WeChat Miniprogram in China Tourism Marketing

With the improvement of the quality of life and the upgrading of consumption, China has become the world’s largest source of outbound tourists. For Chinese consumers, smartphones are almost an indispensable tool in daily life, and they are frequently used during travel. This also shows that the development of the tourism industry has entered a new stage, which is to use digital methods to provide and promote a wide range of tourism products to bring consumers a richer, personalized and differentiated experience.

Among the many digital tools, the WeChat Mini Program has demonstrated its advantages as a lightweight tool. The WeChat Mini Program is an application in the WeChat APP and does not require additional downloads. More than 230 million WeChat daily active users can easily open and use small programs. The advantage of the applet is that there are many entrances for the applet, which is convenient for users to use and can use WeChat authorization to obtain user data in the WeChat backend. As a lightweight tool, the WeChat applet can be very convenient to design functions suitable for different scenarios and can be used in various modes of travel.

Mini programs have different demand scenarios in the three stages of travel. Before travelling, the mini-program is mainly reflected in the aspect of information collection, providing users with query and reservation functions. User needs during travel focus on specific experiences, such as tour information services. At the end of the trip, the mini-program can be used as an information-sharing platform to achieve user retention and even secondary consumption.

Some Use cases:

• Tourism Boards – Integrate destination information, link to travel OTA platform, aggregate tourist data to analyze the needs of tourists. The mini-program of the official tourism bureau of Queensland, Australia not only gathers information on local attractions, food, shopping and hotels but also provides useful functions such as weather, maps, translation, etc., so that users can enjoy services without barriers when leaving the country.

• Shopping Destinations/Malls – online and offline linkage, can attract tourists to the destination through online discounts before the trip, and encourage consumers to share online after shopping. This category is mainly for some business districts or brands. Coupons and promotion information will be issued on some small shopping malls in Hong Kong and drugstores in Japan to attract users to go offline for consumption. And it can also link with WeChat official to issue coupons through official channels such as WeChat’s “Overseas Travel Package” and borrow official traffic to drive traffic to the store.

• Tourist Attractions – provide information and explanations about attractions, provide point-to-point services to tourists, and convert public domain traffic into private domains to further promote the attractions. Some museums and paradise mini-programs not only provide pre-departure ticketing services but can also provide explanations of exhibits by scanning the QR code. Special exhibitions or preferential activities are also displayed daily to attract users to visit again. For example, mini-programs of the National Museum of China, in addition to exhibits guide, convenient information, and current special exhibition information, the content is concise but covers the needs of users.

• Hotels – Pre-booking function, digital services after check-in, and membership system after check-out can retain consumers, and optimize services through data aggregation and analysis. Take the Atour Hotel mini-program as an example. Users can book rooms and use the mini-program to check in & check out. After completing the trip, the membership point system integration will help in brand loyalty & ensure user’s future booking at other destinations with the brand.

• Airlines – Use rich entrances and simple operations to make it easier for users to book air tickets, and the template message of the mini-program can accurately push reminders of flight changes and other reminders for users. Many airlines in China have established their own mini-programs to facilitate users to check-in and receive flight information.

• Cross-border e-commerce – As a lightweight tool, cross-border e-commerce mini-programs can continuously provide users with shopping services at this stage after travel. In addition to the convenience of exchange and payment, logistics, brands establishing cross-border e-commerce mini-programs can also establish stronger connections with brand fans and expand their influence.

Key to success

The product of pan-tourism mini-programs is lightweight. Brands cannot equate mini-programs with official websites or apps. Mini-programs emphasize convenience and address the most urgent needs of users. As an effective marketing tool – mini-programs bring in customers and subsequent conversion is the focus. Due to the relatively low development difficulty, the design of the mini-program can be adapted to various scenarios, so that each travel node is seamlessly linked. As a digital tool – through WeChat user information you can use the data to understand consumer needs.

Talk to us to understand the myriad options for the WeChat mini-program, their development & promoting them effectively.