Author: Liu Ying School of Law, Wuhan University of Science and Technology, Central South Campus

[ Abstract] The current situation of brand management of travel agencies in China is not commensurate with the strong development momentum and prospects of tourism. This paper analyzes the necessity of brand management of travel agencies from the perspectives of intangible products, tourism demand and the cultivation of core competitiveness of travel agencies. It is also pointed out that the construction of brand system of travel agencies should be carried out from several aspects, such as establishing brand awareness, enterprise brand leading, brand expansion and brand consolidation.

[ Keywords] brand management system of travel agencies

Philip, a famous marketing master? Kotler believes that a brand is a name, a term, a mark, a symbol or a design, or a combination of them. Its purpose is to identify the products or services of a seller or a sales group and distinguish them from those of competitors.

No matter the top 5 companies in the world or the top 1 companies in China, almost all outstanding enterprises have independent famous brands in specific fields. These brands not only mark the quality, image, products and competitiveness of enterprises, but also deposit huge intangible assets under the long-term operation, which saves a lot of marketing advertising expenses and ensures the sustained prosperity of enterprises.

First, the status quo of brand management of travel agencies in China

Although China's tourism industry started in 1978, it has made remarkable achievements today, but it is undeniable that most of these achievements are only quantitative. The foundation of China's tourism industry is relatively weak, and it will take time to achieve intensive growth. Take the travel agency industry as an example. In China, there are no companies like Japan Communications Corporation, American Express and Thomas? Cook, a multinational company with great appeal and influence in the industry, and the three most powerful travel agencies, China, China and Qingdao, have almost become public welfare because of the non-market operation in their early establishment, and the only dominant brands have been plagiarized by latecomers. The brand management of the travel agency industry in China can be summarized as follows:

1. The brand awareness is indifferent

Most travel agencies pay insufficient attention to the brand in marketing, and spend money and effort on advertising the tourist routes, but get twice the result with half the effort. However, the routes of each travel agency are roughly the same, which is highly imitative. However, there is no distinctive and impressive advertisement for travel routes in the whole page of the newspaper.

2. Brand confusion and lack of individuality

At the beginning of development, the three major travel agencies in China, China and Qingdao monopolized their own markets, and their brand names were somewhat vague, which could not reflect their own characteristics. After the opening of the travel agency market, some new travel agencies have added the words "China" and "international" to their names because of the influence of the horizontal division of labor system, which has caused confusion in consumers' identification.

3. Improper brand positioning

The purpose of brand positioning is to establish a clear image for enterprises, strengthen customer awareness and stand out in the market competition. The brand positioning of China's tourism enterprises is often the embodiment of the chief executive's will, but the market research is insufficient. Without the brand positioning of consumers, it will be difficult to operate continuously and eventually be eliminated by the market.

4. brand homogeneity, lack of creativity

the imitativeness of tourism products makes it easier to homogenize in the travel agency industry. As long as there are enough funds and manpower and a few cases to imitate, similar tourism products will be overwhelming. This is a common phenomenon in the advertising pages of domestic newspapers: first, a travel agency launched a new route, and after being recognized by the market, the products of all travel agencies in the full-page advertisement became twin sisters-similar routes, similar schedules and similar quotations. The travel agency industry's weak protection of new products makes imitation save R&D expenses, which is more profitable than innovation. On the other hand, the homogenization of tourist routes makes the competition for tourists more intense, and takes the form of vicious price competition, which drags down the industry profits of travel agencies.

Tourism has great economic potential in promoting China's economic and social development. However, as the core enterprise of the tourism industry, China's travel agencies have lagged far behind other industries in brand management, brand awareness and brand building, and there are few well-known trademarks of tourism. According to this situation, whether it can support the bright future of China's tourism industry is worrying.

second, it is necessary for travel agencies to implement brand management

The needs of tourists are increasingly different, and higher requirements are put forward for tourism products. Strong capital and advanced technology can enable travel agencies to provide tourists with the same tourist routes and services at the same low price, but they cannot provide the same brand and customer satisfaction. The value of a brand lies not only in its distinguishing function from homogeneous products, but also in the intangible benefits it brings to consumers. The importance of brand management of travel agencies is reflected in the following aspects:

1. From the perspective of the particularity of travel agency products,

the products of travel agencies are mainly tourist routes, which are not material products, have the characteristics of non-transferability, non-storability, synchronization of production and consumption, and are not search-oriented like material products, and the experiential nature of tourist routes leads to the fact that travel agencies cannot physically display their products; Tourist routes are informative to a great extent. Tourists can't distinguish the differences of tourist products and experience the quality and service level of tourist products before traveling. This makes the brand of travel agency play an inestimable role in transmitting the information of tourism products.

2. From the perspective of tourism demand

In the development trend of global tourism, tourism consumption is showing the characteristics of personalization, diversification and multi-level. More and more tourists are beginning to pursue their own existence value, participate in characteristic tourism activities, and tend to choose travel agencies with strong strength and good reputation, and their requirements for hotel star rating, traffic comfort and other items are gradually increasing. Brand not only meets the self-realization needs of tourists, but also can increase the added value of travel agency products and enhance their competitiveness.

3. From the perspective of cultivating the core competitiveness of enterprises,

Creating product brands can be preconceived before consumption, giving tourists a distinct impression and enhancing the charm of products. Personalized brand identity gives people affinity, and in the process of group travel, the image of travel agencies is promoted through carriers such as hats, guide flags and vehicles, which expands the influence of travel agencies. Through customer loyalty, product premium and capital operation of successful brands, the brand of travel agency can have a competitive advantage that other enterprises can't imitate, and this advantage can be strengthened in the continuous brand management to form its own core competitiveness.

4. From the perspective of industry structure adjustment

As far as the current development of travel agencies in China is concerned, it is basically "macro good news, micro bad news"-the industry is growing gratifying year by year, but the economic benefits of each travel agency continue to decline. This has something to do with the fact that China's sightseeing tourism products can't attract repeat customers, and the short-term business behavior of travel agencies can't maintain tourists' brand loyalty. In 22, Chinese citizens participated in 878 million domestic tourists, among which only 38 million domestic tourists were received by travel agencies, accounting for .49% of the national domestic tourists. Through brand building, travel agencies can cultivate consumer loyalty with brand appeal and increase the number of repeated consumption, thus expanding the tourist market. For example, the Hawaiian islands in the United States receive tens of millions of tourists every year, of which more than half are repeat customers, and many tourists have been there seven or eight times. In addition to the unique sunshine and beaches, more should be attributed to the popular brand "Hawaii".

5. From the perspective of coping with international competition,

After China's entry into WTO, the tourism market will be widely opened in breadth and depth, and large foreign multinational tourism operators will enter the China market one after another, which will have a great impact and threat on China's travel agencies by virtue of their advantages in capital, network, brand and management. If China travel agencies still stick to low-level price competition, they will be unable to cope with the trend of domestic international competition. Therefore, it is urgent for China's travel agencies to find potential and capable market segments and quickly construct their own brand system.

in recent years, many large travel agencies have started to establish their own brands, such as Guangzhou's "Guangzhou Tour", Zhejiang Zhongshan International Travel Service's "Travel All over the World", Shenzhen International Travel Service's "Global Travel" and Youth Travel Service Alliance's "Oriental Students", etc., and have made initial attempts to brand management of travel agencies.

Third, the construction of brand management system of travel agencies. The prospect of China's tourism and tourism industry in the next 1 years is very optimistic. It is estimated that the annual growth rate of tourism and tourism industry will be 1.9% by 213, and the contribution of China's tourism industry to GDP in 213 will be more than 84 billion yuan. According to the forecast of the National Tourism Administration, in 22, the national tourism revenue will be 3.3 trillion yuan, equivalent to 8% of GDP, and it will truly become a pillar industry of the national economy. In order to make China's tourism develop as predicted, and to respond positively to the competition of international tourism multinational groups after China's entry into WTO, the travel agency industry should make a breakthrough in brand management.

1. Establish brand awareness

The construction of brand system should start with awareness. Tourism consumer goods market is a highly asymmetric information market. For tourists, due to the intangibility of travel agency products, tourists can't predict their consumption targets. The comprehensiveness of travel agency products determines the higher search cost of tourists. Therefore, compared with tourists, travel agencies are in an information advantage. If there is no brand to send tourists a signal of high-quality products, tourists will set an "average price" based on their consumption experience, which will eventually lead to the phenomenon that "bad money drives out good money"

2. Leading by enterprise brand

The existing research results show that product brand is the most important for intangible products; For intangible services, corporate brand is the first priority. Referring to this conclusion, the tourist routes provided by travel agencies are intangible, and customers lack intuitive feelings and objective evaluation of the services they will enjoy before buying. Therefore, the strength, reputation and word-of-mouth of an enterprise should be an important factor affecting consumers' purchase decision and evaluation, and it is also a quality guarantee for tourists to get returns to make up for the time and money costs.

The brand management strategy led by enterprise brand can adopt the form of "travel agency name+destination" in the naming of tourist routes. In this way, tourist products can be registered naturally by registering a travel agency, and the property right problem of tourist routes can be solved. The significance of branding tourist routes also lies in finding the positioning of enterprises and governments in the model of "travel agency name+destination", and the former and the latter correspond to each other and establish their respective responsibilities on a new development stage.

3. Realizing brand expansion

After the establishment of the core brand of travel agencies, we should focus on the brand expansion strategy, which can be realized in the following forms.

"Scattered, small, weak and poor" are the weaknesses of China travel agencies. Small and medium-sized travel agencies can avoid these weaknesses and take the road of joint operation. Several travel agencies join forces to operate a brand. For example, different travel agencies in Yangzhou jointly form "Everyday"

Secondly, big travel agencies can use the advantages of capital, mechanism, talents and brand to start brand integration promotion strategy, establish a unified CIS image recognition system, create a chain business department with unified logo, unified image, unified service standards, unified business operation process, unified business philosophy and unified marketing methods, establish a brand flagship store, take the brand chain road, expand the brand sales network, and consolidate the brand loyalty of consumers. CYTS took the lead in introducing the concept of chain operation into travel agencies in August 2, and the first batch of CYTS chain business departments opened in Beijing. At present, CYTS has 17 chain sales offices in Beijing urban area, and the chain operation has achieved initial results.

finally, franchising is a good way for brand management development strategy, and it can also effectively realize the network development of travel agencies. Franchising is not only a brand issue, but also a process of managing output. Travel agencies can enhance their voice in the industry during the franchise process. In addition, as a non-capital-intensive enterprise, travel agencies can achieve the lowest cost expansion by franchising.

4. Consolidate brand quality

Travel agencies must also pay attention to protecting their own brands and cherishing them during brand expansion. Many brands in China have reversed their brands because of blindly developing the production of joint ventures. Shandong Tsingtao Brewery insists on not using the brand of Tsingtao Brewery in other beers in order to ensure the purity of Tsingtao Brewery, although it implements unified technical supervision and quality standard testing for the products. The brand of Sony Corporation in Japan is highly respected by many enterprises in the world, and many enterprises are willing to lend huge sums of money to borrow trademarks or associate with them for processing. For the sake of brand protection, they were all rejected by Sony. These are all to prevent the risk of the brand being smashed.

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