Is Yu Minhong going to snatch business from travel agencies?, Injecting 1 billion yuan for the third entrepreneurial selection | Shanxi | Yu Minhong
Yu Minhong is going to snatch business from travel agencies? This is a story about "the wolf really came".
On July 21, New Oriental's official account announced that, following the selection of Oriental, New Oriental would officially develop its cultural and tourism business. This means that Yu Minhong, the founder of New Oriental who has been striving to find new directions, has found a new direction after achieving some success in the field of e-commerce live streaming.
What is the winning chance for New Oriental, who debuted in the education and training industry, to switch to cultural and tourism?
join in a game
New Oriental's interest in the cultural and tourism industry is not unfounded.
In the second half of last year, New Oriental's Oriental Selection Studio became popular because of the leading anchors such as Dong Yuhui. Tiktok's account rose 3 million followers a week and its daily sales exceeded 10 million. Since then, various data have kept breaking records. In January of this year, the listed platform New Oriental Online issued an announcement, renaming the company to "Oriental Selection Holdings Limited" and securities abbreviation "Oriental Selection".
However, the highlight of the e-commerce live streaming industry is difficult to sustain in the long term. According to the research report of Haitong Securities, from January to March this year, the average monthly GMV of Dongfang Zhenxuan fell by 20 million yuan, and the average monthly viewership fell below 10 million, which is lower than the performance from June to December 2022.
On February 27th of this year, Yu Minhong mentioned in his personal live broadcast about the history of the Beijing Hangzhou Grand Canal that "New Oriental wants to do cultural tourism, and I am also interested in geography." His idea of entering the cultural tourism industry was first revealed.
In mid May, the Oriental Selection team conducted a special promotion in Shanxi, where Yu Minhong, Dong Yuhui, Mingming and other anchors went to Taiyuan, Xinzhou, Datong, Shuozhou and other places to live promote Shanxi's cultural tourism, agricultural products, and more. Before the start of the broadcast, Dong Yuhui's video commentary on Shanxi, which was released as a warm-up for this event, became popular in advance——
"Time seems to favor the land of Shanxi, leaving many traces of its passage here. The fragrant and refreshing Fenjiu in the deep alleys is a wonderful encounter between time and wine yeast, and the rich vinegar on every household's table is the long-term seal between time and sorghum." "Similarly, carbon has become an indestructible diamond, embellishing the shining star river at the fingertips. If a coal mine burns itself, it will light up the lights of every household in the city; similarly, soil, being in the countryside to nourish the five grains, protect human life, and being in the kilns to endure the flames, condensing Chinese civilization." In the commentary, similar sentences are widely circulated and praised by netizens. Introduce the copywriting "ceiling" of Shanxi culture.
As expected, this live broadcast achieved impressive results. As of the first ten days of June this year, the short videos of the Shanxi special section of Orient Selection had been played more than 300 million times, and more than 20 times appeared in Tiktok Hot Search. Many netizens have found that Shanxi not only has coal mines and aged vinegar, but also has a long and rich historical and cultural heritage.
After several preparations, New Oriental's intention for the cultural and tourism industry finally came to fruition. Tianyan search information shows that Beijing New Oriental Culture and Tourism Co., Ltd., with a capital injection of 1 billion yuan, was established on July 19. Its legal representative and chairman Yu Minhong, whose business scope includes tourism business, planning and consulting of tourism development projects, organizing cultural and artistic exchange activities, literary creation, Internet sales, etc. The company is 100% owned by New Oriental Education Technology Group Co., Ltd.
After New Oriental and Oriental Selection, this is Yu Minhong's third entrepreneurship. This time, he attempted to become a pioneer in the cultural and tourism industry.
opportunity
Is there a chance for Yu Minhong to enter the cultural and tourism industry? The answer is yes.
From his own conditions, Yu Minhong has created the glory of New Oriental, and Dongfang Selection also has a good fan base. The fame and operational experience accumulated from the first two entrepreneurial ventures will make New Oriental Culture and Tourism stand on the shoulders of giants. As long as the product quality is up to standard, the early sales of New Oriental's cultural and tourism products will not be a problem.
On the other hand, New Oriental Culture and Tourism announced its focus on the middle-aged and elderly market, claiming to provide high-quality cultural and tourism services with a sense of cultural happiness, knowledge acquisition, and personal pursuit. Middle aged and elderly people and culture are the key words for this entrepreneurship. In terms of product and consumer positioning, New Oriental Culture and Tourism still targets the blue ocean.
After three years of impact from the epidemic, the tourism industry has experienced talent loss and a rapid rebound in tourism demand, resulting in frequent chaos during the summer travel peak this year. At this time, the establishment of New Oriental Culture and Tourism is timely. In response to this, Wu Wenzhi, the director of the Tourism and Exhibition Department at the School of Business Administration of East China Normal University, made a representative comment: "The profit model of the traditional travel service industry should have been reformed long ago. Encourage new recruits like New Oriental Culture and Tourism to prioritize service and content, and encourage more new tour guides and service providers to initiate a disruptive revolution. Travel services that rely on low prices and kickbacks will eventually be eliminated. More and more customers need high-quality cultural and tourism services that have a sense of cultural happiness, knowledge acquisition, and personal pursuit!"
Can the entry of New Oriental Culture and Tourism bring disruptive changes to the entire industry, as the existing low-cost group tour model in the cultural and tourism industry is difficult to overcome? Many people are waiting and waiting. From the perspective of consumers, creating good tourism products that make middle-aged and elderly people who are relatively idle and wealthy willing to pay for and travel with peace of mind will also be a success that the market enjoys.
challenge
In the article "Entrepreneurship Again! New Oriental Culture and Tourism!" released by the official WeChat account of New Oriental, Yu Minhong's philosophy in cultural tourism is to make New Oriental teachers with strong knowledge accumulation become tour guides who truly love to share culture and knowledge. They lead people through time and space, gazing at the stories of their homeland and the sea of life, and perceiving the great spirit and profound Chinese culture through time and civilization.
If it were the gold medal teachers of New Oriental leading the team on a trip, there would naturally be many people willing to pay, and then what? New Oriental Culture and Tourism still faces many challenges.
Previously, Dongfang Zhenxuan focused on live streaming sales and promotion in the agricultural and cultural tourism industries, which was much simpler. Yu Minhong only needed to do a good job in supplier control and product entry barriers. Once truly immersing oneself in tourism routes, New Oriental Culture and Tourism will enter the entire industry chain of "food, accommodation, transportation, tourism, shopping and entertainment", and the complexity will increase exponentially.
At that time, New Oriental Culture and Tourism not only needs a group of excellent tour guides, but also needs to establish a labor-intensive tourism enterprise that includes route design, sales promotion, after-sales service personnel, etc., and huge labor costs are inevitable. Meanwhile, as a tourism intermediary, the core resources involved in the product, such as accommodation, catering, transportation, tourism, and entertainment projects, are not directly controlled by New Oriental Culture and Tourism. Establishing a connection with these high-quality resources also requires a process. For example, it is extremely difficult to book tickets for the Forbidden City, which is very hot this summer. Once high-end customers have a demand, can New Oriental Culture and Tourism solve this problem? If purchasing resources from existing tourism wholesalers, who is this high-quality supplier?
Besides labor costs and resource procurement issues, it is not easy for New Oriental Culture and Tourism to achieve large-scale profitability. There are many popular cultural and tourism products on the current market, and the core logic is that the product design threshold is not high, and the main product categories are rich, with small profits and high sales. The high-quality cultural and tourism products that New Oriental aims to create inevitably face a scarcity of high-quality resources, which also means that the product's replicability is limited and cannot be expanded on a large scale. Will Yu Minhong, who has achieved great success in the field of education and training, be satisfied with only turning New Oriental Culture and Tourism into a "small and beautiful" company this time? Even if he is willing, the capital market may not necessarily agree. Of course, if New Oriental Culture and Tourism is just another concept that has caused the stock price of Dongfang Zhenxuan to take off, it is another matter.
Anyway, after decades of rapid development in the tourism industry, there have been newcomers like New Oriental Culture and Tourism, who are born with a golden spoon in their hands and strive high, and their subsequent performance is still worth looking forward to. The revolution has not yet succeeded, and comrades still need to work hard.
