Zhen Hao:Founder of Eyou World, Senior Vice President of Toread Group, President of the Travel Business Group; Captain of Team Two in Phase Three of the Black Horse Camp; 17 years of experience in the tourism industry, passionate about skiing because it is a sport that perfectly combines speed and adrenaline. Awestruck by the vastness of nature, he is even more drawn to challenging new heights in snowy landscapes, just as entrepreneurs must bravely and calmly overcome one challenge after another on their journey.
Industry: Tourism
Medals: Cross-industry Thinking, Supply Chain Resources in the Tourism Industry
Target Audience:
1. All entrepreneurs who want to connect with resources in outdoor, tourism, sports, and related industries;
2. All entrepreneurs who want to deeply learn cross-industry thinking and build an ecosystem concept;
3. All entrepreneurs in sports, tourism, outdoor, and other industries seeking seed or angel round funding.
On March 18, 2016, at the launch event of Dream Factory held at the Toread Travel Experience Center, Zhen Hao appeared in a triple role: Senior Vice President of Toread Group, President of the Travel Business Group, and Managing Partner of the Dream Factory Fund under Toread.
Before joining Toread, Zhen Hao was the founder of Eyou World International Travel Agency, which owned nearly 200 storefronts, branches, and 1,000 travel planners. As a veteran in the tourism industry, he has been an entrepreneur for 17 consecutive years, setting multiple industry records. Observers believe that Zhen Hao’s over ten years of background in the tourism industry is his greatest strength, combining both inheritance and innovation, which is rare in the entire online travel industry.
This man, who in his early years claimed to be not good at capital operations, secured his first round of angel investment in the second year of founding Eyou World. Especially after the launch of Yiyou.com (1u.com) in 2013, he became highly sought after by investors. On March 18, 2015, Toread invested 230 million RMB in Eyou World, dropping a “heavy bomb” in the domestic outdoor travel circle. Zhen Hao’s identity and role changed from that moment on.
Nowadays, committed to becoming a warm and experiential travel leader, Zhen Hao sets off again with Toread. Entrepreneurs in the tourism industry struggling to find channels, or those wanting to deeply learn cross-industry thinking, should engage in hands-on practice with Zhen Hao.
Zhen Hao's Growth Trajectory and Entrepreneurial Methodology
I. Choice is Always More Important Than Effort
In 2000, Zhen Hao, who majored in tourism, founded Beijing’s first peripheral travel company — “Eyou Holidays,” offering travel products within a 500-kilometer radius centered on Beijing. During that time, he and his team traveled to almost all major and minor attractions, resorts, and other tourist destinations around Beijing, personally discovering and packaging tourism resources, integrating various channels for marketing, and creating classic cases such as “Baxian Villa.” For seven years, “Eyou Holidays” consistently maintained the top market share in Beijing’s peripheral travel, and Zhen Hao’s title as the “King of Peripheral Tourism” became widely known.
While operating Beijing’s peripheral travel business, Zhen Hao conceived the idea of transforming from traditional tourism to online tourism. In 2002, he collaborated with Sohu to experiment with B2C marketing using a portal website, once again igniting the market. But at that time, Zhen Hao said he only used the internet as a marketing channel and did not deeply understand its e-commerce value. “Choosing the wrong direction makes effort futile — choice is always more important than effort.”
In 2008, Zhen Hao made a choice that seemed unbelievable to outsiders — he divested the original Beijing peripheral travel business and created Eyou World International Travel Agency with a business model of “chain operation + e-commerce,” claiming to be “China’s most innovative travel agency channel operator.”
Faced with fierce competition in the tourism market, in 2015 Zhen Hao once again chose to collaborate with Toread, making a new layout for differentiated and mobile online and offline services. “To be frank, Eyou World is in great need of brand and financial support, because today’s tourism market competition is not just about branding, but more about capital, service, and resource competition. With the backing of a listed company and more funding, we will be able to make greater plans in the next two to three years, provide better services to more consumers, and create greater value. More importantly, Eyou World and Toread have a very high degree of alignment in personnel, culture, and business, which is a factor we value even more than funding and branding,” Zhen Hao said in an interview with the media.
II. Delivering Great Products and Services Is the Key
China’s tourism industry is entering a golden age of rapid development. Data shows that in 2015, China’s domestic tourism exceeded 4 billion trips, with tourism revenue surpassing 4 trillion RMB, ranking first in the world. Among this, the online travel market penetration rate was only 8.5%, indicating huge potential.
However, most travel agencies in China are small and micro enterprises, often facing issues such as complex procurement processes, low efficiency, and weak profitability. Zhen Hao believes that the internet is changing the operational habits of the entire tourism industry, and minimizing intermediate channels in the tourism industry will definitely bring greater value to users.
This is precisely the original intention behind Zhen Hao founding Eyou World. After five years of preparation in accumulating tourism supply chain resources, in 2013, Eyou World launched Yiyou.com (1u.com) — covering group and individual flight tickets, global hotels, electronic tickets, global visas, travel insurance, destination transportation, and more, with over 100,000 products available. Leading the domestic O2O comprehensive travel service, it provides a one-stop trading platform for Chinese tourism buyers and global tourism distributors. Eyou World is seen by outsiders as the Alibaba of the vertical tourism field.
“Products and services that deliver value to users are what truly matter,” Zhen Hao explained. The core functions of Yiyou.com (1u.com) are: helping registered buyers find products they can’t find elsewhere, negotiating prices they can’t get on their own, and ensuring product quality; helping registered sellers find channels they can’t access, selling products that don’t move, with guaranteed transaction settlements.
With the precise positioning of a “retail channel operator for travel agencies,” and relying on a “e-commerce + chain operation” business model, Eyou World’s service outlets now cover more than 100 cities nationwide, with last year’s annual turnover exceeding 10 billion RMB.
III. The Path to Innovation Lies in Cross-Industry Integration
“From one to many, you need to establish cross-industry thinking and build an ecosystem concept,” said Zhen Hao at the Third Black Horse Sports Games held in March this year.
What is cross-industry thinking? Tom Kelley, General Manager of IDEO, once said: “Cross-industry thinking can produce magical effects. Those who possess this ability hold incredible magic. Experiencing, and then experiencing different things, thinking, and then thinking differently about those experiences, leads to great ideas. Cross-industry thinkers are skilled at stringing together the pearls scattered in their minds. Even the most seemingly unrelated ideas and concepts, they can cleverly connect them to create something magical.”
Regarding Toread’s cross-industry thinking, Zhen Hao explained: “Originally in the outdoor field, Toread provided services based on equipment and products. Later, we found that most users who purchased equipment also had travel needs, so we began laying out an ecosystem of ‘outdoor + travel + sports.’ To achieve greater ecological synergy, Toread has recently completed a series of acquisitions, investments, and mergers involving approximately thirty companies.”
IV. It Pays to Have Big Trees to Lean On When Starting a Business
In March 2016, Toread established a 2,000-square-meter travel experience center known as the "Dream Lab," along with a Dream Lab Fund of 200 million yuan. The fund primarily invests in seed and angel rounds of projects related to sports, travel, outdoor activities, and healthy lifestyles.
As an entrepreneurship incubation platform under the Toread Group that focuses on outdoor, travel, sports, and related industries, the "Dream Lab" not only provides entrepreneurs with abundant resource support but also offers guidance from expert mentors to help incubated startups grow.
As the managing partner of the Toread Group's Dream Lab Fund and a youth entrepreneurship mentor, Zhen Hao believes that for an entrepreneur, having only passion for starting a business and an innate fascination with the entrepreneurial process is not enough. Entrepreneurs need more social attention and support. Starting a business is never easy—it helps to have big trees to lean on. "We hope to leverage Toread’s upstream and downstream resources to provide entrepreneurs with more resources and content, helping everyone grow together."
Zhen Hao
from the third phase, second team of Heima Lianying
is currently recruiting, with limited spots available
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