Articles tagged “alibaba”

Booking.com, Airbnb, Marriott, and every high-end retail shop on the Champs-Élysées want to see the proliferation of Alipay and other digital payment services to capture the spending of Chinese travelers. But Alipay's key cross-border payments strategy, despite a record-setting IPO, has run into major snags.

The pandemic rapidly sped up a trend in livestreams. But the early success of Trip.com Group's and Alibaba Group's Fliggy webcasts marketing travel suggests that the phenomenon is here to stay.

An unfortunate first-mover in the pandemic, China, in turn, got an early start on its travel recovery. But officials at major travel companies there view a robust bounce back as taking a year or longer — and much of that pace depends on how quickly coronavirus gets neutralized in the rest of the world.

While it focuses on arresting a drop in Chinese arrivals, Thailand should spend equal or more time assessing why European arrivals are declining. It's the higher spending market. The reasons are different, and it's time for Thailand to look internally rather than blame external factors like Brexit, the baht, and a trade war for Europe's shrinkage.

Accor has formed a partnership with online marketplace Alibaba to make it easier for Chinese travelers to book rooms and other services. It's a smart move to appeal to Alibaba's 700 million high-spending consumers who are eager to travel around the world.

Alibaba does not deserve all of the credit for Marriott's sustained performance in China over the past year, but the partnership with the e-commerce company shows just how mutually beneficial these kinds of agreements can be.

Quality tourism is a term that has been bandied about by Southeast Asian destinations. It’s high time they stop and give real thought to it.

Marriott could do a lot worse than tying its fortunes in China to the e-commerce juggernaut Alibaba. Rest assured that this won't be the last big partnership for Marriott in the country. These are, after all, early days.

Marriott's strategy for becoming part of a customer's entire travel journey, from booking to checkout, is tied heavily to its Bonvoy loyalty program. The more kinds of products the company offers, the more likely it will get what it wants.

Attribute-based reservations may go nowhere or they could transform the way people shop for hotel rooms in coming years. Marriott's Stephanie Linnartz believes consumers like the increased control they get when booking rooms with specific features.