Trip.com Group is globally committed to a customer-centric approach highlighting the technology to empower it, as a key to travel’s future.
Boon Sian Chai, Managing Director and Vice President, International Markets, Trip.com Group, took the stage as the keynote speaker for the Technology Track taking place at World Travel Market London today.
Mr Chai’s perspective on customer-centricity was put into context by the moderator Timothy O’Neil Dunne, who told the packed auditorium that what they were about to hear about “[is] not pie in the sky stuff, this is live, in operation, today.”
Artificial intelligence underpins most of Trip.com Group’s innovations. He mentioned initiatives including: Trip.Best, a tool that provides personalized hotels, destination, restaurants, and experiences recommendations based on analysing over 100 million user reviews and TripGenie, an AI travel assistant capable of crafting itineraries and answering queries, which has served about 3 million users and elevated engagement.
Mr Chai also talked about Hotel + X, a product which allows hoteliers to promote their property on Trip.com as a holistic experience by allowing them to upsell the unique features of the property or its location as a “rooms-plus” package. The 8,000 hotels who have signed up for the product are seeing an average increase of 30% in their ADR, he said.
Trip.com Group is taking a global approach to its innovation roadmap, with localisation capabilities built in. Mr Chai noted that travellers in Europe have a greater interest in sustainability, so Trip.com’s points of sale in Europe can surface sustainability information during the search stage and provide recommendations. Conversely in the Middle East, delivering the correct tone of voice of the many languages needed to serve the region’s travellers is essential.
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Mr Chai also hinted at the next expansion of its Live Streaming product, which was an initiative launched by the group’s co-founder and executive chairman James Liang during the pandemic. The idea was to maintain a connection with travellers when travel was not possible, and the chairman’s live video streams picked up tens of millions of views across various platforms in China.
This led to the opening of a dedicated live streaming centre in Bangkok to serve the Asia-Pacific market. Mr Chai told the WTM London audience that the increasing popularity of live streaming online led the group to believe “it is possible to replicate the success we’ve seen in China in the rest of the world, including Europe.”
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