In the past few years, China's tourism industry has experienced explosive recovery due to policy driven and retaliatory travel. Nowadays, the tourism industry is entering a new stage of endogenous growth relying on market innovation, and with the influence of new technologies such as large models, how can the tourism industry develop high-quality and maintain sustainable growth?
On October 24th, Ctrip held a Global Partner Summit on Sentosa Island, Singapore, providing the answer to the triple innovation of "AI, Content, and ESG": accelerating the deep application of generative AI in fields such as business travel, air tickets, accommodation, and vacation; Building a user oriented content ecosystem centered around rankings; Release Ctrip low-carbon hotel standards to assist the tourism industry in exploring sustainable development.
Ctrip's first move of the Global Partner Summit overseas is a reflection of its global development strategy and an effort to accelerate the recovery of inbound and outbound tourism. On site, Ctrip signed a three-year strategic cooperation with the Singapore Tourism Authority and jointly launched a global market cooperation upgrade plan.
Tourism promotes innovation and Ctrip creates endogenous growth for partners
Liang Jianzhang, co-founder and chairman of Ctrip Group, explains why the tourism industry is a unique industry that promotes innovation from perspectives such as psychology, economics, sociology, and philosophy. He believes that, In psychology, it satisfies high-level needs that are difficult to saturate. From an economic perspective, it is a long-term high growth industry. At the social level, it promotes human understanding, enhances communication, and brings peace and inclusive development. In the field of philosophy, innovation is promoted by expanding horizons, and inheritance is promoted by dispersing risks. Thus, the ultimate mission of innovation is achieved, and the long-term prosperity of human civilization is pursued through innovation and inheritance
Liang Jianzhang stated that Ctrip has a small mission, which is to provide humanity with the best travel experience in the real universe.
Tourism promotes human innovation, and innovation also brings growth and increment to tourism. Through marketing innovations such as new traffic, new audiences, and new content, Ctrip has brought over three times the growth of new customers to its partners in the first three quarters of this year, adding endogenous strength to the tourism industry and accelerating the recovery process. Sun Jie, CEO of Ctrip Group, stated that in 2024, the global tourism industry will maintain a new trend. If China's tourism industry can improve in visa, language, products, and other aspects, telling the story of China to the world will bring new development opportunities to the industry.
For future development, Liang Jianzhang stated that Ctrip will continue to innovate around three aspects. AI dimension, further improve the Ctrip Q&A model, integrate generative AI into various products, and use natural language based interactive interfaces to improve user experience and help businesses reduce costs and increase efficiency. Content dimension, based on an average of 5 million data operations and manual verification per ranking, to create a "reliable answer library" for the tourism industry. ESG dimension, introducing quantifiable low-carbon hotel standards, comprehensively promoting environmental friendliness, family friendliness, community friendliness, etc., and enhancing sustainable development capabilities.
Ctrip low-carbon hotel standards officially released and displayed carbon reduction transcripts
At the conference, Ctrip announced that it will further innovate its ESG strategy and launch the "Ctrip Low Carbon Hotel Standards". Compared to current industry standards, this standard has significant features such as quantifiability, detectability, and improvement.
The low-carbon product manager of Ctrip introduced that this standard takes the gas and electricity bills submitted by cooperative hotels (the main sources of carbon emissions from hotels) and low-carbon measures as the calculation pool. It is inferred that in order to achieve the 2030 1.5 temperature control target of the Paris Agreement, carbon emission thresholds should be determined for different service capabilities and star rated hotels. Those below this threshold are considered "low-carbon hotels". Based on the expansion of the computing pool and seasonal changes, update the threshold on a semi annual basis and re certify.
In the future, Ctrip will invest funds and resources to further promote low-carbon hotels and help the tourism industry achieve the goals of "2030 Carbon Peak" and the Paris Agreement. After obtaining low-carbon certification, hotels can receive more brand exposure and traffic support, converting low-carbon dividends into order dividends. For hotels that have not been shortlisted, Ctrip will also provide carbon reduction suggestions and plans such as renewable energy and energy-saving building materials, clarifying the carbon reduction path.
In order to implement the concept of sustainable development, Ctrip also invited cultural and tourism representatives from Singapore, Macau, Chengdu, and other regions as well as guests from tourism enterprises to share low-carbon practices in venue renovation, green exhibitions, green transportation, and renovation. Ctrip also demonstrated its carbon reduction transcript: 92% of domestic flights and 86% of international flights have achieved carbon compliance; New energy vehicle rental orders have increased nearly threefold in the past year; The proportion of low-carbon business travel flight orders for enterprise users has exceeded 50%; 1200 hotels joined the low-carbon camp.
Ctrip has many innovative measures in ESG: opening Ctrip vacation farms across the country, improving the quality of rural tourism, cultivating rural tourism talents, and jointly building community friendliness; Every year, nearly 8 million yuan is invested in providing benefits to female employees, and a special recruitment plan for female employees is launched to promote workplace friendliness; In June of this year, a global employee maternity allowance was launched to promote family friendliness. Ctrip's ESG practice is exploring a path for the long-term prosperity and sustainable development of the tourism industry.
Joining hands with the Singapore Tourism Authority to launch a global partnership, Ctrip Business Travel releases the "Global Influence Plan"
Data shows that in 2019, the income of inbound tourists accounted for only 0.5% of China's GDP. If it rises to 1.5% of the international median, it will bring at least 1.3 trillion yuan of growth space, and the potential for inbound tourism is enormous.
In response to this, Ctrip has launched the "Inbound Tourism Revitalization Project", which helps promote the development of inbound tourism through brand building, integrated marketing, content planting, and products. At the same time, we will collaborate with partners to increase the convenience of inbound tourism in infrastructure dimensions such as payment, translation, and hotels, and jointly customize tourism products to improve bilingual environment construction.
During the summit, cultural and tourism bureaus in Hunan, Tianjin, Chengdu and other regions carried out tourism promotion to attract overseas tourists to China.
In 2020, the Singapore Tourism Authority signed a three-year strategic partnership with Ctrip Group. This time, the two sides renewed their relationship, signed a second three-year strategic cooperation, and launched a global market cooperation upgrade plan: the two sides will carry out cooperation within China around Singapore's hot festivals, art and culture, and further implement cooperation between Trip.com's multiple overseas sites and the Singapore Tourism Authority in the international market. At the same time, we will assist in upgrading Singapore's tourism products and digital marketing, and continue to make efforts to expand domestic tourist sources and expand international tourism promotion for Singapore.
Since 2012, we have established a long-term partnership with Ctrip. In the future, we will continue to strengthen our advertising targeting different audience groups in the leisure and MICE tourism markets, and enhance cooperation in digital solutions and innovation. At the same time, we will work together to develop more in-depth tourism products and create a more diverse tourism ecosystem in Singapore
Ctrip has also signed MOU agreements with Singaporean tourism partners such as the Sentosa Development Authority, Sentosa World of Attractions, and Singapore Changi Airport Group, focusing on multi-dimensional deep cooperation in product marketing, content marketing, membership rights, and other aspects in the global market.
On the same day, Ctrip Business Travel released its global influence plan. In the future, Ctrip Business Travel will improve multiple payment and settlement methods such as overseas credit cards, BTA (travel allowance), VCC (virtual credit card), and cover multiple international service sites in Southeast Asia and Europe. At the same time, we will strengthen the supply of overseas hotels, airlines, and car resources, further improve the global business travel supply chain resources, and grow into a global TMC (Business Travel Management Company) originating from China.