The tourism industry is entering a new stage of endogenous growth relying on market innovation. Superimposed on the impact of new technologies such as large models, how should the tourism industry develop with high quality and maintain sustainable growth? On October 24, Ctrip gave the answer of "AI, Content, ESG" at the Global Partner Summit.
Liang Jianzhang, co-founder and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Ctrip Group, explained from multiple perspectives why the travel industry is a unique industry that promotes innovation. Psychologically, he argues, it fulfills higher-level needs that are difficult to saturate; From the economic point of view, it is a long-term high-growth industry; At the social level, it promotes human understanding, enhances exchanges, and leads to peaceful and inclusive development. In the field of philosophy, innovation is promoted by expanding horizons, inheritance is promoted by spreading risks, and long-term prosperity of human civilization is pursued through innovation and inheritance.
In the first three quarters of this year, Ctrip brought more than three times the growth of new customers for cooperative merchants. Sun Jie, CEO of Ctrip Group, said that in 2024, the global tourism industry will maintain a new trend, such as China's tourism industry can improve in visa, language, products and other aspects, and tell the world a good China story, which will bring new development opportunities to the industry.
"We were pleasantly surprised to find that China's political, academic and business communities are paying more and more attention to inbound tourism." Sun Jie also specifically mentioned that this has opened up incremental imagination space for the domestic tourism market. According to the Global Tourism Organization, the recovery level of global tourism in the first quarter of this year reached 80% of the level in 2019, and the Asia-Pacific region was 54%. In countries with developed tourism industries, inbound tourism has become an important pillar of economic development.
Data show that in 2019, foreign inbound tourism income accounted for only 0.5% of China's GDP, if it is increased to 1.5% of the international median value, it will bring at least 1.3 trillion yuan of growth space, and inbound tourism potential is huge. The platform launched the inbound tourism promotion project, mainly promoting the development of inbound tourism, attracting overseas tourists to China, telling the story of China to friends around the world, and showing the beautiful China to the world.
For the future development of the tourism industry, Liang Jianzhang said that he will continue to focus on three aspects of innovation, specifically, the AI dimension, further improve the Ctrip Q&A model, integrate generative AI into various products, based on natural language interaction interface, improve user experience, and help businesses reduce costs and increase efficiency; In terms of content, based on an average of 5 million data calculations and manual verification for each list, a "reliable answer database" for the tourism industry is built; In the ESG (environmental, social and corporate governance) dimension, quantifiable low-carbon hotel standards are introduced to comprehensively promote environmental friendliness, family friendliness, community friendliness, etc., and enhance sustainable development capabilities.
In 2020, the Singapore Tourism Board signed a three-year strategic cooperation with Ctrip Group, and the two sides signed the second three-year strategic cooperation, which will cooperate on Singapore's hot festivals, arts and culture in China, and help upgrade Singapore's tourism products.
