Plug and Play China Launches New Travel & Hospitality Program in Shanghai
According to statistics, from 2012 to 2018, the national tourism income has maintained a double-digit growth. Tourism income reached 6 trillion yuan in 2018 and is expected to grow in 2019 in domestic.
There are a lot of opportunities in such a trillion-scale market. With the development of IoT, big data, AR/VR/MR and other emerging technologies, the concept of “Tourism+” comes into being. With the help of technology, the travel industry is becoming smarter, so as to meet the increasingly diversified and personalized demands of consumers.
On June 27, Plug and Play China Travel and Hospitality Summer Summit was held in Shanghai. More than 100 guests from industry and academic circles including China Eastern Airlines, Spring Airlines, Juneyao Airlines, Xiamen Airlines, Shandong Airlines, China Express Airlines, Marriott, Melco Crown, BTG HOMEINNS, Four Seasons Hotels, Qunar and Fudan University attended the event to discuss technology innovation in the tourism industry.
Peter Xu, Executive Director and CEO of Plug and Play China, delivered a welcome speech. He reviewed Plug and Play’s road of innovation starting from Silicon Valley to 28 cities around the world now, and introduced the current ecological innovation platform of Plug and Play.
Peter Xu, Executive Director and CEO of Plug and Play China
In terms of the travel & hospitality as vertical field, Chen Fei, Executive Director of Plug and Play Travel & Hospitality, introduced its innovative layout in the United States, Southeast Asia, Europe, the Middle East, China and other countries and regions.
According to Chen Fei, Plug and Play Travel & Hospitality has cooperated with nearly 30 leading enterprises in the tourism industry. At present, it has accelerated 140 startups, invested in nearly 30 companies, and led more than 100 innovative projects of cooperation between corporations and startups.
Chen Fei, Executive Director of Plug and Play Travel & Hospitality
He shared the insights of the white paper published by Plug and Play Travel & Hospitality in the first half of this year, and explained to the guests the focused issues of Plug and Play in the tourism and hospitality industry, as well as the excellent cases of the recent Acceleration Program.
Later, Wang Linyu, Head of Travel & Hospitality Vertical of Plug and Play China, announced the upcoming Travel & Hospitality China Batch 1 .
The Travel & Hospitality China Batch 1 will start in November. Based on the focus areas of its corporate partners, Plug and Play will determine the focus of the entire Batch and select excellent startups worldwide. Within 6 months of the Program, Plug and Play will help corporates in introducing innovative technologies as innovative forces.
Wang Linyu, Head of Travel & Hospitality of Plug and Play China
Plug and Play China also invited guests from AirAsia, Ctrip and FCM Travel Solutions to share their comments on their cooperation with Plug and Play and their practical experience in innovation.
Round-table Forum on Digital Innovative Practices of Enterprise Partners
Spencer Lee
CEO of AirAsia BigLife
Plug and Play introduces to us a number of high-tech startups that can provide us with technologies that enable us to better serve our customers. We keep learning, and we believe that working with startups is the best way to innovate. In this way, we can further improve our performance and make our platform better.
Feng Yue
Innovation Director of Ctrip
In the next five years, Ctrip is going global. We want to have a better understanding of the global market, the supplier and the customer. One of the main reasons for our cooperation with Plug and Play is that Plug and Play has a good international perspective. In addition, Plug and Play has a wide range of businesses and professional colleagues, and we really appreciate this ecosystem, which is valuable to Ctrip.
Terry Yip
COO of FCM Travel Solutions Greater China
What we’ve found in China is that a lot of innovative companies provide solutions to very specific, small pain points, which is great. FCM hopes to have a good cooperation with startups and hopes they can complement us, so that we can provide better services to our customers, and save time in technology R & D.
Then, guests from Spring Airlines, OAG and Jin Jiang Wehotel introduced their experience in innovation from the perspective of civil aviation enterprise, data provider and hotel respectively.
Qiu Zhong
CTO of Spring Group
The three pain points of innovation are the grasp of future trends, independent R & D, and seeking for cooperation.
The way of innovation in the future is “inner brain + outer brain + startup”. We can set up an innovation team internally, but there are hundreds of innovation teams outside. We need a lot of innovation teams to work together to realize our ideas in the field of innovation.
Liu Junpeng
Head of Hospitality Technology of OAG
Our industry faces many difficulties, and they are also our opportunities. By 2037, there will be 8.2 billion civil aviation passengers worldwide, which will be a huge market.
We observe that the entire civil aviation industry is undergoing a digital transformation. The transformation shows three directions: the industry is growing, airlines need to become more efficient, and passengers need better services
Liang Xiaoyun
General Manager of Channel and International Business of Jin Jiang Wehotel
WeHotel has 145 million members. How to activate these members? In the past two years, we have gradually transformed from the original channel operation to data collection and analysis and to scenario-based operation. We have also communicated with our partners about the integration, analysis and matching of data.
Then, 11 startups such as Hangzhou Pi-solution, PKFARE, Quicket.io, Travel-X, Tech Valley, Kiwi.com, Shinian, Globaleur, GTRIIP, TITAN CLOUD - Red AUG, ArchiFiction presented their innovative products. The technical direction involved user experience, customer loyalty, precision marketing, auxiliary marketing revenue, new distribution capacity (NDC), operational efficiency and automation, seamless integrated journey, channel of distribution, AR/VR, etc. It has covered all links of the tourism industry chain, providing new ideas for the digital transformation of the tourism and hospitality industries.
With the end of the Summer Summit, the Travel & Hospitality batch 1 of Plug and Play China will be officially launched. The travel and hospitality team of Plug and Play China will accelerate the application of innovative technologies in domestic enterprises with the help of its global innovative resources and profound understanding of domestic and foreign markets.
About Plug and Play China
The former entity of Plug and Play was founded at No. 165 University Avenue, Palo Alto, CA in 1998. We have successfully invested and incubated a number of Internet Giants including Google, PayPal and Dropbox.
Plug and Play was formally established in Silicon Valley in 2006. With over ten years of development and 20 years of experiences in early-stage investment, Plug and Play has co-working spaces and regional offices in more than 28 countries and regions worldwide. We have made over 250 early-stage investments annually and invested in nearly 1,000 startups. Each year we provide innovation services for over 280 Global 500 Companies by holding over 700 matchmaking activities between startups and corporates.
Founded in 2015, Plug and Play China currently has four innovation centers in Beijing (headquarter), Shanghai, Chongqing, and Shenzhen. There are five main business sectors across our platform including investment, corporate innovation, startup incubation and acceleration, cross-border innovation and co-working space. We have formed China's leading innovation ecosystem online and offline, and created a multi-dimensional open innovation platform including university, government, venture capital, innovation research lab, and city innovation partner.
Please visit www.pnpchina.com for more information.
