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Which phone tells you a lot about your type of traveler, according to data from Booking.com, especially in China, where the hotel reservation platform will soon give different search results depending on the phone used.
"IPhone and Android users have different behaviors and, in general, Android users tend to spend less and book mainly for domestic travel", said Marsha Ma, general manager and vice president China of Booking.com. "But it depends on the phone." There is a much bigger price range for Android phones, and in fact those with high-end Android phones. [choose] more expensive hotels than iPhone owners. "
Thus, if you think that those who use an iPhone XS Max are the ones who spend the most, those who own a Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus or Huawei P30 Pro are more likely to stay in the most expensive hotels. (The Booking.com app is preinstalled on Huawei phones in China and new users can benefit from exclusive discounts.)
Since its humble beginnings in Amsterdam more than 20 years ago, Booking.com has evolved a lot. Every day, its website and app generate 1.5 million bookings in 27 million hotels in 229 countries. For many of its users, everything is a matter of convenience. An option to cancel rooms free of charge makes it easy to plan long trips, and even monitor price reductions and bookings closer to departure.
However, Chinese travelers do not use this service in this way. In fact, digital behavior in China is so different that society has had to treat it as an entirely new part of its business.
"Chinese tourists are much happier to book a hotel on the same day," said Ma. "China is a world only for applications, and when the Chinese are looking for, their behavior is very different from the rest of the world. " Booking windows are becoming shorter and many Chinese travelers regularly book a place to stay when they reach their destination.
"The same day bookings are much higher than the rest of the world," said Ma. "According to our data, Generation Y in China does not like long-term planning. We see a lot … less planning for domestic bookings. "
This preference for the same day booking and other China-specific behaviors led Booking.com to do something in China that it had never done elsewhere. He has built a specific application for China, which is becoming a platform in its own right. WeChat is integrated, there is a China-only loyalty point system, and a customer service reminder function that works around the world. Ma confirms that Booking.com will soon include an online discussion with customer service; integration with the car sharing company Didi Chuxing is also possible.
A key function of the app is location-based search, which allows searching for a last-minute hotel deal by simply searching the surroundings. The algorithm of Booking.com is the "secret sauce", using machine learning to try to guess what you want. For example, if you usually book in downtown hotels when you visit cities, that's what it shows you. "It depends on the previous booking of customers, their location and their type of phone," says Ma.
In its first four years in China (where it has been active for eight years and has 1,000 employees in seven offices), the Booking.com platform has been translated into Chinese. At the time, the travel market was very different.
"Most Chinese people traveled to their country, then to Southeast Asia, and then [the Asia-Pacific]And now, he's … everywhere, says Ma. It's still centered on Asia, but Chinese tourists are traveling everywhere. We have this cool world map that shows how the footprint of our Chinese customers covers the whole world. Every day we see a new destination illuminate. "
What are the favorite destinations of Chinese travelers? According to the Travel Trends internal survey conducted by Booking.com, it is the most booked cities in 2018 by outgoing Chinese travelers:
1. Hong Kong
2. Tokyo, Japan
3. Bangkok, Thailand
4. Osaka, Japan
5. Taipei, Taiwan
6. Kyoto, Japan
7. Chiang Mai, Thailand
8. Seoul, South Korea
9. London, United Kingdom
10. Singapore
This article was first published in South China Morning Post.
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