Jingdong Travel, a travel unit of China’s online retailing platform JD.com billed as a major competitor of Alibaba’s Tmall, unveiled its hotel business strategies on October 25. It aims to support hotel operators and suppliers with immersive experience, membership benefits, connection platform and all-inclusive marketing services.
Established in 2014, Jingdong Travel operates in six categories – ground transportation, hotel and accommodation, vacation packages, attractions and parks, tours and activities, as well as corporate travel.
Immersive experience
JD.com will introduce high-quality amenities into hotel rooms to better serve guests and drive occupancy rates and average room rates. In Narada-branded hotels, 35 household items including electric toothbrushes, latex mattresses and LED makeup mirrors from the JD.com platform are available for use by hotel guests.
JD.com will work with hotels to create personalized spaces to reach the young generations who are social media regulars, and will also integrate social elements into hotel spaces for social networking. In Genting Grand, JD.com has made hotel rooms “smart living showcases” with innovative tech products. At present, the occupancy rate of the themed rooms has increased by 10%, and retail sales have contributed 20% to the room rate.
Mr. Kuiyu Hou, head of Jingdong Travel, said that the company plans to join hands with 1,000 retail brands and 1,000 hotels to provide 20,000 retail-themed rooms where guests can enjoy a unique and interesting stay.
Membership benefits
With 313 million active uses, JD.com is able to categorize users and predict their behaviors through intelligent analysis. It can also recommend partner hotels and help them quickly engage more members with targeted marketing tools.
Connection platform
Globally, JD.com is working with more than a million business partners, 170,000 merchants and extensive hotel amenity suppliers. The platform can connect these users with its hotel partners.
JD.com will integrate the travel needs of its business partners and merchants, and help them book hotels with centralized contracts. On the other hand, it will save procurement costs for hotels.
All-inclusive marketing
JD.com will share its traffic, channels, data, users and other marketing attributes with its hotel partners, and provide them with more flexible and diverse solutions.
Joseph Wang, CCO of ChinaTravelNews, commented: “It is indeed different from OTAs in that JD.com explore the conventional accommodation sector from a retailing perspective, backed by its large traffic volume, high-quality user base and procurement advantage.”
