Travel live streaming has no top streamers, and Oriental Selection wants to take the lead

There has never been a "top streamer" in the live broadcast of tourism. This year, New Oriental officially announced its entry into the cultural tourism track and will conduct a travel live broadcast on Douyin on December 10. Let us take a look at the author's detailed introduction.

"Twenty thousand years ago, volcanic activity made Hainan an island. Iron-red magma gushed into the clear blue sky. Hainan grew up underwater like a turtle. All the substances and elements needed for life activities are shining brightly here."

Sitting on the edge of the infinity pool, with his back to the sea and the sun, the celebrity anchor Dun Dun, who was selected by Oriental, started his familiar “narrative”.

Early in the morning of December 10, "See the World through Oriental Selection" was launched for the first time on Douyin and the APP with more than 200 travel routes. In the Douyin live broadcast room, unlike most "background cultural and tourism live broadcasts", the real-life check-ins in "See the World" have a very high "tourism content".

In fact, New Oriental officially announced its entry into the cultural tourism industry as early as July this year. In the past six months, it has established a number of local cultural tourism companies and launched a large number of self-operated cultural tourism and study tour products, which are sold on the "New Oriental Cultural Tourism" account. What is different about this event is that the sales channel of the Oriental Selection APP is used, and the products are all provided by third-party suppliers.

From self-operation to live streaming, from Douyin live broadcast room to Oriental Selection APP, New Oriental has changed its path and entered the cultural tourism track.

As Yu Minhong said, "The business model built on external platforms is very fragile." Cultural and tourism live streaming seems to have become a new bullet after Oriental Selection's independence, but how far can this bullet fly?

1. How did the 16 million GMV come about?

"The infinity pool is really beautiful. Let me show you how to swim." Dun Dun and Bei Bei in the Douyin World Live Broadcast Room are watching the sunrise in the infinity pool, singing K in the yacht while enjoying the sea breeze, and riding on white horses on the beach... They seem to be on a three-day tour at public expense.

Although there is no link and playing is the whole content, the main purpose of Dun Dun and Bei Bei is to attract traffic to the Oriental Selection APP. "If you want to experience the same itinerary as us, click the small windmill in the lower right corner and download the Oriental Selection APP."

The business data group found that the broadcast of "Dongfang Zhenxuan See the World" was mainly divided into two positions, namely Douyin APP, Dongfang Zhenxuan APP and mini program, with different divisions of labor. The former played the role of attracting traffic and planting grass through the content of the live broadcast room, while the latter was responsible for converting sales.

From corn and prawns to sunshine, beaches and waves, celebrity anchors + real travel became Oriental Selection's first strategy, and judging by the data, it was quite effective.

According to Chanmama data, the first day of the live broadcast in the Douyin live broadcast room lasted about 14 hours, with 2.209 million viewers and an average of 5,772 people online; in the Oriental Selection APP, there are anchors explaining specific routes and a special tourism product section has been opened up. During the same time period, the number of people online in the APP live broadcast room was only about one-tenth of that in the Douyin live broadcast room.

However, at 10 p.m., the bullet screen area celebrated, "Today's scene, the GMV of self-built houses (Dongfang Selection APP) reached 16 million."

The data of 16 million means that the GMV within this APP can already compete with the main account of Douyin "Oriental Selection". However, a simple comparison of the user data of both parties shows that the main account of Douyin "Oriental Selection" has 12.108 million viewers, with an average of 25,000 people online, while the number of viewers of "Oriental Selection See the World" is only one-sixth of that of the main account.

In other words, Oriental Selection's "See the World" has earned a GMV almost equal to that of the main account with fewer views and higher average order value.

This is indeed good news for Dongfang Zhenxuan, which has entered a bottleneck period in live streaming sales. In the short term, the sales of cultural tourism products will greatly increase the scale of income and profit margin compared with agricultural products; in the long run, cultural tourism is different from retail, with a longer and deeper service chain, and also represents a broader sky.

2. Live broadcast of cultural tourism: small wins big

So, what is Oriental Selection’s secret to seeing the world with small gains and big risks?

First of all, different product types cover different levels of the population, including four types: route products, hotels, entertainment tickets, and tour guide explanations. All of them are provided by third-party suppliers, and there are no self-operated products.

Earlier media reports said that this special live broadcast was the first time that Oriental Selection launched cultural and tourism products on the App. Currently, more than 100 companies have finalized their cooperation intentions and are about to move in.

The routes include ten overseas travel routes; most of the hotels are high-end, high-star, and design-oriented; and the explanations are provided by Guangzhou Sanmao Information Technology Co., Ltd., and New Oriental Education & Technology Group Co., Ltd. wholly owns Beijing Oriental Zhuoyong Investment Management Co., Ltd., which has previously invested in the company.

Secondly, the pricing is more down-to-earth. This travel live broadcast room is different from the high-end pricing of agricultural products selected by Oriental. Instead, it takes the cost-effective route. Not only do members enjoy discounts, it even supports price comparison across the entire network.

For example, the 6-day 5-day group tour to Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the APP is as low as 3,899 yuan, and only more than 3,500 yuan after the member discount. The provider, Wanmei Holiday Travel Agency, also started live streaming on Douyin early on, with more than ten matrix accounts, and a single Douyin account has about 20,000 fans. The direct selling price of the same package is 3,999 yuan.

Since announcing its entry into the cultural tourism industry in July this year, New Oriental Culture and Tourism has launched a number of self-operated routes, using New Oriental lecturers as tour guides. One Hangzhou route is priced at 29,800 yuan.

Under the temptation of cost-effectiveness, the overseas travel package had sold 350 units just three hours after it was launched, and the total sales on the day reached more than 1,300 units. The total amount was calculated to be about 5 million yuan. The same package was priced at 3,999 yuan in the Douyin Wanmei Holiday Live Room, and the sales volume was only 700+, but there were only dozens of people in the live room at the same time. In comparison, Oriental Selection's ability to bring goods has been proven.

From the perspective of user links, the Douyin "Kan Shijie" account uses content to attract traffic, explanations in the APP live broadcast room, and sales of third-party supplier products in the APP travel and vacation section. The entire model only cuts into the sales link and promotes and selects products. It is not competing with Meituan and Ctrip as some netizens think.

The logic of short videos + live broadcasts is to find people through goods, replace tool consumption with interest consumption, and integrate grass-roots and conversion, which complements the original OTA platform search model.

At the same time, from the perspective of increasing revenue and duplicating tracks, Oriental Selection’s entry into the cultural and tourism sales industry is also in line with the situation in the cultural and tourism industry.

Since the beginning of this year, the cultural tourism industry has shown a strong recovery trend, and live streaming of cultural tourism products is also developing in full swing. Whether it is OTA platforms, traditional travel agencies, travel experts or even short video platforms themselves, they have all started live streaming products.

On June 9 this year, Douyin Life Service launched its first overseas outdoor live broadcast, inviting Gao Yuanyuan, Wang Zhener, Paris Xiao Guoguo and others to promote cross-border travel products while visiting Paris. The platform already has a large number of influencer accounts, mainly through the way of sharing commissions with travel agencies that have opened stores on Douyin.

However, compared with Li Jiaqi in the beauty industry and Yang Ge in the department store industry, there are no top influencers in the entire vertical travel live broadcast track. The East China Little Player, which ranked first in Douyin's national travel list in December, is an MCN transformed account of Tuniu Travel. It has only 530,000 fans, and the peak popularity of its live broadcast room has been around dozens of people in the past two weeks.

Dongfang Zhenxuan has the potential to fill a gap in the market with its cultural tourism model. Whether it is OTA, Douyin, or travel agencies, there is a demand for live streaming and selling goods, and they all need Dongfang Zhenxuan and his team of star anchors.

3. Oriental Selection, Running in Anxiety

Returning to Yu Minhong’s original intention and watching cultural and tourism live broadcasts again, this may just be one of his moves.

Looking back at the development of Oriental Selection in the past two years, Yu Minhong has been trying every means to break through the ceiling of live streaming, expanding the product categories from agricultural products, beauty products to books and wine, deepening the supply chain from live streaming to self-operated operations, replicating channels from Douyin to APP and Taobao, and replicating anchors from Dong Yuhui, Yoyo to Chuanxi, running wildly in anxiety.

The cultural and tourism track opened up this time involves resources, matching, services, and fulfillment, which are completely different from the e-commerce retail track in terms of logic. At the major time node of the recovery of cultural and tourism, this is not only a normal expansion of a new track, but also more like a new growth point cultivated after the bottleneck period of live e-commerce.

After Dongfang Zhenxuan established its APP, Douyin’s popularity and sales inevitably declined. According to Chanmama’s data, the average number of viewers in November this year was 6.921 million, a 43% decrease from 12.179 million in the same period last year; the average sales volume dropped from more than 20 million to more than 10 million. According to the financial report, Douyin is the main source of income for Dongfang Zhenxuan.

The decline in data is due, on the one hand, to the fact that Douyin's live streaming has reached a bottleneck period, and on the other hand, to the fact that Oriental Selection has intentionally diverted traffic.

It is worth noting that the sales volume in the same period last year was relatively average, while the peaks and troughs of sales this year vary greatly. For example, the sales volume on November 18 directly increased the performance of the whole month, reaching more than 30 million yuan. That day was also the theme event of the Oriental Selection Hebei Tour. In fact, every time Oriental Selection holds a special event and does outdoor live broadcasting to bring goods locally, the sales volume is the highest value of the month.

Data shows that in May, the total sales of goods sold at the Oriental Selection Shanxi special event reached 130 million yuan, including local agricultural products and cultural and tourism products. During the 6-day special event, the topic "Shanxi Trip" was on the Douyin hot search list more than 20 times, the topic of "Oriental Selection Shanxi Trip" was played nearly 200 million times, and the short video playback volume on the entire network exceeded 600 million times.

This shows that Oriental Selection’s content strategy is effective, but on the other hand, it also shows that measures to address the decline in traffic are urgent.

In fact, judging from the life cycle of internet celebrities who have become popular on Douyin, Oriental Selection has been very persistent since it became popular in June last year. However, from the perspective of becoming a live streaming platform, agricultural product technology company and cultural communication company, Oriental Selection still has a lot to do.

During the live broadcast, a fan said, "If we use the shared bikes, sales will definitely be higher." But the APP sales model also kills two birds with one stone. It can not only attract new members, but also use the 10% off membership system to shift shopping mindsets to the Oriental Selection APP instead of Douyin.

It is understood that Dongfang Zhenxuan's income mainly comes from commissions for bringing goods and sales of self-operated products. In order to break through the ceiling of MCN influencers' bringing goods, Dongfang Zhenxuan is frantically replicating itself.

The first is the replication of accounts and categories, from Oriental Selection, which focuses on the sale of agricultural products, to Oriental Selection Sees the World, Oriental Selection's self-owned products, Oriental Selection Beautiful Life, Oriental Selection's Books, Oriental Selection's Wine... a matrix-style broadcast to replicate the influence of accounts.

In addition, in terms of specific product categories, going deep into the supply chain and making branded agricultural products with stronger barriers will also help improve profit margins. Previously, Yu Minhong proposed in a live broadcast that by the end of 2024, the number of self-operated categories will reach 400-500.

The second is platform replication, from Douyin to independent APPs, WeChat mini-programs, and then to Taobao live broadcast rooms; different platforms gradually take over different users, set up a 199 yuan membership discount system in the APP live broadcast room, and continue to stratify.

The third is to copy anchors, from Dong Yuhui, Yoyo, to various new generation anchors, the number of anchors in the Oriental Selection series accounts has reached dozens. In the live broadcast room of Watching the World, Chuanxi, the operator of Dun Dun Lianmai, is also attracting fans crazily, "This is a real beauty trap used by our Oriental Selection, please click to download and pay more attention to it." Dun Dun also joked.

Overall, Oriental Selection has always been practicing not putting all your eggs in one basket.

However, from the current perspective, people still choose Oriental Selection based on popular anchors; multi-matrix and multi-channel can only increase revenue, but cannot solve the fundamental problem of traffic sources - even with the recent launch of Oriental Selection Culture and Tourism, the number of downloads of the Oriental Selection APP is only ranked outside the top 20 on the shopping list and outside the top 200 on the free list.

The pain of becoming an independent platform is inevitable for Oriental Selection, but the benefits after independence are irreplaceable by symbiosis with the platform.

IV. Conclusion

Sometimes, choice is often more important than effort.

Compared with other well-known MCN companies, Yu Minhong is an entrepreneur who has experienced many ups and downs. It is precisely because of this that the market has given Oriental Selection a market value far exceeding that of other MCN companies.

But if you want to become a platform and break away from Tik Tok and big anchors, you still have to find a way to generate your own traffic - compared to constantly making baskets, it is more important to keep laying eggs.

"In my opinion, the reason why New Oriental has such strong core competitiveness in the education era is that it has a strong educational methodology and can continuously train good teachers. The teachers who come out of New Oriental are good role models in the industry." A former education and training practitioner told Business Data.

In the live broadcast era, Dongfang Zhenxuan still needs to think about its core competitiveness other than "leadership". At present, Dongfang Zhenxuan seems to be going through a period of exploration. After the exploration period, what kind of answer Yu Minhong will give to the market is really exciting.

Author: Huang Xiaoyi WeChat public account: Business Data School