“Real universe must defeat the metaverse,” says James Liang
The first impression I had when I walked into the Resorts World Convention Centre on Sentosa to attend the Trip.com Global Partner Summit was that I had travelled through a time tunnel back to October 2019 in Shanghai.
That was the 20th anniversary celebration party of Ctrip in which it changed its name to Trip,com Group, announced its intentions to be the leading travel brand in Asia in three years, to be the leading international travel brand globally by 2025, and to be the undisputed, most valuable and respected leader in online travel by 2030 with the best technology, best service, largest market share and most recognised brand. (Read article)
The Resorts World ballroom was packed with the more than 2,000 partners who had flown in from China for the Summit to hear Trip.com’s plans for a post-Covid future, and no expense had been spared for a massive sound and light production to wow the guests.
At the 2019 celebration, which I attended, chairman and co-founder James Liang also declared the group’s new mission of growing inbound tourism. Noting that in most countries, inbound tourism as a contribution to GDP was usually between one and three percent, China’s was 0.3%, the lowest among major economies. Calling it China’s biggest weak spot, he said just a shift to one percent would produce $100b to $200b growth. “This results in a lack of soft power and huge deficit in education sector and ability to attract talent,” he said at the time.
Trip.com Global Partner Summit 2023, hosted at Resorts World Convention Centre, signalling the group’s ambition for growth.
Well, after that big party, the you-know-what blip happened and Trip was forced to press the “pause” button on its plans but there’s no mistaking the ambition and drive is still there for the group to grow into a “glocal” giant as well as play a leading role in Chinese inbound. In fact, you could say it’s even stronger after a challenging three years, in which it had to first refocus on domestic, then ramp up its global business units to capture the initial recovery outside China and now with the full reopening of China, lead the outbound charge as well as inbound into the country. With the challenges facing the Chinese economy, post-Covid, it is clear inbound tourism will have to play a bigger role in addressing the tourism deficit to balance out the outbound flow.
James Liang on travel as “chicken soup” for the world.
Liang, as always, struck a philosophical note in his opening. Sentosa, he said, held special memories for him because he caught Covid while on this “tropical island with beautiful beaches, bars and good food”.
“I had to be locked in a pretty comfortable place for a week and, after that, felt totally revived and restored.”
He called travel “the chicken soup” for humanity. Citing Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, he said travel fulfilled the need for exploration, discovery, adventure with some element of risk involved. “It satisfies the higher needs of humans.”
Unlike other industries such as manufacturing or entertainment, travel cannot be fully automated and even though there is the metaverse, he said, “The real universe is better and real universe must defeat the metaverse so our young people will go out to explore the real world.”
He added, “Travel promotes understanding and exchange, reduces inequality and promotes peace and the highest purpose of life and humanity is the longterm prosperity of human civilisation through innovation and risk diversification.”
Travel leads to innovation, he said, adding that since the time of tribal migration out of Africa, mankind has been on the move and innovated and space travel is the next frontier. “Let’s not put all our eggs in one basket – earth.”
Jane Sun, CEO of Trip.com Group, brought things down to earth as she cited a series of numbers with a lot of zeros at the end, signalling Trip.com’s robust recovery – 100% increase in overseas attraction tickets, 100% increase in multi-attraction ticket orders, 60% increase in domestic hotel bookings, 40% increase in overseas hotel bookings, 260% increase in flight bookings (700% increase in flight bookings in Europe), etc etc.
With domestic travel in China more than fully recovered – as evidenced by the recent National Holiday numbers – Sun talked about the group’s quest to bring more overseas visitors to China. With inbound recovery just at 48.8%, she said Trip was rolling out strategies to push incoming tourism.
It will use its platform to empower partners to tell the China story, curate inbound tourism products, customize and differentiate service offerings, and provide bilingual services. “We can learn from Singapore with its multi-lingual and diverse culture,” said Sun at the event, which also saw the group renew its partnership with the Singapore Tourism Board for another three years. Under the MOU, both parties will expand their collaboration and embark on joint campaigns to boost inbound travel to Singapore and promote more in-depth and lesser-known tours and experiences in Singapore. In addition, it will also leverage its expertise and resources to promote Singapore’s MICE offerings and explore digital innovations that enhance visitors’ experience in Singapore.
Meanwhile, Ray Chen, CEO of accommodation business, said younger users, born in the 90s and Millennials, were the driving force in the recovery and growth. “Their user behaviour is also more confident,” he said.
Quoting a Chinese saying, “Listen to the clouds and rain and act with determination”, he said the group was determined to create the most customer-responsive organisation. With a total of 8,000 technicians working on AI projects, he said AI was helping Trip achieve record standards in customer service. Up to 97% of customer calls are resolved through automation and 95% of requests are responded to in less than 20 seconds.
On innovation, Liang spoke of how Trip was looking at AI innovation for natural language interactive interfaces, content innovation to build the most authoritative source of content and ESG innovation including labelling of low carbon hotels. In the absence of a global standard for carbon measurement, he said Trip “has decided to build our own standards, which will be unique and objective.”
For the more than 2,000 partners from China who flew to Singapore for the two-day summit, there was no mistaking that four years after its last celebration in Shanghai, Trip.com Group is on its way back to serve “chicken soup” for humans all over the world.