Niche doesn’t mean dead-end. In fact, these overlooked areas that the giants haven’t yet tapped into are where the next killer app is more likely to emerge.
Since travel social apps inherently gather users around the shared interest of travel, their advertising and product marketing can be more targeted—unlike some large social platforms that swing wildly from one thing to another.
As for how interest-based communities can make money, the Iron Blood Community has already paved a decent path. Beyond ads, marketing related products is also a viable route.
Travel social apps can generally be divided into two types: content-focused ones, like the continuously improving Douban Travel. Due to Douban’s heavy reliance on content and its slow-paced corporate style, its commercialization journey hasn’t gone far. The other type is like “Go Wild” (www.quyeba.com), an outdoor sports brand—the official app of The North Face. It not only meets users’ social needs in outdoor travel scenarios but also extends outdoor sports services, integrating a marketplace function within the app. The former is about stockpiling resources before claiming dominance, while the latter spots a clear path and charges ahead.
I wouldn’t say which model is more correct, but the combination of social and e-commerce has at least become a trend—didn’t Alibaba’s investment in Sina Weibo prove that?
Apps like Go Wild, backed by outdoor brands, have even more inherent advantages in merging these elements, but achieving truly seamless integration remains a challenge. Over-commercialization would definitely not be good for them.
For these travel social apps, the fact that earlier leaders are slowing down doesn’t automatically mean opportunity has arrived—they still face many challenges.
First, initial user accumulation is difficult
No matter how great an app is, without users, it’s nothing. Because these are interest-based social apps, their marginal cost of acquiring users is higher than that of regular social platforms.
How to accumulate users in the early stages is definitely a major issue. Mafengwo has been around for a long time, yet its user base has consistently hit a bottleneck. Compared to Go Wild, which benefits from the halo of the well-established travel brand The North Face, the challenges are relatively smaller—but as a new app, it still needs time to make a name for itself. It could be called a dark horse in the travel world.
Second, a misaligned business model may lead to direct competition with OTAs like Ctrip
In recent years, aside from e-commerce, the fiercest price wars have been in online travel booking—and travel social apps seem to have significant advantages in becoming OTAs.
But if these social platforms really enter this field, they’re likely to face fierce backlash. As lone players, they probably won’t come out on top.
However, not engaging in head-on competition doesn’t mean they can’t take an indirect approach. Specialty hotels and youth hostels could become partners for travel social apps—why not try a “surrounding the cities from the countryside” strategy?
In short, as the travel market continues to boom, travel social networking could very well become the next breakout trend. Who will seize this opportunity? We’ll wait and see.