Yu Minhong just invested in a Shandong guy

This was a somewhat unexpected financing.

This week, the overseas Chinese chartered car travel company, Huangbaoche Travel, announced that it had received a financing of 200 million yuan, led by New Oriental Group and Shenqi Capital, and followed by Wuxi Huishan Government Fund. So far, Huangbaoche's financing has brought together state-owned and industrial capital. We are not unfamiliar with New Oriental, and Shenqi Capital is an investment platform under 58 Group.

This time, Yu Minhong invested in Meng Lei, a post-80s Shandong native - the founder of Huangbaoche. Born in a rural area of ​​Shandong, Meng Lei grew up in a poor family and went out to work to earn money before finishing junior high school. After several struggles, Meng Lei founded Huangbaoche Travel, a chartered car brand that connects overseas Chinese drivers and outbound travel users, in 2014. Before the epidemic, Huangbaoche had risen fiercely, serving more than 10 million outbound users in total, covering more than 90 countries around the world.

The sudden outbreak of the epidemic forced the once star tourism company to stagnate. Until this year, the tourism industry ushered in a retaliatory recovery, and Yu Minhong saw an opportunity. As he mentioned, "Let New Oriental teachers with strong knowledge accumulation become tour guides who truly love to share culture and knowledge." New Oriental officially entered the tourism industry.

After three years of the epidemic, the tourism industry is gradually recovering.

Before 2020, Huangbaoche was still a star startup with a long list of investors. According to Qichacha, since its establishment in 2014, Huangbaoche has completed eight rounds of financing, with a cumulative financing amount of more than 1.3 billion yuan, and many well-known venture capital institutions such as Sequoia China, Matrix Partners, Gobi Partners, Xiangfeng K2VC, and Shenzhen Capital Group are behind it.

However, during the epidemic, Huangbaoche, which focuses on outbound tourism, was hit hard. After experiencing the suspension of overseas business, a large reduction in team members, the transformation to domestic chartering, and a sharp decline in revenue, it finally restarted in January 2023.

According to China Travel News, when Huangbaoche returned, it quietly completed a round of financing with old shareholders. In the eyes of industry insiders, this seemed like a self-rescue financing launched by old shareholders in order to restart their business.

Until the latest round of financing, one of the leading investors was New Oriental Group led by Yu Minhong. Speaking of the origins with New Oriental, founder Meng Lei revealed in a recent media interview that many of the drivers and guides of Royal Charter Travel had training experience at New Oriental, which to some extent contributed to the fate of Royal Charter Travel and New Oriental. He also said that in this round of financing, in addition to New Oriental's financial support for Royal Charter Travel, the two sides will also cooperate in business.

Yu Minhong's move into a travel company was unexpected but reasonable. An important background is that at the beginning of this year, the New Oriental team repeatedly laid out cultural tourism. In July, New Oriental's 1 billion yuan investment in a cultural tourism company attracted countless onlookers, and the topic once became a hot search. At that time, Beijing New Oriental Cultural Tourism Co., Ltd. was officially established with a registered capital of 1 billion yuan. Its business scope included tourism business, tourism development project planning and consulting, and organizing cultural and artistic exchange activities.

According to Qichacha, the newly established cultural tourism company is 100% controlled by New Oriental Education & Technology Group Co., Ltd. Yu Minhong is in charge of it personally , serving as the legal representative and chairman, which shows how much he values ​​the cultural tourism industry. On July 21, New Oriental officially announced that it would develop a cultural tourism business, and said that this was a "second venture" after Oriental Selection.

Just like in 2021, when everyone was saying that "live broadcasting of agricultural products is not easy to do", Yu Minhong took the helm of Oriental Selection and made live broadcasting of agricultural products a success. Now, he resolutely led the team to enter the field amid the voice of "cultural tourism is not easy to do".

"Let the New Oriental teachers who have strong knowledge accumulation become tour guides who truly love to share culture and knowledge, and take people through time and space while walking, looking back at the past stories of their country and family and the ocean of life, and feeling the great spirit and profound Chinese culture in the years and civilization." While walking in Longshang, Yu Minhong naturally came up with the idea of ​​doing cultural tourism.

In fact, cultural tourism is not a strange field for New Oriental. More than a decade ago, Yu Minhong led a team to launch international study tours and domestic camps for teenagers, but at that time the business belonged to the education sector of New Oriental. This time, New Oriental officially entered the tourism industry, and its target customer group is the middle-aged and elderly people who are not paid much attention. At present, New Oriental Cultural Tourism has established branches in Shaanxi, Gansu, Zhejiang, Xinjiang and other places, and the opening speed is amazing.

It is worth mentioning that this time, a guiding fund also appeared in the financing of Huang Baoche - Wuxi Huishan Economic Development Zone Government Guidance Fund. Through the official WeChat account of "Wuxi Huishan Release", it can be seen that as early as 2018, Wuxi Huishan District had already invested in and signed a contract with Huang Baoche, and officially settled in the Huishan Economic Development Zone Software Park at the end of 2019. This is also a microcosm of the local government's vigorous layout of the cultural and tourism industry.

Those were unforgettable and difficult times.

Meng Lei, the founder of Huangbaoche, was born in the 1980s. His family was poor. In order to change the status quo, he came to Beijing from his hometown before graduating from junior high school to work and earn money. In those years, he did almost all the hard labor that did not require skills and education, and lived in a damp and crowded basement. After struggling at the bottom of various industries, Meng Lei slowly found his direction. He worked as a ground promoter in the early days of Ctrip, handing out small cards at the station every day.

It was also this experience that allowed him to experience the cultural differences in different places and accumulate many rules and experiences in doing business. In the Internet and entrepreneurial boom, he decided to work hard in the tourism industry. In 2004, the 20-year-old Meng Lei founded Woke Business Travel, providing international first-class and business-class air ticket reservation services, serving high-end people.

In the early days of his business, in order to expand the first batch of users, Meng Lei always bought a first-class ticket and sat in the VIP lounge of the Capital Airport before dawn at 6 a.m., promoting his products to passers-by one by one. In the following nearly ten years, Meng Lei, who came from a grassroots background, built Wo Ke from scratch to a company with an annual net profit of tens of millions. However, under the competition of multiple platforms, Wo Ke began to grow sluggishly. In 2013, after comprehensive consideration, Meng Lei decisively sold the company.

After a period of rest, Meng Lei gave up the more niche overseas customized tours and turned his attention to overseas chartered cars. In his opinion, a perfect free travel solution cannot lack standardized chartered car services. After half a year of preparation, Huang Chartered Car was officially launched at the end of 2014.

At first, Huangbaoche's customer acquisition method was quite primitive. They summarized the information released by part-time tour guides in major overseas Chinese communities and travel exchange websites, and used the most stupid telephone sales method. There was no time to develop an APP, so Meng Lei opened an online store on Tmall. With his strong local sales ability, he recruited the earliest batch of drivers, guides and users for Huangbaoche. According to reports at the time, during the 2015 Spring Festival, Huangbaoche received tens of thousands of orders.

At the end of the year, Meng Lei recruited Pan Fei, who had been working in the tourism industry for ten years, as the company's CEO. Together, the two led Huangbaoche to carve out a place in the tourism industry at home and abroad. As the founder, although Meng Lei did not have a resume from a prestigious school or a well-known company, he still led Huangbaoche to maintain a stable financing rhythm.

But the crisis came in 2018. In May of that year, Huangbaoche started a new round of financing, but the investment and financing atmosphere in the venture capital market was severe at that time, and Pan Fei went out to raise funds for two months but got nothing. "It is very likely that we will not get the money. We recalculated the accounts and spent more than a month planning and laid off nearly 300 people." Pan Fei recalled in the documentary "Flashpoint", "There is no other way. (If we don't lay off) we will run out of money in three months."

After a cliff-like growth, Huangbaoche successfully received financing in 2019. So far, after years of development, Huangbaoche has developed into a comprehensive and innovative one-stop travel service platform covering overseas Chinese airport pick-up, Chinese chartered car (tour), local customized (tour) and other businesses, serving more than 10 million outbound users, covering more than 90 countries, more than 1,800 cities, and more than 300 international airports around the world.

But unexpectedly, an epidemic brought a devastating blow. In the following three years, Huangbaoche almost disappeared, and only officially returned in January this year.

Under the official tweet about the resumption of business of Huang Charter Car, Meng Lei left a message: "I am grateful to everyone who has given support at this moment. The most important thing in life is to live up to the trust. No matter what, I will definitely do a good job in Huang Charter Car Travel, live up to the shareholders, the drivers, and the Huang Charter Car partners who have never left me."

Looking back at the bumpy past, we have now crossed thousands of mountains - the generous investment from investors this time has undoubtedly boosted the morale of Huangbaoche as it has emerged from the trough, and is also a ray of encouragement for the entire tourism industry.

After three years, the tourism industry finally breathed a sigh of relief.

The latest statistics from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism show that in the first half of this year, the total number of domestic tourists increased by 63.9% year-on-year to 2.384 billion, and domestic tourism revenue increased by 95.9% year-on-year to 2.3 trillion yuan. With the upcoming Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day, with 8 consecutive holidays, we may usher in the hottest tourism season in the past three years.

Let’s look at outbound travel first. In August this year, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism announced the third batch of countries and regions that have resumed outbound group travel. The popularity of major outbound travel destinations around the world has risen rapidly. The market expects that the outbound travel market will usher in a small peak in passenger flow during this year’s Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day Golden Week.

Data from Ctrip, Fliggy and other platforms show that as of September 12, the total number of outbound travel orders during the National Day holiday reached 20 times that of the same period last year. Although there is still some time before the "Golden Week", the number of international air tickets and international hotel bookings has far exceeded the same period last year, and the search popularity has also returned to the same level as the same period in 2019.

Domestic tourism is also booming. On September 13, the railway 12306 sold train tickets for the first day of the National Day Golden Week. This year, the national railway is expected to transport 190 million passengers during the National Day Golden Week. Immediately, the topic of "12306 ticket grabbing" quickly became a hot search on Weibo, and some netizens exclaimed that "it is harder to grab tickets than Jay Chou's concert."

Airline tickets and hotel bookings have also risen. According to Ctrip data, in the first week of September, domestic travel product bookings increased nearly five times year-on-year, with weekly growth rates of air tickets, homestays and other formats exceeding 50%. The average price per domestic air ticket was nearly 1,300 yuan, up 20% from the summer vacation, and scenic spot tickets doubled. Many people were discouraged by the price when planning their trips, and one netizen joked, "I booked my air tickets and hotels by pinching my philtrum."

Tourism demand is booming, and new competitors are emerging in the industry. Among them , Douyin is the most impressive . In July this year, Douyin, which has 700 million daily active users, quietly established a travel agency (Chengdu Haikuotiankong Travel Agency Co., Ltd.), making a big move into the hotel and travel industry. Before that, Douyin has been making continuous moves in the tourism industry, not only launching a policy to support hotel and travel businesses, but also launching a calendar room function, and even upgrading the hotel and travel business to a first-level department, parallel to the store business.

There are also Kuaishou, Xiaohongshu and Dongfangzhenxuan, which either link up with traditional OTA platforms, or complete "scenic spot planting" through short videos and other content, or promote cultural tourism products in live broadcasts, etc., becoming indispensable content carriers in the recovery of cultural tourism. The confrontation between new and old players is fierce, and the upcoming National Day holiday is bound to be another tough battle that cannot be missed.

Various cities have also launched a battle to attract customers. Overseas, such as Thailand, issued a "visa-free" policy for Chinese tourists to Thailand. In order to meet the travel needs of the majority of tourists, Changchun has added more than 30 round-trip flights; Wan Liping, director of the Nanchang Municipal Bureau of Culture, Radio, Film, Television and Tourism, even called on netizens across the country: "Don't worry about your vacation and leave it to Nanchang."

The Super Golden Week is coming soon. Have you arranged your travel plans?