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Trip.com Group recently held its 2022 Global Partner Summit in Macao, with tourism boards, international airlines, hotel groups and industry representatives from across the travel industry in attendance. Celebrating this year’s theme, ‘Journey into the Future Together’, Trip.com Group and partners provided insights on the industry’s growth and opportunities ahead, with leadership and experts sharing sector-specific knowledge via breakout sub-forums.
An Encouraging Outlook
Countries worldwide are reopening borders, and the pace of global travel recovery is accelerating. James Liang, chairman and Co-founder of Trip.com Group, made no secret of his expectations for the future of tourism. He believes that: “Travel has great significance on innovation and heritage. At Trip.com Group, we play an important role in bringing people together from around the world. It’s our mission to help build communication and innovation, using our travel platform to create new value for the industry.”
Trip.com Group is continuously safeguarding efforts toward global travel recovery by following its ‘Local Focus, Global Vision’ blueprint. Jane Sun, CEO of Trip.com Group, highlighted some of the Group’s financial results, emphasising triple-digit growth in hotel bookings across key APAC markets compared to the same period in 2019. With its global air ticket bookings increasing by 100% year-over-year.
Rising international air ticket and hotel bookings have empowered partners with a source of business and revenue. Trip.com Group’s hotel travel specials (PKG program) delivered recommendations to over 30 million cross-users and brought over RMB 10 billion GMV to hotel partners. Jane Sun commented: “Although the road ahead is still uncertain, we want to explore more opportunities and use cooperation, technology, and service to promote the tourism industry together with our travel partners.”
Trip.com is the mainstay global travel brand of Trip.com Group. Its hugely successful 11.11 global campaign reveals the growth of the all-in-one travel app across its major markets. Bookings around 11th November hit a new high, surging by 84% compared to last year, and the average number of bookings for promoted products rose by 68%. In the Singapore market, bookings for the 11th November flash sale jumped by 115% in just 24 hours, while in South Korea, bookings on the same day jumped by 260% year-on-year.
“The early recovery of global markets has given us confidence. We will continue looking for more possibilities to better serve our partners and users by building an improved travel ecosystem to meet users’ needs,” said Jane Sun. “The recovery and prosperity of the global tourism industry is a long-term trend, which will not be hindered by short-term difficulties. We remain confident and patient,” said James Liang.
Scaled-up Content Marketing Strategy
Trip.com Group has ambitious plans to revitalise the tourism economy and reconnect with keen travellers by enhancing engagement between travellers and partners. This is primarily done through an expanding content offering, consisting of Trip Moments on Trip.com, the Ctrip Community travel sharing space on Ctrip, and Star Hub, the Group’s enhanced marketing tool for suppliers to increase marketing activities, which generated a total GMV of RMB 1 billion in the last 30 days.
In the past year, Ctrip Community has continued to see exponential user growth and has provided hundreds of millions of users with travel inspiration. Several upgrades and expansions to the existing content marketing offering were announced at the summit. The innovative and hugely popular Ctrip Livestream, which generated a total GMV of RMB 10 billion, will launch across more cities in mainland China to boost global distribution.
Trip.com’s successful Trip.Best list, which curates an extensive range of hotels for global users, will launch across all major sites. This valuable tool will help global users get the best from the Trip.com app. Bo Sun, CMO of Trip.com Group, explained: “We are optimising user engagement, inspiring more travellers and generating increased traffic by upgrading how we connect products and partners. This year, we have helped millions of new travellers, KOLs, and partners connect to our content marketing hub and inspire travel around the world.”
Strengthening Global Destination Reach
Its global reach, diversified supply chain and content marketing ecosystem have uniquely positioned Trip.com Group as a leading travel service provider able to promote regional and local destinations to eager travellers. Under new and existing partnerships, Trip.com Group leverages its world-leading brands to engage high-quality travellers eager to explore global destinations.
Trip.com Group and the Macao Government Tourism Office held a Global Partnership Launch Ceremony to strengthen their collective commitments this year. On-site for the event was Lei Wai Nong, Secretary for Economy and Finance of the Macao SAR Government.
With joint efforts to enhance the vitality of the Macao tourism market, Ctrip platform data shows that the popularity of Macao travel searches has increased by 231% year-over-year. Trip.com Group further deepened cooperation with industry partners to enhance Macao’s tourism market vitality.
Trip.com Group and Sands China Ltd. held a strategic signing ceremony, in which both parties will continue to deepen cooperation in various aspects around product marketing, content marketing, membership benefits, offline shopping and dining activities to help upgrade the Macao tourism consumption market.
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