WeChat and Chinese Tourists

As China got richer, the wanderlust hit the Chinese citizen. But they faced two major challenges when it came to travelling abroad, says Kevin Shimota in The First Superapp. The first one is the language problem – most Chinese don’t know English. The second one, surprisingly, is navigation. What? Don’t smartphones have maps? More on that in a bit.

 

The language problem hurt a lot. Prospective travellers would end up relying on posts and blogs by fellow Chinese (in Chinese, of course), and would often miss other worthwhile spots, even if they were close by. In most tourist spots, information was almost never in Chinese, so no help there either.

 

Now to the surprising problem – navigation. How’s that even possible when everyone has a smartphone? Because for the Chinese, everything Google is banned. That includes Google Maps. Even when they go abroad, if they are using a Chinese SIM, Google Maps won’t work. Alternatives like Bing Maps and Apple Maps aren’t too good. And China’s own map apps only cover China.

 

The Chinese superapp, WeChat, took both of these as challenges to be met, writes Shimota. Remember from an earlier blog how WeChat allows for integration with others’ features? Well, WeChat tied up with tourism boards in neighboring countries that the Chinese frequented to integrate digital maps and content that was relevant to tourists and in Chinese into WeChat.

 

Wondering why these entities integrated into WeChat? Instead of creating their own apps? Aha, unlike the rest of us, the Chinese are so used to finding everything on WeChat, they don’t bother installing new apps – they just assume everything will be available on WeChat!

 

Such initiatives expanded from Singapore, Sydney and Auckland to Dubai and even London. At 6 lakhs, Chinese are the largest tourist group at the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. In 2016, when the UAE allowed the Chinese visa-on-arrival, Burj Khalifa’s tourism team decided to capitalize by hooking up with WeChat to inform them of other attractions in the city – did you know there’s more to Dubai than the Burj Khalifa? Entertainment entities like Merlin (that’s the little-known brand behind assorted global attractions ranging from Madame Tussaud’s to theme based Legoland’s to the London Eye) integrated into WeChat – anything to increase tourism, footfall, and sales.

 

All of which is why Shimota says:

“At the center of China’s Internet is WeChat.”

To be clear, he’s biased – after all, he’s an executive at the company. But while he may be gushing in his praise, that doesn’t mean he’s lying about the role of WeChat in China as the one app that does it all.