As Chinese travelers are venturing to all corners of the world, China’s travel industry is also making big strides in globalization, having built up a wealth of capital and technological knowhow in the bloodbath within the domestic market. Despite speed bumps along the way, we are geared up to embrace a new era for China’s tourism industry.

Having captured Qunar, neutralized eLong and taken a slice of ly.com and Tuniu, the Ctrip that regrouped under James Liang’s leadership has managed to build a new empire within three short years. However Ctrip still has to fend off salivating Meituan and Alitrip, while trying to take a breather from the onslaughts of airlines and hotels developing their own direct sales initiatives, and the threat of price wars still in the background. 

While the dust is still settling on the consolidated playing field, Ctrip is already taking steps to expand overseas by joining Priceline in the foray into India. What is the road map of Ctrip’s global expansion?

How will Liang, a demographic expert by training, juggle his roles in the hardnosed commercial world and the idealistic ivory tower. How will he lead Ctrip to go through the next reinvention and scale new heights?  

China’s leading tourism enterprises are going after two main goals – to draw blood in the domestic market, and to make it big in the international market. Yet it won’t be plain sailing for their globalization campaigns as the market environment is vastly different. Should they fight a lone battle, or join up with others through strategic M&As, or set up joint ventures? What is our most viable option? 

The future of the travel industry is in customers’ hands.  With a few apps, some swipes and clicks, an entire travel experience will be planned and confirmed by the customer alone, anytime, anywhere. The way of how people communicate is also changing.  In five years’ time, we will probably see more immersive content like virtual and augmented reality. With the proliferation of technology, mobile and data around the world, travel marketers have a unique opportunity to make business personal and communicate in a more immersive way.  Businesses who understand and embrace the power of personalization and relevance, stand to win and scale fast.

In this session, Paul McCrory, Head of Travel and Financial Services, Facebook, will outline how to unlock mobile and technology to propel travel business growth.  Join to learn how to unveil the beauty of China in the palm of worldwide travelers.

What impact does China’s economic slowdown have on China’s outbound tourism and the global tourism industry?

As the slowing growth of China’s macro economy is bringing jitters to the industry about the growth potential of China’s outbound tourism, it’s time to take stock of how Chinese travelers’ buying and booking behavior have been evolving. How should international tourism brands cater to the ever-changing shopping needs of Chinese travelers?

In the past decade, China’s hospitality industry has been revolutionized by users’ escalating demands. From budget hotels to mid-range accommodation, from serviced apartments to short-term rentals, homestays, long-term rentals, public startup space and themed shopping spaces, the hospitality has been relentlessly exploring and crossing over to other territories. The line between conventional hotels and shared accommodation is increasingly blur. 

So what kind of novel hospitality experiences can users expect from innovation and integration of technology and products?

In the past 20 years, online travel distribution has progressed from OTA to UGC to vertical search, and then platform-based model and now the mobile-only model now commonly adopted by many start-ups. How would new technological breakthroughs in big data, virtual reality and artificial intelligence change the future of travel distribution? And what will become of travelers’ planning and purchase behavior as a result?

Technology has been a driving force for globalization, creating both opportunity and disruption for the travel industry. Travelport’s Martin Herbert reviews the technology trends shaping the world of travel, and how savvy travel leaders can leverage them to stay ahead of the competition. 

Disney's focus on the guest experience is reflected in every detail of the design and operation of Shanghai Disney Resort. How will the resort’s innovative attractions and entertainment leverage technology to immerse guests in their favorite stories, creating life-long memories for millions of families as they experience Disney’s legendary guest service?

From mobile application to sharing economy, new business models and technology innovation are revolutionizing the way that travel companies serve the business travelers. How will travel management companies leverage the momentum driven by technology innovation and sharing economy, to better serve the business travelers?

Discover payment insights from Worldpay’s new research survey of 12,000 travellers across 6 countries – China, India, USA, Australia, Germany and Brazil. Find out how demographic and cultural factors influence the way people pay for holiday packages and what you can do to optimise your payment strategy.

In the era of economic development under the new normal, hotel marketing requires more stable, diverse and innovative motivations. Searching and exploiting incremental market with developmental potential, adopting effective marketing methods to acquire users are driving forces of hotel marketing and strategies of sustainable development in the future. Looking to the future, where is the increment in the hotel market? How to acquire incremental users with high efficiency? How to make innovation possible? Here are the answers for you.

For hotel industry, besides sharing spaces, sharing customers, knowledge and skills are also effective measures to help hotel improve efficiency and increase revenue. But how to quickly realize sharing and precise matching of need and demand in the market? That requires a platform. The concept of “platform” has been prevalent in hotel and travel industry, and various platform services are provided by OTAs and internet companies. Under the circumstances, is that possible that hotels themselves can build up independent and innovative sharing platforms with integrations of production, supply and sales covering the whole tourism consumption chain? Some of the industry alliances, such as China Hospitality Alliance, Sifang Alliance, Sunawang, Yanxingwang, Boutique Hotels Association of China (BHAC), Landison Platform have gained achievements. Curious about how to establish hotel’s own open platform? Attend the 2016 TravelDaily Conference to take a look.

What will the hotel online distribution turn to be in 2020? What will be the opportunities and challenges brought by the rapid development of Internet technology? DerbySoft will share with you about our opinion and discuss the actions to embrace the next hotel online distribution era. 

Criteo examines several million online bookings across devices every day to bring you the only travel-focused report vast enough in scope to accurately assess growing trends in travelers’ behavior.

In the mobile internet period, one of the critical issues for tourism advertisers is to find the targeted audience and communicate with them in an efficient way. With the ecosystem of rich internet products and data mining capability, Tencent has taken effective measures to communicate with users, which will help our partners to identify targeted audience precisely, and bring the targeted users to accomplish their whole consume journey, from brand awareness to order and finally become their loyal clients.

New trends are sweeping over the travel industry in China: sharing economy, tailor-made trips, and the use of mobile…just to name a few. As dazzling as these trends are, however, consumers still stay rational. They simply choose agencies/products that they are most engaged with. Hence, how to deliver a personal touch became the top concern for travel industry players. Join the presentation to find out how to engage travelers along their journey, and turn your branding efforts into conversions. 

Internet has penetrated into every aspect of our lives and fragmented life style has brought great challenge to digital marketing. With the innovation of information technology, data driven precision marketing has become true. By sharing the latest insight on domestic and foreign travel industry and brilliant successful cases of Chinese clients, in the 2016 TravelDaily Conference, along with clients from travel industry and peers of the same filed, Google will discuss the flourishing future of marketing motivated by the technology in the travel industry.

Each of the three winning teams from Thack co-hosted by Tnooz and TravelDaily will present their products to the audience.

Eight companies that have prevailed in various rounds of elimination will showcase their product innovations within their eight-minute time slots. They will face sharp and perceptive questions from experienced product experts on the judging panel as well as the audience, and then the judging panel will name the winner of “China Travel Innovative Challenge”.

After a few years of investment frenzy in China’s travel industry, are investors and start-ups seeing bubbles in travel industry investments? What areas still present growth potential and investment opportunities? Which companies have the power to transform the value chain of travel distribution? How can the risks of starting and investing in a business be better controlled?