景区门票不好卖了？美团启动景点游玩业务服务商招募

This article covers Meituan’s latest recruitment drive for service providers to support its new scenic spot operation business. The company aims to activate its existing inventory of small and medium-sized scenic spots via an agency operation model. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Recruitment targets three groups: in-depth scenic spot partners, short-video platform service providers, and scenic spot investors. The initiative comes after Meituan has already listed the vast majority of China’s scenic spots on its platform, leaving a large number of small and medium-sized sites lacking professional operational capabilities even after going live.

2. The partnership terms are very service-provider friendly: no security deposit is required, performance tracking starts the day after contract signing, and there are no performance penalties. Revenue includes tiered volume rebates, new customer advertising revenue sharing, and room to negotiate marketing fees, with rebates reaching up to 35% of Meituan’s platform commission.

3. Meituan has set clear entry requirements for participants. The model still faces multiple practical challenges, and its on-the-ground performance remains to be tested.

For scenic spot brand owners, here are key takeaways for brand operation and growth:

1. Current industry trend: Online ticket penetration for scenic spots has already neared saturation, leaving limited growth potential from pure OTA platform traffic distribution. Brands need professional operations to unlock the value of existing traffic. Most small and medium-sized scenic spots in lower-tier cities and counties generally suffer from weak digital capabilities and a lack of marketing talent, creating strong demand for operational upgrades.

2. Growth opportunity: Meituan has built a mature traffic channel for tickets, and its new third-party agency operation system can help brand owners overcome their own operational shortcomings, improve ticket conversion rates, and unlock growth from existing inventory.

3. A key note: This model is still in its early stages. Brand owners need to align their own goals with platform rules, assess service provider capabilities when selecting partners, and adapt to requirements for refined operations.

For practitioners looking to enter the scenic spot operation sector, here is a summary of opportunities and risks:

1. Breakdown of Meituan’s recruitment policy: The initiative requires no security deposit, imposes no performance penalties, starts tracking performance the day after contract signing, and has clear entry requirements, making it very accessible to new entrants.

2. Market opportunity: Meituan currently hosts a large inventory of small and medium-sized scenic spots that remain under-utilized after listing. These sites generally lack professional operational capabilities, creating huge unmet demand for agency operation services. Participants can earn multiple revenue streams including tiered rebates, 40% of new customer advertising revenue, and marketing fee negotiation margins, making this a new incremental growth market.

3. Risk warning: The model’s on-the-ground performance remains unproven. Challenges include inconsistent service provider quality, difficulties in dividing regional interests, and high requirements for refined operations. Practitioners should assess their own capabilities before entering the market.

For manufacturers serving the cultural and tourism sector, here are key takeaways:

1. Business opportunity: Meituan’s core goal in launching this recruitment drive is to activate existing inventory of small and medium-sized scenic spots in lower-tier下沉 markets. As these sites scale up their operations, visitor traffic and consumer demand will grow, driving significant increases in demand for tourist souvenirs, branded merchandise, and supporting facility supplies. Manufacturers can expand their customer base to small and medium-sized scenic spots in lower-tier markets in advance to capture new order growth.

2. Implications for production and digital transformation: Digital transformation is accelerating in the country’s下沉 cultural and tourism market. Visitor demand at small and medium-sized scenic spots leans heavily toward localized, personalized products. Manufacturers need to improve their digital capabilities, adapt quickly to changing demand, adjust product design and production focus, and align with the consumption preferences of visitors in lower-tier markets.

3. Manufacturers can expand their customer acquisition channels by partnering with Meituan’s service provider system, reducing customer acquisition costs when working with small and medium-sized scenic spots.

For service providers serving the cultural and tourism industry, here are key takeaways:

1. Industry development trend: Online traffic penetration on OTA platforms has already reached a high plateau, and the marginal value of pure traffic distribution continues to decline. Platforms are now shifting toward outputting operational capabilities to the supply side. Activating existing inventory of small and medium-sized scenic spots has become a new growth driver for online cultural and tourism operations, with strong market demand.

2. Customer pain points: Most small and medium-sized scenic spots in counties and lower-tier cities generally suffer from weak digital capabilities and a lack of marketing talent. Their cooperation with OTA platforms only goes as far as ticket distribution, and they fail to convert existing traffic, creating clear, unmet demand for agency operation services and a large market gap.

3. Cooperation opportunities and requirements: Meituan’s cooperation terms are very friendly, with a clear revenue-sharing mechanism. As long as they meet entry requirements, service providers can generate stable revenue by leveraging Meituan’s traffic. Requirements cover team size, industry expertise, and an in-house business development team, among other criteria.

For local life and cultural tourism platform operators, here are key takeaways for industry reference:

1. Current platform business needs: When traffic business penetration nears saturation, the growth value of pure traffic distribution continues to decline. Platforms need to output operational capabilities to the supply side to unlock new growth, particularly for high-margin businesses such as travel and hospitality, which serve as a new growth lever to offset profit pressure on platforms’ core businesses.

2. A referenceable new operational model: By recruiting third-party service providers, Meituan outsources labor-intensive operational work including marketing execution, ad buying, and offline promotion to third parties with local advantages. This cuts the platform’s own operational costs, improves conversion efficiency for scenic spot supply, and motivates service providers through clear recruitment terms, entry requirements and incentive mechanisms.

3. Potential risks to avoid: The model faces latent challenges including inconsistent service provider quality, difficulties in dividing regional interests, and challenges aligning scenic spot goals with platform rules. Platforms looking to launch similar businesses should plan rules in advance to address these potential conflicts.

For industry researchers, here are key insights on new developments in the scenic spot operation space covered in this article:

1. New industry development: Meituan has already completed its traffic-side layout in the scenic spot ticketing sector, and is now pushing to activate existing supply-side inventory. It is leveraging a third-party agency operation model to unlock incremental value from small and medium-sized scenic spots, in order to build a new growth curve for its travel and hospitality business and offset profit pressure on its core local services business. This marks a new trend in the OTA industry.

2. Analysis of the new business model: The core logic of this model is that the platform provides traffic and operating rules, third-party service providers provide local operational capabilities, and scenic spots gain improved traffic conversion. The three parties form a positive growth cycle through tiered commission rebates and advertising revenue sharing, solving the dual problems of insufficient operational capabilities at small and medium-sized scenic spots and high in-house operational costs for platforms.

3. New areas for further research: This model is still in its early stages, and its on-the-ground performance remains unproven. It faces multiple unresolved challenges including inconsistent service provider quality, difficulties balancing regional interests, and high requirements for refined operations, making it worthy of continued tracking and research.