Here’s Jing Travel’s weekly guide to stories providing insight into Chinese travel trends and how they affect the industry’s main players.
SHANGHAI SPECIAL
Shanghai Grand Theatre typically draws attention for its array of onstage excellence (Mamma Mia took over this summer), but the institution’s website and app revamp is equally newsworthy. Striving to boost ticket sales, increase membership, and improve user experience, the redesign shows the importance of creating user-friendly platforms for cultural institutions hoping to boost ROI in China. The clean, elegant design helps users search performances, purchase tickets (UnionPay and Alipay), and sign up for membership.
CAVE COLLECTABLES
Dunhuang’s famed Mogao Caves may be several thousand kilometers from the ocean, but geography hasn’t stopped the UNESCO Heritage site from releasing beach attire and tapping into a summer travel trend. The Silk Road institution collaborated with e-commerce platform Taobao to create spin-off products inspired by onsite murals. Dunhuang Museum is the latest cultural institution to monetize its IP for a culturally engaged Chinese audience with Shi Mingxiu, the museum’s director, saying the products “hope to integrate traditional culture with modern aesthetic standards.”
IMPERIAL GOES DIGITAL
Beijing’s Palace Museum continues as a pioneer in the Chinese cultural sphere with an extensive digital transformation underway. The digital upgrade includes an extensive cataloguing of the former Chinese imperial palace’s collection, a redesigned WeChat mini-app, and the creation of a “Panoramic Palace Museum,” a VR experience that offers full access to the seat of the Ming dynasty. The development follows the March agreement with Chinese technology giant Huawei to roll out 5G and shows how China’s most visited cultural site continues to modernize and improve visitor engagement.
ON VACATION
The China Airlines commercial “What Travel Brings You” takes an alternative approach to the joy of travel, shamelessly breaking with convention by humorously depicting the perverse and often untended consequences of travel including pregnancy, injury, and botched surgery. The cheeky advertisement, which launched in early July, has been watched more than nine million times. The Taiwan-based airline flies to 85 Asian destinations including popular holiday destinations for Chinese travelers such as Bangkok, Tokyo, and Sanya.
