Chinese online outbound travel O2O website Baicheng has accepted a RMB200 million (approx: US$32.2 million) investment from Qianhe Capital, Baicheng’s CEO Song Zeng has confirmed.
Qianhe Capital’s director Yawei Wang, a veteran investor, said he is confident in Mr. Zeng‘s strategy of using visa service as a foothold and scaling up by leveraging technology to offer refined destination service to Chinese clientele around the world. He has high hopes that Baicheng will become the top brand in China’s online outbound travel.
Baicheng earns solid reputation with visa expertise
In 2014 Baicheng took on Ctrip over visa services by offering a commission-free visa service with full refund guarantee for unsuccessful applications. This campaign helped it established itself as the number one online visa application service in China ever since.
Baicheng then released its app after much fine-tuning and upgrading to offer visa consulting service “anytime, anywhere”. Baicheng’s original online virtual visa hall makes remote document review possible and has significantly accelerated the visa process for users. Its pending permanent electronic passport system promises to make Baicheng’s visa processing even easier for users.
Leveraging destinations travel service to win more users
Leveraging data analysis of users’ needs and its app’s functionality, Baicheng up-sells to visa service customers by recommending destination consumption and semi-customized and fully-customized vacation products, such as daytrips, gourmet guides and discount coupons for shopping. It skillfully integrates fragmented services to meet the young consumer’s demands for convenient and individualized service.
By extending its services from visa to specialized destination travel, Mr. Zeng hopes to grow Baicheng’s scale from one million users to 10 million users, and make it one of the top 20 destination travel services in the world.(Translation by David)
