Trip.com Group’s Chinese language platform Ctrip has launched its 2023 Travel Revival A Plan – its four-pronged strategy aims to capture the pent-up travel demand in the Chinese travel market by reuniting global destinations with Chinese travellers.
In 2020, Trip.com Group launched its pilot Travel Revival V Plan, investing 1 billion yuan (US$143.2 million) in a recovery fund to help the industry battle pandemic pressures.
On the new iteration of the initiative, Bo Sun, executive vice president and chief marketing officer of Trip.com Group, commented: “Our focus on revival is to assist the industry to meet short-term difficulties, while strengthened revitalisation efforts will look to reshape the post-pandemic industry by forging new opportunities for the industry and destinations.
“For Chinese tourists, there has been a huge build-up of anticipation for their first outbound journey. For this reason, our Ctrip platform has been collaborating with destinations in preparation.”
In July 2022, Ctrip produced the travel documentary Hit the Road that combined destination marketing and the platform’s unique new “Travel + Culture” content marketing model, with the show garnering over 120 million total views. This model will be extended to tourist destinations around the world in the future.
On the group’s expanded marketing offering, Sun said: “We have built out top destination lists, delivered hundreds of super destination promotions, destination-specific live streaming events, and facilitated the distribution of 1 billion yuan in travel consumption vouchers across 20 countries and regions to boost campaign destination orders. In 2023, we will continue to leverage the cultural travel economy to drive business.”
Ctrip Community and Star Hub channels enable destinations to engage with hundreds of millions of users every week, allowing partners to leverage this traffic to offer regular content and products through Ctrip Live, with over 200 million users on the platform. The product system will be updated through dynamic data to meet tourists’ needs.
In addition, Trip.com Group is building a global tourism data and resource sharing platform, linking its brands, including Ctrip, in order to help global destinations to better welcome Chinese tourists again.
This means airline ticketing and hotel resources to travel agencies around the world will open up, facilitating travel service providers to package and sell their products online, and help destinations to access the first cohorts of outbound Chinese tourists.
Trip.com Group also released its first-ever Sustainable Travel Consumer Report in 2022. With sustainable travel now a global trend, they launched its Green Tourism Goals in July, with more than 10,000 low-carbon travel products.
“We have a duty to develop sustainable travel for the future of the entire industry and to fulfil the tourism industry’s responsibility to the world,” said Sun.
