Travel websites that want to 'go global' need to focus on the mobile experience and fraud risks in order to grow, an executive at Trip.com said at the ITB in Berlin.

“Details matter,” said Lynn Qu, Chief Product Officer of Trip.com - A Ctrip Company. “The way we word things, for example. Chinese and American customers may not have the patience to read the terms and conditions to the end. But the Japanese may. So these are things that for us, as a young OTA, are helpful to consider.”

Qu said that in some markets, customers are comfortable chatting in their native languages with customer service agents who speak with an accent, while customers in other markets may not be. This, Qu said, effects the costs that a company will have to budget for servicing a specific market.

Trip.com, Qu said, measures its performance by this formula: Performance = Acquisition x Conversion + Repeat. Acquisition costs include SEM, Meta, and SEO outlays. Conversions are tracked as smart phone application (app) downloads.

As Chinese travel companies go abroad, Qu said they would be well served by considering that “what’s very finely tuned for the Chinese customer might not work outside of China.”

Trip.com, a Seattle and Shanghai-based company, processes 50 terabytes of data daily. Qu said the company is able to identify global patterns which the company can then roll out across all of its websites.

As Chinese companies expand into the global tourism market, they will likely encounter some of the same issues that Trip.com has, Qu said.

“At Trip, one team optimizes for global scalability and another for local relevance,” Qu said. “There is necessarily friction, due to time differences, distances, cultural barriers – but we embrace that.”

As for non-Chinese companies catering to Chinese consumers, they will have to develop a laser-like focus on catering to Chinese users’ preference for use mobile apps.

“Chinese travelers want to do everything on their mobile devices,” Qu said. “For companies, the offering needs to be on a Chinese-native app, or else don’t bother.”

This is strictly an exclusive feature, reprints of this article in any shape or form without prior written approval from 4Hoteliers.com is not permitted. Michael Scaturro is reporting exclusively for 4Hoteliers.com at ITB Berlin 2019 - www.4Hoteliers.com/itb.

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