more they flew, the more experience they would have. Moreover, Americans were all backpackers, and more often traveled to poor places. They were very careful and knew how to use transfer flights to get cheaper travel. Americans were better than people of Hua Xia.
Most Americans would set off from any of the hub airports in the United States to Yan Jing. When they realized that they could save hundreds or even thousands of dollars on a private plane, it was difficult for them to resist this temptation.
In theory, if Li Mu could lower the overall cost of traveling from Los Angeles to Yan Jing enough, ordinary tourists from the United States who came to Yan Jing might consider buying the Los Angeles to Yan Jing package provided by Li Mu. In this way, his coverage would be far more than just California.
These tourism companies had always thought that Li Mu was helping Schwarzenegger to make some political achievements because he had a good relationship with Schwarzenegger and to increase the tourism income of California. However, they did not expect that Li Mu actually wanted to use the price advantage to turn California into a core hub for tourists from the United States to Hua Xia.
In this way, this matter was even more promising.
For these companies, it was like they had suddenly seen the light. Coupled with Li Mu's unparalleled resources, they agreed without hesitation after thinking about it for a while.
Therefore, Li Mu won again and obtained the cheapest tourism resources in the entire California.
These tourism companies covered a wide range of resources, including tour guides, translators, cars, food and beverage, tickets, attractions, and even shopping. The overall cost of this area was reduced, and it could allow Taobao to have more room to operate.
When the summit forum was about to end, Li Mu had already incorporated all the participating companies into the scope of cooperation with Taobao. At the same time, he obtained the lowest price in the industry.
The biggest attraction of Taobao to tourism related companies in China and the United States was that it helped both parties find a new market to cash in.
Before this, American tourism companies had a large number of local tourism resources, but their main targets were from the United States, Europe, Australia, Japan, and South Korea. Hua Xia had a population of 1.3 billion, and the number of people who traveled to the United States every year was negligible. Now, Taobao had started to export more tourists from Hua Xia to the United States, giving them another group to cash in.
If this chain was reversed, it would also be beneficial to Hua Xia's tourism companies.
Whether it was the United States or Hua Xia, the use of tourism resources was far from saturation. This meant that both markets needed more consumers.
However, to Li Mu, compared to letting tourists from Hua Xia go abroad, he hoped that overseas tourists would come in. At the same time, he hoped that they could publicize the great rivers and mountains of Hua Xia so that more overseas tourists would know about it.
In order to promote the overseas tourism project as soon as possible, Li Mu invited the Central TV documentary team to organize and produce a documentary of all the famous attractions in Hua Xia. He was going to put it on Twitter to promote it. Central TV also felt that this was a good opportunity for overseas people to get to know Hua Xia, so they agreed without hesitation. They did not even need Li Mu to bear a single cent of the production costs.
After that, Li Mu gathered the executives of Makino Technology and Taobao for a meeting to sort out the overseas tourism service process.
First, they would look for headhunting companies to quickly poach a group of professionals in the tourism industry and form a complete tourism team to be fully responsible for the three stages of the entire service.
The pre-sales stage would include the development of tourism plans, customer contact, and help users apply for visas. Especially visa issues, not only would they help users prepare the necessary materials and help users fill out the necessary forms, but they would also need to organize users to go to embassies and consulates for face-to-face signings to maximize the success rate.
The mid-sales stage would include customer organization, gathering, sending groups, following groups, translating, and coordinating the tourism resources between the two companies.
The post-sales stage would include customer return visits, satisfaction surveys, complaint handling, and feedback.
Second, the cooperation process of the entire business could be described in one sentence: Makino Technology would set up the stage, and Taobao would perform. All the costs would be connected by Makino Technology and the suppliers. Then, Taobao would integrate the sales, and then settle the accounts with Makino Technology. Based on this principle, the different plans for the tour groups and self-driving tours would be completely decided by Taobao. They would make the plans and calculate the price.
Li Mu's aim was to not earn a single cent in the early stages. It was fine to make it even. He would use the lowest price to subsidize the users and quickly build up the market. If the feedback from the users was not very positive, he could take out some money to subsidize the users. For example, the cost of a travel plan was 8,000 RMB, and Taobao could subsidize each person for 1,000 RMB. He would spend a few hundred million RMB first to make overseas tourism popular, and then he would not have to worry about not having money to earn in the future.
Third, once the plan was developed, he would immediately start selling it on Taobao. YY, Weibo, and Twitter would immediately follow up and promote it. He would get it on the right track as soon as possible!
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