In acorns business news.. we have just had a huge breakthrough.
Our core education business is going very strong, but we have been focusing heavily this year on expanding into travel. The Chinese travel industry is a minefield, but its so lucrative if you can get a footing into it. Problem for us has been that we are pushing a different aproach to travel, specifically focusing on high-end student travel. Bassically there are a million companies pushing the same type of offer: 20-30 students, travel by coach.. visit a few universities, museums, cities etc. go home.
We are instead offering only 5-10 students, a vastly different array of activities that focuses on actually getting into English culture, rather then just watching it from the tourist attractions. Local events that only happen at certain times, that bigger companies cant afford to structure around.. smaller family experiences that they cant manage, and a much more personalized trip plan.
The issue has been in trying to persuade parents that there is value in this type of trip. If they are part of the new chinese-rich class then they are never doing a trip at all, as money is no issue, and they will just fly around to where ever, whenever they want, and pay for the best. So we are targetting the aspiring rich.. the huge and growing chinese middle class, who all want their kids to oneday be rich, and see western education/knowledge as a way into that world. Its the same market our core business works with, so we have a nice cross-over going on.
For a lot of them though, they are only interested in the facts/reputation/bragging rights. In china it is very much about the outcome, rather then the experiance.. its why when you see things like soap marketted in england they say 'ohhh... this soap with its luxurous silky feel and aromatic fragrance'.. but in china they are just like 'this soap kills everything better then every other soap'. Its more the factual outcome, rather then the experiance. So for them they want to have their kid go to england.. what happens in england is less important then just having their kid go, and being able to tick off that 'Im a good chinese parent' box.
Trying to explain to them how a smaller more intimate trip will allow their kids to learn and intergreate better into another culture/langauge.. just falls on deaf ears. To them, you are more expensive, with less of a reputation, going to the same place, and talking some bollox about experiance, whereas the other company is just giving them a straight up list of exactly whats going to happen.
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No point trying to compete with the big companies though, they can out-price, out-market and destroy small buisness like ours any day of the week.. so pushing for something new, even if its not something the customers are demanding, is the only way.
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Anyway, after a year of working on this part of our business.. we have finally broken through. We have our first trip happening this christmas. 2 weeks in england with english families for the holidays, 6 students.. a really tidy amount of profit. But most of all, getting the first trip (like getting our first clients in our core buisness) is always the hardest.. as long as we dont **** it up, then we actually have a reputation and a previous trip we can use to market ourselves and our next trip.
So yeah.. pretty happy! Going to be paid nicely to visit my family in england this christmas!