Doubao intends to carve out a slice of Didi's market pie.

Ahead of the peak travel rush for the National Day holiday, Doubao has quietly launched a "Grand Travel" entry.

The new entry, named "Use Doubao for Travel", is located above the input box on the homepage of the Doubao App, alongside labels such as "Chat" and "Help Me Write".

After clicking to enter, the upper half of the page is mainly occupied by one-click travel planning. Doubao has pre-written different prompts, for example, "I want to eat Peking duck tonight, which nearby restaurant serves authentic ones", and users can see relevant suggestions after clicking.

The lower half of the page gathers four functional modules: map navigation, transportation, hotel accommodation, and food, drink and entertainment, covering functions such as navigation, nearby services, ride-hailing, high-speed rail, air tickets, hotels, homestays, catering, and sightseeing. Preset prompts will pop up after clicking and keep scrolling below the functional modules.

Users can click the preset prompts to activate relevant functions, which usually requires authorization to access the geographic location.

Alphaboard (ID: wujicaijing) tests found that the preset prompts of "Use Doubao for Travel" lack clear rules and logic, and are not personalized at all, having no connection with users' personal information, past chat records and other data.

The widespread preset prompts are originally intended to facilitate use, but in scenarios such as travel and local life, users have clear purposes and vastly different demands. The probability that the pre-written prompts can "hit" the actual needs is actually very low.

However, these prompts can play a role in user education, allowing users to understand at a glance how to ask questions and what results the AI will return after the query.

On the other hand, all the services aggregated by "Use Doubao for Travel" are services previously launched by Doubao. These services were originally scattered inside Doubao, and now they are sorted and integrated on the same page.

Doubao's function matrix is divided into two major parts: general Chatbot and office Agent. Now, through the unified "Grand Travel" entry and preset one-click operations, Doubao is quietly cultivating users' habits for local life services.

After years of development, the local life sector has a very mature model, but it is still profitable, which has been proven by both Didi and Ctrip. For Doubao at the current stage, it is quite important to make money and reduce losses in a stable way with small investment.

Before the arrival of the Golden Week holiday, Doubao's ambition to enter the travel and local life sectors can no longer be hidden.

A

When Doubao develops the "Grand Travel" business, it offers a top-tier traffic position for the new feature.

Open the Doubao App, there are only three function labels above the main interface input box, and "Use Doubao for Travel" is one of them. In comparison, the "Ask Doubao Before Buying" feature that previously attracted widespread attention has been moved to a much lower position.

Occupying such a prime position in an App with over 200 million daily active users speaks volumes about how much importance is attached to "Use Doubao for Travel".

At the same time, in addition to accessing ByteDance's own services, the new feature also links to products from other companies.

Practical tests show that its map navigation is provided by Baidu Maps. Douyin had its own map as early as 2021, but Doubao did not adopt it, nor did it choose Gaode Maps or Tencent Maps which have more users.

The ride-hailing service is provided by Caocao Mobility. This is not surprising — the two sides announced in the first ten days of this month that they would jointly build an AI ride-hailing service, which was first launched in Beijing, Hangzhou and Suzhou.

As for high-speed rail and air tickets, Doubao will directly inform users that it can provide recommended trains and ticket purchase guidelines, but users need to go to 12306 or OTA platforms to buy tickets, and it even attaches a link to Ctrip's air ticket search page.

In terms of hotels and homestays, most of the hotels Doubao finds according to users' requirements come with booking links from Douyin's travel and hospitality business. Catering, entertainment and other services are directly connected to Douyin's local life. "Use Doubao for Travel" has realized a large closed loop of these services within ByteDance's ecosystem.

Doubao has opened up high-quality traffic positions to strongly promote "Grand Travel", but it does not exclude third-party services, and is willing to share traffic with other companies.

This seems to send a signal: At the current stage, Doubao's "Grand Travel" business does not put external competition as its top priority, and running through the service matrix is more important.

Even so, Doubao's move is still enough to make the veteran players in the local life sector alert immediately.

Doubao has been involved in local life for a long time, and the entire industry has felt its threat to this market. However, at that time, users needed to take the initiative to ask questions, and Doubao would provide the entrances to products and services in the responses, which seemed very "gentle" and was not enough to arouse the vigilance of veteran players.

Now, Doubao has suddenly adjusted its strategy, it has given traffic support right from the start, and it also uses preset prompts to shorten the user's operation path as much as possible. Compared with passive response, this time Doubao's offensive is much sharper.

Companies such as Didi, Ctrip, Meituan and Gaode have been cultivating in their respective tracks for a long time and have built competitive barriers. But as a native product in the AI era, Doubao itself has the advantage of dimensionality reduction strike; supported by huge traffic, if "Use Doubao for Travel" becomes a hit during the National Day holiday, companies like Didi will have to fight a defensive war.

But before that, they may need to answer a question: Should they confront Doubao head-on, or follow the example of Baidu and Caocao Mobility to form an alliance with it?

The two choices have their own advantages and disadvantages, and there is no absolute right or wrong. This is the first problem Doubao throws to the small giants of the mobile Internet after it exerts efforts on the "Grand Travel" business.

B

Doubao diverts traffic to "Use Doubao for Travel" and increases the weight of mobile Internet businesses such as travel and local life, which seems slightly abrupt in terms of strategy.

Since its birth, Doubao has always been inclined to develop new businesses and new ventures in the AI era.

In the first stage, it spent a lot of energy and resources polishing the Chatbot experience, and finally became the winner in the competition against Tencent and Alibaba.

By the second stage, Agent has become the focus of the whole industry. Doubao has gradually shifted its focus to AI office, launching Doubao Work on the one hand, and integrating Feishu on the other, striving to gain an upper hand in the office Agent track.

Compared with the Chatbot sector where the overall situation has been settled, the competition in the office Agent track is still fierce. In addition to ByteDance's full investment, Tencent and Alibaba are also determined to win. This is bound to be a more intense and longer-lasting battle than the Chatbot competition.

At this critical juncture, Doubao suddenly turns around, aggregates services and opens up new entrances, putting a considerable amount of weight on the "Grand Travel" business, which is somewhat unexpected.

This can of course be understood as a "seasonal limited" measure — the long holiday is coming soon, and the "Use Doubao for Travel" entry can increase user opening rate.

However, businesses such as travel, hospitality and local life have diverse scenarios, numerous links, complicated operations and are difficult to standardize, which are businesses that require patience to polish. If it only injects traffic for a short period of time, there will probably be no practical results.

What's more, although these businesses have allowed many companies to make a lot of money and even grow into small giants, there are also many problems that cannot be ignored.

For example, their business models have pushed efficiency to an almost extreme level, leaving almost no room for innovation. Although Doubao holds the sharp blade of AI, it cannot find a differentiated development approach, and currently it still stays at the basic step of diverting traffic.

For another example, in every track of the "Grand Travel" business, there is at least one large player. They are not only experienced, but also have resources covering the entire upstream and downstream industrial chain, with deep moats. If Doubao fights head-on, it is very likely to fall into a brutal close combat.

So why does Doubao still go deep into this thorny front?

Up to now, ByteDance has not given an explanation. But combined with its recent moves, we can probably draw the conclusion: Doubao needs to continue to expand the overall transaction volume of its platform, and "Grand Travel" is one of the high-frequency, high-value core scenarios.

Transaction is one of the tentacles of the "Doubao Universe" that extends outward.

It embedded Douyin Mall links in its replies very early, and then gradually opened up links for order placing, payment, order management and other links to realize the in-app transaction closed loop. In April this year, it launched "Doubao Helps You Choose", which was the first time it was directly associated with shopping; in May, it was upgraded to "Ask Doubao Before Buying".

Now, Doubao's transaction module covers not only Douyin's e-commerce and local life services, but also third-party services in finance, travel, retail, catering and other sectors. And where there are transactions, there are revenues and profits.

Previously, Doubao has successively launched a series of "Grand Travel" functions, but they were scattered on the user side. Now, it offers a high-priority entry, which can further improve transaction frequency and efficiency, and obtain more generous returns.

Backed by ByteDance, Doubao is already the AI traffic faucet with the most abundant traffic in China, but it also faces the problem of continuous losses. It needs to figure out how to make money, and "Grand Travel" is one of the important answers.

When a traffic platform gradually takes shape, the "Grand Travel" sector will always become a priority area for development.

Baidu once took the same path. Around 2013 and 2014, it held the largest traffic pool in China's Internet, and the track it chose to enter was also O2O services represented by travel, hospitality and local life.

Over the past decade or so, Baidu has not become the biggest winner in the O2O sector, but all tracks have been further matured through fierce competition. Now that Doubao holds the traffic valve in the AI era, looking around, the most profitable sector worth developing is still "Grand Travel".

What's more, the chatbot part of Doubao largely undertakes the search function of the mobile Internet, which highly overlaps with Baidu's core traffic pool. The difference is that Baidu used to do text search in the past, while Doubao is now increasingly leaning towards voice search.

Therefore, the money Baidu used to earn, Doubao can not only earn now, but also earn much more.

C

From a longer-term perspective, the wave of Personal Agent inspired by Meta Muse may also be one of the reasons why Doubao strongly promotes "Use Doubao for Travel".

Since its launch in the first ten days of this month, Muse has delivered a remarkable performance in the US market. It once became one of the most popular agent services, topping the free app list on Apple's App Store.

Muse's main features such as proactive Agent, long-task background execution and transaction closed loop are not unique or groundbreaking when viewed separately. But with excellent engineering integration, Muse has indeed impressed many users.

More importantly, Muse's design concept is built around personal life scenarios. The agent only serves the individual user, and can also remember the user's personal preferences, habits, historical data and other information.

In contrast, many agents belong to "public agents", and users can hardly get a continuous and coherent service experience. Although many agents also have memory functions, most of them are not as prominent as Muse's.

It can be said that Muse has accurately hit the "agent ownership" issue. In China, Tencent's WeChat Mini Agent actually has such characteristics.

In this context, Doubao's development of the "Grand Travel" business can also be regarded as an exploration along the path of Personal Agent.

"Use Doubao for Travel" integrates different services together, implying the possibility of interconnection and information fusion. What it hopes to provide to users is not just a single navigation, a ride-hailing car, or a one-night hotel stay, but a series of services that meet the user's needs filtered according to the user profile, and provided as a complete package.

This process of service filtering and packaging is in line with the personalized essence of Personal Agent. "Use Doubao for Travel" is not only an aggregation page, but also the embryonic form of the Personal Agent's web version.

Under this logic, Doubao may not have overly high expectations for short-term data; what it wants to verify is whether Personal Agent can take root on the platform, and gradually let users form the mindset of "Use Doubao for [specific scenario]".

For ByteDance, this path is relatively easy to take, cost-effective, does not require immediate head-on confrontation with other players, and has greater long-term value.

But for the veteran players in each track, every move Doubao makes may, with the support of ByteDance's ecosystem, gradually evolve into a huge wave that sweeps across the entire industry. When Doubao has just started to exert efforts, how to adjust their own strategies and tactics, and how to re-evaluate their relationship with Doubao, are all major tests of the decision-making ability of relevant enterprises.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Alphaboard" (ID: wujicaijing), written by Yan Fei, and authorized for release by 36Kr.