The economy in China might be slowing but its citizens, who comprise the largest visitor source of the Special Administrative Region, still favour high-end hotels, according to Rachel Lu, senior director of International Business Development of the country’s most popular online travel agent – Qunar.com. She told Business Daily during the Global Tourism Economy Forum that Japan, Korea and the U.S. became the rising favourite destinations for Mainland Chinese when these countries loosened their visa regulations for Chinese passport holders What is the current travel trend for Chinese tourists in terms of hotels? In fact, the majority of people who book travel products on our platform are mainly leisure travellers, of whom we define the majority as smart and price-cautious travellers. We observe that they’re actually tending to choose luxury hotels more and more. The anti-corruption campaign of the Chinese Government did not affect the choices of our users as they are mostly leisure travellers, who travel primarily for fun. In addition, because they earn more money than before in general, they tend to spend more in luxury hotels now. The bookings we have received for luxury hotels have been climbing. Are they primarily family tourists or individual tourists? Most of our users are relatively young; as I said, they are leisure travellers. At the beginning of the operation of our platform, many of our users were college students or young professionals. So, over the years many of them may already have their own families. But they keep using our website for their needs as family travellers. Hence, the answer is I think the majority of our users are young people but at the same time we also have family tourists. With the local tourism industry experiencing a downturn do you see fewer bookings for Macau-related products? I don’t have the exact numbers with me now. However, I think it’s true that many Chinese tourists have [visited] Hong Kong and Macau a few times, so they may now want something different. In addition, many countries have changed their visa policies for Chinese citizens, such as Japan and South Korea. As such, you can see more Chinese tourists prefer going to these two countries. Moreover, for long-haul, the U.S. now also offers visas to Chinese citizens [valid for] up to 10 years. Frankly speaking, things in the U.S. may even be a lot cheaper than in Hong Kong and Macau, thus we also see the trend that the numbers of Chinese tourists travelling to the U.S. or Europe are increasing rapidly. As I said, I don’t have the exact data with me showing the bookings related to Macau products on our platform are indeed decreasing but I can say Macau may not be as important as before for leisure travellers. Yet, there are still a lot of people travelling to Macau. You can see the streets are still crowded, so it seems that it is still a fun place for tourists. Especially when more resort projects open, I think people will still love to check them out. Are online travel agencies a trend in Mainland China? For sure they are. The whole tourism industry is growing rapidly in China due to the economy growing. When the GDP per capita reaches a certain level, travel becomes a must for most people, rather than a “maybe”. If you look at the macro data, people in China have travelled more and more in recent years. In that sense, we can assume that the growth in the number of travel [trips] made by Chinese is even higher than the growth of GDP. Even though the GDP growth of China is slowing now, we see the Chinese outbound tourism market will continue going up. Meanwhile, within the tourism market, the online sector will certainly surge – just imagine how many people can access the Internet in China, how easy it is to look for travel products online, and how easy it is to compare prices between different providers. Online booking is so convenient that you don’t need to call a travel agent; you don’t need to show up at travel agencies. You may only need to tap your phone a couple of times then book everything you need. In your opinion, convenience and cheap prices are the advantages of online travel agencies? Sure, of course. Qunar.com offers quite a number of hotels with cheap room rates. Do you work with the hoteliers or with other travel agencies? We co-operate with both. At the beginning of our business, we were only a travel search engine, which means we worked with a lot of tourist service providers and suppliers. At that time, we led our users directly to providers in order to complete their bookings. Over the years, we have found this model did not work the best for us, especially in China. Hence, in addition to providing travel search, we started to turn ourselves into an online booking agency. On top of that, for both of our search sector, and the online booking agency business, we work directly with hoteliers as well as many other travel service suppliers, so that our users can book their products directly. Including hotel operators in Macau? Yes, we have a team based in Hong Kong. This team also works with hotels in Hong Kong and Macau, especially high-end hotels. And I think that part of the business is still quite healthy. Regarding the platform, what are the most popular products related to Macau? Well, you know Macau is about gaming, which is very obvious. As such, when people come to Macau, many of them may want to bet on one or two games. But some of them come to Macau to watch shows, while others come for shopping. I think the proportion of entertainment [products] is becoming bigger, after many tourists have got to know that Macau is an Asian version of Las Vegas. So they may now want to see a more cultural side of Macau, by visiting historic sites, for example. The local government is promoting ‘multi-destination tours’ of Macau and other nearby cities, like Zhuhai and Zhongshan . . . Yes, I think this can be a good idea. When people travel to this part of the country they may first want to visit the new theme park in Hengqin – Chimelong Ocean Kingdom – which is actually quite an impressive project. After that, they may want to visit Macau as the two places are so close to each other. As such, it is a good idea to sell linked packages for tourists to travel between Macau and other nearby Chinese cities on the same tour. Does Qunar.com sell this type of package? I cannot exactly name the packages but I’m sure there are a lot of similar packages on our platform as the products we provide are very varied. I’m sure there will be packages for our users to visit Hengqin, Zhuhai and Macau on one tour. In fact, we have a function on our mobile application that provides user information of what is around them, or special offers. For example, when they are in Hengqin, we may remind them that there is a special offer of hotel rooms in Macau so they can check it out. With our technology, we know where people are, plus their previous preferences [thus] we would bring up specific products to them. Hence, I think multiple-destination tours can be a really good policy. Qunar.com has launched a joint venture with other companies to develop high-end rural hotels in China. Why is that? I still believe the income of Chinese people is increasing in general. Meanwhile, as I said, when their income reaches a certain level they will only tend to travel more and more, and travel will occupy a bigger and bigger proportion of their expenditure. In fact, in my opinion, people are no longer making choices between whether they should take a trip or buy a car or a television as they now already have cars and televisions, they have all those things. Hence, many will [naturally] spend on travel instead. Meanwhile, when they travel, they would certainly search accommodation in the upper market as people want to stay in nice places on their travels. Sometimes, people may stay in a high-end hotel around their cities just for the weekend. This is the trend, so we have such a plan. We want to take advantage of this trend. Is developing your own products, such as hotel projects, a strategy for the company to deal with the intense competition in the industry? Well, we are still a technology company, that’s how we define ourselves. We don’t like to perceive ourselves as a company doing business in traditional ways. So I think, broadly speaking, we are a technology company. Our acquisitions are mostly of technology companies or I.T. companies inside or even outside of China. But here or there, we may have some other joint ventures, or some other initiatives that focus on different things, like the hotel business you mentioned. However, in general, it is not the major focus of our company. Is the company planning to promote the website in Macau? In fact, as the website is in Chinese, people here can actually access and use it. Currently, we mostly promote our site in China. But for Chinese outside of China [Mainland], such as in Macau, Europe or in the U.S., if they go to our website or download our application there won’t be any problem for them to use it. But in the future, we’ll probably develop a multi-lingua interface for users; for instance, in English, or let’s say in Portuguese. I don’t know. But the plan will take [shape] a couple of years down the road.
—
