Taishan, the first of the Five Mountains, has created a new market with Mount Tai to climb with it.

As the name means, "Taishan accompanied the mountain" refers to accompanying customers to the top of Mount Tai. In the experience posts of major social platforms, most of the people who carry out the accompanying climbing business are male college students. The method of "accompanying to the top" includes but is not limited to "drag, pull, drag, and back". Some of them come with scenic spot explanation services. The key to this service is to be familiar with the mountaineering route and provide emotional value to customers.

How big is the market for hiking? There is no accurate statistical caliber at present, but the "breathing" of the Internet's accompanying crawling videos can be used as evidence. The hottest thing is the incident in which two women with children spent 30,000 yuan to hire 24 people to climb to the top of Mount Tai at the end of August. In the mountain climbing video, 24 accompanying climbers held a 40-pound child to the top of Mount Tai, and from time to time fanned and rubbed their legs for customers.

Photography of 24 accompanying climbers before climbing the mountain / Source: Red Star News

Pan Pan, a college student who works as a crawler in Taishan, is one of the 24 crawlers. He and the other 23 crawlers are "all friends, no studio or company", and contact each other in the crawler group. "(24 people) include college students, veterans and newly graduated sports students," Pan Pan explained.

During the peak tourist seasons in July and August, Pan Pan climbed 23 times and 26 times of Mount Tai, respectively. He spent almost all of his two months in Mount Tai, until September came and the school started, Pan Pan began to consciously reduce the number of orders received, from one order a day to one order a week.

In addition to the need to devote oneself to school at the beginning of school and the passenger flow has also decreased accordingly, another reason is that the high-intensity climbing has made Pan Pan feel uncomfortable in his knees. "Persistence depends entirely on persistence," he said.

Business Opportunities

Similar to most people who do escort, Pan Pan went to school locally in Tai'an. In May this year, he learned that his senior was escort and climbing became an opportunity for him to enter the industry.

Pan Pan is born with a slow heart rate, his heartbeat is 20 less than that of a normal person per minute, and he has the inherent advantage of exercise. The fitness habits that he has maintained for a long time and the identity of a member of the school basketball team are "plus factors", which make him think he is in good physical condition and can follow his seniors to take over the business of accompanying him. "You can earn living expenses and no longer have to ask parents for money. I think this is a cool thing."

Enough physical fitness is the basic threshold for being accompanied Mount Tai. After all, it takes four to five hours to climb Mount Tai to the top once.

So, the accompanying crawlers who take orders on social platforms, regardless of men or women, will write the words "having fitness habits", willing to exercise or "retirement" in front, or give the shortest time record of the top of Mount Tai, to prove that they can not only reach the top alone, but also be able to share their spare time to assist customers to reach the top.

The male actor of "Northeast Transfer Student" worked part-time to climb Mount Tai. He once said in the video that he was tall and ran fast / Source: @Shi Yuanting

The rest of the words such as height of 180cm and abdominal muscles, and the photos attached to the post have little to do with climbing themselves, but are just to attract the attention of potential customers.

After Pan decided to start taking orders, his business "ups and downs" almost overlap with Taishan's tourism off-peak season. There were not too many orders from May to June, and the frequency was stable at about one order a week. "In July, it became one order a day."

A few months after receiving the order, climbing Mount Tai has almost become a "assembly line work" for Pan Pan. He was helping the customer with his backpack, and was also responsible for pulling, carrying, carrying or pulling the customer to the top of the mountain, and finding the best viewing point for the customer to watch the sunrise or sunset, and then accompanying the other party down the mountain. "I'm already numb, and I won't watch the sunrise (now) anymore," Pan Pan said.

But the advantage of taking orders at high intensity is that Pan Pan, who can earn a net profit of 550 yuan in one trip, can have more than 10,000 yuan a month, completely covering life needs. Therefore, part-time jobs and some pocket money are common reasons why male college students are doing Taishan to accompany them.

Robot dog in Taishan/Source: Xinhua News Agency

Chen Li is one of the few retired female soldiers in the circle of accompanying crawlers and is also a female college student. He also entered the industry of accompanying crawlers to earn more pocket money. But because there is inevitably physical contact with her crawling, she only takes the orders of girls and writes "not accepting men" in a conspicuous place to take the orders. "And boys generally have no problem with physical strength. Those who are not physically strong are generally more weight--it is not easy for me to pull them up (to the top of the other party)."

Unlike Pan Pan, who only rests for a few days a month, Chen Li, who started to work with crawlers from May to June, is more "Buddhist". "If you have orders, you can take them, and it doesn't matter. The price was relatively low at the beginning, and you can receive two orders in a week."

This makes the customer base portraits of Chen Li and Pan Pan different. Pan Pan received more orders that needed to assist middle-aged women to go up the mountain. Chen Li only climbed with girls because of the low price, so she lacked budget and had poor physical strength. College students who were "fear not being able to successfully reach the top" became her main source of customers.

What you need to do during the climbing Mount Tai is similar. But Chen Li feels that it is important to provide emotional value to customers, "because Taishan is easy to climb and collapse for people who are not very sporty." How to "coax" customers to go up the mountain is something that every "climber" who wants to have a good reputation must think about.

Market

Among his peers, Chen Li's physical fitness is already considered strong. But she still felt that the money was not easy to make, because the height and risk of Mount Tai were objective - in the steepest and most difficult section of the "Eighteen Pan" road, ordinary people had to use their hands and feet to pass through this mountain with an almost vertical slope. "In my friend's words, it's really hard work," Chen Li said.

For example, when I climbed at night and watched the sunrise, the guest thought he was in good physical strength and could carry a dozen pounds of backpacks, and stuffed a whole bag of snacks for Chen Li to carry. But before halfway through the journey, the guest was exhausted. Chen Li could only carry a ten-pound backpack with his ten-pound backpack, carrying a snack in one hand and pulling the guest to the top with the other.

"When the price was low before, I basically couldn't make much money." After taking a few orders, Chen Li raised the price a little, but still thought that for girls, it was difficult to do with crawling with them. The reason was that "girls' physical fitness is definitely incomparable to boys. The energy we consumed once crawling may be similar to that of boys twice crawling."

In the crawling market, the quotes of female crawlers often range from one hundred to three hundred yuan higher than those of male crawlers. A studio accompanied by climbing told Nanfeng Window that taking their studio as an example, the price for boys accompanying to climbing during the day is 599 yuan, and the price for girls accompanying to climb during the day is 699 yuan, and the price for girls accompanying to climb during the day is 799 yuan, and the price for girls accompanying to climb during the day is 799 yuan, and the price for girls accompanying to climb during the day is 799 yuan, and the price for girls accompanying to climb at night is Regarding the uneven price situation, the studio gave the reason that there are relatively few women in the circle, which is the price increase caused by the supply and demand relationship.

Posted by female crawlers on social platforms / Source: @Taishan crawlers (cheese)

Unlike studios that require private messages to understand the price, Pan Pan directly marked the price clearly in the post on the social platform homepage. From May to the peak tourist season for summer vacation, his accompanying climbing price has also increased from 499 yuan a day to 599 yuan a night to 700 yuan a day and 800 yuan a night, which is a price level similar to most order-takers in the market.

In the accompanying crawler market, this fee for hiring accompanying crawlers usually includes tickets to Taishan. But if the customer can't hold on and wants to take the cable car up and down the mountain, the customer also needs to "reimburse" the car fare for the accompanying climber. The reason why night climbing is a little more expensive than day climbing is that night climbing requires climbing all night, or spending the night on the top of a mountain with lower temperatures to watch the sunrise on Mount Tai, so the physical exhaustion is higher and the environment is more difficult and dangerous.

Sometimes Pan Pan will receive "excess" orders, and at this time he usually posts the customer needs in the accompanying group, "Whoever has time is gone, if five people are available, then send photos of five people, and the customer chooses which one they choose."

The accompanying climbing group is equivalent to a "civil organization" with intermediary nature in the entire Taishan accompanying climbing system. Correspondingly, studios and companies such as Pan Pan and Chen Li are searching everywhere, and the latter makes money by "information gap".

On July 31, tourists visited Tianjie, Taishan Scenic Area / Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Zhu Zheng

Business opportunities are ahead, companies and studios who want to be middlemen who make money must have resources. Therefore, they need to independently recruit male and female college students. On recruitment posters, most of them will state that veterans and outdoor enthusiasts are preferred, and promise to "check out immediately after completion, and give one order money to make one order."

Nian Yi, a male college student who just started taking orders at the end of August, had already received the "recruitment" information from the accompanying crawler studio. "But (I) don't have this intention, because I don't want to make a lot of money for the purpose of accompanying me." Unlike other people who are trying to make living expenses, Nian Yi, who already likes pulling exercise, takes hiking as an interest and prepares to take orders for only a period of time.

Company Service

In the promotion of studios and companies, consumers' advantage in choosing them is that once a dispute arises, they can complain about the accompanying crawlers through the company's channels; and the advantage in choosing to affiliate with them is that once the customer makes excessive demands, the accompanying crawlers can also have safety channels.

In short, they will put forward their business licenses and claim that they are "more formal" to attract more crawlers and consumers. Such publicity can play a certain role because in the Taishan accompanying climbing industry, disputes really exist.

Simple search on social platforms to find many "lightning protection" strategies, either "lightning protection" crawlers do not provide corresponding backpack services or emotional value, or they accus them of disappearing after collecting deposits.

Lightning protection posts on social platforms / Source: Screenshots of social platforms

At the same time, another voice also exists. In the posts where some accompanying crawlers take orders, some people kindly remind the accompanying crawlers to pay attention to screening when taking orders (especially when receiving orders of the opposite sex) and be careful about personal safety. A female escort also responded in the comment section, "It's okay, I have a company, and I mainly take orders from the company."

The potential risks in the industry cannot be ignored, but the risks do not only exist in the role of "Taishan accompanying the climb". Such companionship economy will always fall into similar controversies.

If it is expanded and filled, the companionship service of Taishan Accompaniment has actually existed in the market for a long time. From the earliest personal companionship to the current Disney companionship, and even coser entrustment, the nature of its "companimental economy" is actually very different - in addition to real explanations, queues, shop visits and other services, it is best to provide emotional value to customers.

But without exception, the nature of its private transactions often makes people think that there is no way to complain, and they can only post "lightning protection posts" on social platforms, and take the initiative by influencing the other party's reputation.

But in fact, local companionship, crawling and other similar personal companionship services are not the gray areas of the law.

Local companion, crawling and other similar personal companion services are also subject to law / Stills of "The End of the World is My Love"

Lawyer Qi Yanbing told Nanfengchuang, "According to Article 2 of the current Tourism Law, as long as tourism activities are engaged in or organized abroad by the country, and business activities that provide services to such tourism activities must be subject to the Tourism Law."

It is just a tour with different natures that will be subject to different supervision. Lawyer Qi Yanbing explained that if the traveler is for profit but does not participate in the tour guide, tour leader or travel agency service, referring to the Tourism Law and the "Provisions of the Supreme People's Court on Several Issues Concerning the Application of Law in Trial of Tourism Disputes", he is already a tourism operator and should abide by the rights and obligations stipulated in the Tourism Law.

If the services engaged in the tour guide include business of the tour guide, the tour guide or even the travel agency, the tour guide must obtain the corresponding qualification certificate through the tour guide qualification examination, and register with the travel agency or industry association to obtain the tour guide certificate before the service can be carried out.

Requirements for tour guides in the Tourism Law / Source: China Government Website

From the legal provisions alone, once a dispute occurs, consumers and operators standing on both ends of the companionship service can actually safeguard their legitimate rights and interests through legal means and apply for litigation or mediation from the tourism complaint accepting agency.

But the premise is that "the evidence must be kept as soon as possible, such as contract or consent content, receipt and payment records, service provision and proof of dispute arising, etc.," explained lawyer Qi Yanbing.

Although there is a way to litigate, more people still choose to "suffer from silence" or let the dispute go to nothing. One of the reasons is that people often weigh the hundreds or thousands of yuan involved in disputes, the time, energy and money required to be paid for in litigation, and the latter's overwhelming magnitude is often daunting.

But with the rise of the Internet's "track culture" and companion economy, this market focusing on "emotional value" will inevitably become larger and larger, and clearer and more complete industry supervision and industry norms are needed to reduce potential industry risks from the "source".

In this way, the "regular" signboard can be truly established in the market.

(Chen Li is a pseudonym)

Author | Ren Zaoyu

Editor | Zhang Lai

Tutorial Editor | Wu Qing

Typeline | Promise