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Find here Daxue Talks episode 31. Olivier Verot gives insighs on Ctrip new feature in China. How to leverage these “points of interests” to attract Chinese tourists in your particular local shop or restaurant? Listen to this very short episode of our China marketing podcast to find out more.

Full transcript below:

Interviewer: What is the new service ‘Ctrip point of interest’?

Olivier: Ctrip developed a new function in their app to regroup what they call the point of interest. What is Ctrip in general? It’s a kind of booking.com so people use it for book tickets, hotels etc. And what they want is that people will use their app more to search information while travelling or after and share their thoughts on Ctrip.

Ctrip’s indirect competitors are more Mafengwo or Tripadvisor. And this app became very successful because it is based on user generated content. Ctrip is going to ask its users their personal information to put it on a platform to regroup everything under tags. Those tags are called ‘points of interest’. Let me give you an example: a point of interest can be a museum, a church, a shop, a restaurant, it can be anything Chinese tourists need to see on a trip. And the more people are going to share their information the more points of interest will become popular and bring traffic. That is their first move.

As a marketer, because of my clients are restaurants or shops based overseas, it is a big opportunity for them because they can take control of this point of interest, put ads, manage content like putting some pictures to be in the top popular things to see in the city and attract the people.

So I’m a new traveler and I need to go to Paris for example. I have 3 days. Ctrip will make for me recommendations of the top 10 points of interest like the Louvre, Notre Dame and this kind of things. So I will be able to follow what Ctrip and all the users are recommending to me and check the pictures. Everything not based on beautiful flyers but on user generated content. That is the new concept of Ctrip point of interest.

Daxue Talks is a show powered by daxue consulting, a china-based strategic market research company founded in 2010! With Daxue Talks, you will stay up to date with all the latest business updates in China.