Using new digital tools to nurture traditional B2B partnerships

Project Specifics
  • Tourism Authority of Thailand – Chengdu Office
  • NTO/DMO

  • B2B Solutions
  • 2017

The Situation:

Thailand is one of the top destinations for Chinese outbound tourism, attracting many different market segments from luxury tourism to family tourism. Rather than having just one unified WeChat account, Thailand instead has eight different WeChat accounts in China, each run by a different city. Despite the rise of digital travel bookings in recent years, most travel is still booked traditionally, through travel agents, and so working together with the offline travel trade is very important – and also requires digital solutions.

Our Work:

Dragon Trail supports the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) – Chengdu Office digitalize its trade communications in China via WeChat, China’s most popular social media platform. This has resulted in increased efficiencies and more effective communication, as WeChat is heavily used for work in China.

At the heart of this strategy is the creation and management of a trade-dedicated WeChat account to send travel agents regular updates about upcoming activities and newly launched services, as well as other industry news. The account also includes general information for travel agents about visas, direct flights and Thai holidays.

Dragon Trail also supported Tourism Authority of Thailand training and the certification of nearly 1,700 travel agents from the Southern provinces of China, including Sichuan, Shanxi and Yunnan. The WeChat based mobile travel agent training course powered by the China Travel Academy has received over 400,000 page views to this date, and is accessible for new agents to complete through the WeChat menu.

All of the itineraries that agents learned through their CTA courses can be found on the product catalogue, allowing agents to easily search for products such as spas, wedding destinations, golf clubs and more. Travel agents can filter by type of product (e.g., tour), location and customer category (e.g., family), then directly call or email suppliers.

Finally we have assisted the Tourism Authority of Thailand to promote travel trade events and manage online registrations.

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