THE leisure travel wholesale arm of Asiatravel.com, TAcentre.com, has made its first foray into China.
It has already begun operations in the country with four local offices – one each in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu – and will officially kick-off at a launch event in Beijing on September 6 followed by a roadshow in Shanghai on September 8.
TAcentre.com, which has been in operation in South-east Asia since October 2012, will be known in China under the localised brand 汇订网, which roughly translates into “integrated web platform”.
Explaining and describing the move into China, Fred Seow, senior vice president of marketing & B2B at Asiatravel.com, said: “Everyone knows how big a market China is. It has become one of the top source markets for many countries. But just like the Great Wall, you don’t know the magnitude of the place until you are actually there. The complexity, the culture, the mindset, the way they run business is all different.
“Being a new player, we started preparations almost a year ago to get everything prepared before we officially launch it. We spent time modifying the product to suit the market needs.
“For example, TAcentre.com outside China uses standard credit card payment modes such as Visa and Mastercard. But in China’s context, no one uses those cards. They want to pay by WeChat, Alipay and UnionPay, so we had to integrate these local payment gateways into the system to serve our Chinese travel agents.”
He further illustrated that while the brand TAcentre.com serves well in international markets, it wouldn’t mean anything in China, thus the effort to come up with a localised brand.
Agents can access the Chinese platform via TAcenter.cn, which carries the same inventory as the international site of over 500 airlines, 200,000 hotels, and a multitude of activities, packages and car rentals worldwide. The company will also be leveraging its Asia and Middle East networks to offer procurement and destination management services to larger travel companies in China.
“We have been spending the past one year fine-tuning our strategies, operating style and pricing. We are also engaging with agents to find out exactly what do they need. There is nothing better than meeting agents face-to-face to find out about their business and their challenges,” added Seow.
“Currently we are already serving some of the biggest online and mobile players in China because of our API capability. Everyone uses a mobile in China but not everyone uses a desktop. So the mobile play is our main distribution channel.
“Having said that, there are still many offline agents that serve their own local community. 汇订网 is focused on reaching out to these traditional agents at the same time.”
When asked where in China offices would open next, he said: “Our B2B concept has always been focused on the proximity to the client, the agents. The more secluded they are, the greater their need and dependency for a system like TAcentre.com. We are looking at opening offices in cities like Nanjing, Fujian, Chongqing, Shenyang and a host of others.”
Concurrently, the company is launching TAcentre Exclusives, a selection of independent hotels that will be given greater prominence on the platform via a separate product tab. Independent hotels that appoint TAcentre.com as their exclusive distributor will be put on this list and be featured regularly in their marketing communication initiatives.
“Now that we have that distribution channel in China, we are announcing to the rest of the market that we intend to be one of the top B2B players in China, and we will be happy to support (the marketing efforts of independent properties) there. We have the platform and the API, so we hope to be able to help independent hotels gain (greater awareness) in China,” explained Seow.
As to whether they will be bringing the company’s namesake B2C business to China, Seow said the focus is on the outbound B2B side for now, but that it is definitely in the business plan to do so.
