Mobile and new payment methods: China influencing Travel & Tourism

China has become over the years one of the most interesting origin market of tourism flows, in terms of numbers and expense capacity. Chinese Travel & Tourism industry has been bursting with innovation, M&As and openness to the West. According to a research by Openjaw Technologies, the Chinese airline retailing platform, there are several strong trends that are defining Chinese tech tourism industry.

Mobile devices are considered to be the future of travel. Even in 2015 Chinese Internet users were almost 700 million, and 90% of them accessed the Internet on a mobile device. Provided that Chinese people spend at least 2 hours a day on their smartphones, online payments reflect the consequence of this important trend. It is not surprising, in fact, WeChat mobile app became one of the favourite payments method for Chinese consumers, even though is now facing Alipay competition.

Among the last developments, these applications are opening toward the business world, allowing even the smallest realities to simplify payment experiences, which are flanking traditional methods. This is one of the reasons why WeChat grew by 35% yoy, registering 768 million users at the end of 2016, with 200 million who linked their bank ATM cards with the app.

Also 50% of total e-commerce in China takes place on mobile devices, compared to 20% in the USA and 35% in the UK.

At Twissen we observed that Chinese travel habits are heavily influencing the international Travel & Tourism industry. Given the growing attention toward quality and luxury services, new business opportunities are opening in developing personalised services.
Providing the adequate payment methods is essential to deal with this target.

Twissen