Northstar

TRAVEL WEEKLY ASIA I T B A S I A S H O W D A I L I E S www.travelweekly-asia.com 4 18 OC TOBER 2018 CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1. such as accommodation, car rentals, cuisine, shopping and attraction tickets. Its 'super app' includes a virtual travel guide, in which travellers can swap travel tips, and a chat bot that can help with important information, such as visa requirements for those travelling overseas. "Localisation is very important," said Tseng, who was a speaker at ITB Asia's opening keynote. "So, too is customer service in creating loyalty. We have 30,000 people on call to ensure that we are accessible across the world. We are able to answer 95% of customer calls within 20 seconds." Along with Ctrip and Trip. com, other brands in the group are Qunan.com in China and Skyscanner. "There is still huge opportunity for us in China," Tseng added. "Our online penetration is still less than 20% and while travel spend on outbound travel with Ctrip is US$250 billion, that comes from only 10% of China's population." Spotting the trends in Chinese travel Ctrip has revealed trends in both the domestic and outbound Chinese tourism market during this year's seven-day October National Day Holiday when 726 million travelled throughout China, a year-on-year increase of 9.43%. During the October National Day Holiday, Chinese travellers visited more than 1,000 destinations in 100 countries. Fifty-six percent of outbound travellers were females, with 36% of outbound travellers born in the 1980s. This group, along with the 18% of travellers born in the 1990s formed the main travel force of this year's National Day Holiday. According to Ctrip's travel data, Thailand overtook Japan as the top destination for Chinese outbound travellers, with Hong Kong coming in at third place followed by Vietnam and Singapore. South Korea, Croatia, Mexico, Serbia, and Tunisia were the top five dark horse destinations. Ease of visa contributed greatly to rising interest for the latter three countries. In addition to flights and hotel bookings and searches, data from Ctrip's Things to Do (TTD) showed that Chinese outbound travellers continued to spend money on in-depth local experiences and unique travel activities. The top six favourites were skydiving, hot air balloon rides, scuba diving, helicopter rides, cooking classes and off-road racing. According to Ctrip's Gourmet List findings, dining remains the favourite activity for holiday travellers. Restaurant bookings made through Ctrip's Gourmet List platform saw an increase of 300% compared with the previous month. Shanghai, Beijing and Chengdu were the top three domestic destinations for food-lovers. TRANSFORMING THE DIGITAL DANCE CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1. better customer experience. "Think about your data and how you are going to harness that to drive next-generation decisions," he advised. This includes optimising operations to become proactive instead of reactive, planning for something in event it fails and fixing it before the customer ever encounters it. Don't neglect employees too. "Empower employees to have superpowers and more information at their fingertips than customers," he said. Cognitive services can also give product solutions a human side. For instance, multi- language digital assistants can augment customer engagement, chatbots can be used for consumer-facing and employee-facing services. Don't forget to plan for changing consumer behaviour too. High smartphone usage in the region is fundamentally changing how consumers interact with digital travel companies, said Hermione Joye, head of industry, travel, APAC, Google. Users also research about travel across multiple platforms, using Google search, maps and YouTube. It is up to the travel industry to meet the customers at their level. "The customer is curious, impatient and demanding," she said. She went on to elaborate that customers want more content, want it immediately and it has to be relevant. 69% of travellers report greater loyalty to travel brands that personalise experiences and 36% are willing to pay more for a travel brand that personalises experiences. "Serve your customers based on their needs," she advised. "Travel brands need to offer users assistive experiences." Some examples of these include ensuring that information loads quickly, keeping track of preferences, enabling one-click booking, integrating payment methods seamlessly, always being present and to follow up with customers. "We have 30,000 people on call to ensure that we are accessible across the world. We are able to answer 95% of customer calls within 20 seconds." – VICTOR TSENG, CHIEF COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER, CTRIP CTRIP, TRIP.COM TO CAMPAIGN FOR WILDLIFE PROTECTION C trip and Trip.com will use their mobile applications, websites and offline stores to increase public awareness of the illegal wildlife trade among its more than 300 million users around the world. Ctrip and Trip.com agreed at the recent Illegal Wildlife Trade London Conference 2018 to develop new ecotourism tours and encourage Chinese tourists to engage in ecotourism. And in cooperation with environmental organisations, Ctrip and Trip.com will launch a campaign to discourage and dissuade its vendors and clients from products related to the illegal wildlife trade. Shane O'Flaherty, global director of travel and transportation, Microsoft.

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