Alibaba Travel Division Alitrip and Singapore Tourism Board To Help Chinese Travellers

Alltrip has tied up with STB to facilitate Chinese tourists in Singapore.

Alitrip might soon help more independent and free Chinese travellers to visit Singapore. Alibaba’s travel unit ‘Alitrip’ proclaimed a partnership with the tourism sector and Singapore Tourism Board here on January 8, 2016.

The tie up is the travel platform’s first contract with a destination overseas, with hotels, businesses, and airlines at tourist destinations to establish retail stores on its online marketplace. Resorts World Sentosa, apartment operator ‘Ascott’, and Six Stars Tours and Services already have stores on the webpage. Talks with Tigerair and Singapore Airlines are done. 

Alibaba is also cooperating with restaurants, local malls, and duty free stores to give promotions and discounts. Its innovations, allowing tourists with a “high credit rating” to stay at lodgings without a deposit, would soon be launched there. With its huge data infrastructure, the online platform would also offer insights to affect STB and business marketing decisions. The cooperation is amongst those signed recently by STB, which is also collaborating with Chinese partners, including online review sites ‘Mafengwo’ and ‘Dianping’, and e-travel service provider ‘Tuniu’.

"Chinese visitors today are more sophisticated and discerning. They look for authentic and in-depth experiences that showcase the multifaceted character of Singapore," stated CTO of STB, Quek Choon Yang.

Past year, 63% of China’s visitors to Singapore were independent tourists. The travellers from China to Singapore reduced by 24% to 1.72 million from 2013 to 2015, following factors, such as formulation of Chinese aviation incidents and tourism law. However, the figure is rising. In past year’s first 10 months, some 1.8 million travellers came to Singapore, yearly growth of 21%. The second most populated country is also the second biggest contributor of international visitors to Singapore after Indonesia.

An official of Alitrip, Li Shaohua, said Singapore was selected as the first overseas collaborator due to a number of factors, such as streamlined visa processes, rich tourism resources, and the popularity of Alibaba’s travel services among China’s tourists.

In other news, Alitrip would help Ascot reach more than 100 million Chinese tourists who are presently using the traveller friendly platform. The Corporation’s global network of over 26,000 apartments would be offered through the e-travel platform by June in 2015.

CEO of Ascott, Lee Chee Koon said, “Ascott is delighted to be the world’s first serviced residence company to form this global partnership with Alitrip, China is the world’s second largest economy, and rising incomes are driving domestic travel and making it the world’s biggest outbound travel market.” The tie up between Alitrip and Ascott has followed the recent investment in e-apartment sharing company ‘Tujia.com’.

Such collaborations fuel Alibaba’s growth and expansion. South Asia is Ascott’s largest market. Therefore,  this presents opportunity to both partners to boost their business.

Alibaba Discusses Women's Online Shopping Behavior

Alibaba notices an increase in women's online shopping in China during sports events on TV.

Alibaba Group has discussed the shopping behavior of a particular gender. More females in China buy online when an important sporting event is taking place, according to the data gathered by the Hangzhou-based enterprise, and such data could let merchants effectively plan promotional campaigns and make profits, an employee stated at a recent medium and small enterprise fair.

Alibaba News affirmed that while citing information from its Taobao online trading network, an official of the Alibaba Group, Jack Tu, stated that during the period of an important sporting event, the proportion of female buyers increase from 50% to 60%.

 Taobao’s data also demonstrated that female purchasers are often interested in buying costly products, which they will not usually buy when a game event is telecasted, and the highest fraction of transactions is carried out at the commencement of a game, Tu stated.

"If you are a vendor on Taobao, understanding such a pattern will allow you to promote products with better precision", Tu stated during a conversation on October 10, when opening of the China SME Summit took place in Guangzhou.

Alibaba news today revealed that in accordance to Tu, enterprises in the current era are not just battling on efficiency but also on the utilization of data and knowledge. In the U.S., 50% of SMEs have adopted cloud-computing facilities but the proportion is lower than 10% in the most populated country, and Alibaba is looking to provide cloud services to the Chinese companies.

Mr. Tu also highlighted the online trading enterprise’s Tao Gongchang, which is also identified by its domain name 1688.com, at the summit while elaborating upon how the Asian giant is playing its role to aid manufacturers move online. Established in March 2014, the Tao Gongchang network has lured 10,000 manufacturers, whereas more than 30,000 active purchasers have carried out transactions worth 5,000,000 Yuan ($790,000).

An apparel manufacturer concentrating on exports in the earlier times has viewed its profit margin enhances after it joined the 1688.com, Tu stated. Two years ago, the apparel maker recorded sales worth 20,000,000 Yuan ($315,000) by shipping 300,000 clothes. Its exports decreased this year to 150,000 garments but sales revenue only declined to 15,000,000 Yuan (236,0000), Tu acknowledged.

Alibaba Breaking News reported that Tao Gongchang is also known for helping companies to lower down their inventory, because they can currently purchase products simultaneously from a various merchants that could export the required product in short time.

It is quite likely that Alibaba’s findings would not only help improve the marketing strategies of different vendors but also play an important role in threatening its competitors. Other businesses also try to capitalize on such buying trends and fads but the secret to success is the timely realization of any opportunity.

Alibaba Teams up With China's Largest Telcom, Aims To Sell Smartphones To Rural Customers

Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, aims to cater rural areas of China instead of markets in overseas in its near term expansion.

Latest ALIBABA news is about the e-commerce giant being partnered with China’s largest telecom operator in order to sell smartphones that are low-cost, these smartphones are aimed to be sold to the people belonging to and residing in rural areas. The prices shall be as low as $48 which is approximately 299 RMB.

China Telecom is considered to be one of the pioneers in telecommunications industry in the country and has 186 million users. The deal that has been signed with this giant is a part of a two branched strategy for e-commerce giant. The deal visions the small cities of the country as the key to growth plans for Alibaba’s business and also YunOS, which is its operating system.

There is a series of eight smartphone models that have been developed by obscure brands such as Kingsun, Uniscope and Ctyon will consist of YunOS, Alibaba’s operating system that has been built to be competed with Android. The smartphones of this series are going to be inexpensive and will be affordable. Other a little pricier models, which are six in total, will have Taobao pre-installed in the phones. Taobao is a shopping app by Alibaba. These pricier phones shall be coming from better known manufacturers such as TCL, Hisense and Coolpad.

Alibaba news reports that these smartphones shall be sold in the stores belonging to China Telecom. There had been 15,000 retail outlets for the Chinese telecom giant in rural area in 2014 as per the reports. However the company is planning to grow its number of outlets there for further business.

According to the reports by Kantar, the company wishes to position YunOS as a trustworthy alternative to Android which is currently holding a market share of 80.4 percent in the cities of China.

Despite the moves such as that of partnership to make YunOS more powerful with Quixey or the $590 million investment in Meizu which is a smartphone maker and also uses YunOS on some of the handsets, however the OS is yet to become more reliable or popular among the natives. As of October 2014, the operating system had 10 million users only.

The e-commerce giant may have a better opportunity to expand and grow its business by targeting the rural areas. The Alibaba research unit reported that rural e-commerce market in China shall hit $75 million which is approximately $460 billion RMB by the year 2016. In this case, the residents of these rural areas are seen as spending $80 - $300 for the online shopping every year.