TRENDSPOTTING: Live Streaming
Sarah Zhan
Marketing Director
May 21, 2020
Posted in: China, Travel Trade
June 2020
With stay-at-home orders lifted, China’s travel trade is working to stimulate tourism recovery and find creative ways to encourage travel purchasing. Live streaming is now the most efficient promotional tool. Delighting millions of viewers, Trip.com’s Chairman James Liang took to the stage to ignite domestic travel interest.
Since the launch of Chairman Liang’s live-stream broadcast on March 24th, he’s hosted nine shows helping Trip.com generate more than 300 million yuan in transactions. His latest live stream attracted nearly 2 million viewers.
With digital consumption at an all-time high (WeChat reported monthly active users surpassed 1.2 billion in Q1), tour leaders and destination partners are getting in on the action by teaming up to shoot videos and launch live streaming to promote tourism products.
Chinese super apps like Meituan, the “Amazon of services” which connects consumers with local businesses for food takeout, hotel bookings, movie tickets among other services, and e-commerce giant Pinduoduo, a group buying deal platform, have also held similar campaigns via live broadcasts. Duo Duo Live, the live streaming section of Pinduoduo, hosted a virtual tour of an ancient town in Hunan Province to promote tourism for Labor Day and will launch a series of live streaming virtual tours to support tourist destinations.
Live streaming gives consumers a deeper understanding of products and is an effective promotional tool for destination marketers. In the weeks to come, we can expect more local government and tourism administration officials to KOLs and celebrities to leverage digital and incentivize consumers with special offers.
