Malaysia-based budget hotel chain, Tune Hotels, makes a breakthrough in tapping the Chinese outbound travel market with the recent inking of a marketing collaboration agreement with Plateno, one of China’s leading hospitality group.
For a start, 14 Tune Hotels’ properties in Asia, Australia, England and Scotland are featured on Plateno’s booking engine.
Guangzhou-based Plateno operates over 2,000 hotels under five different brands across more than 300 cities throughout China. It also operates the country’s largest hospitality loyalty programme with over 80 million members who travel for business and leisure, domestically and overseas.
The Chinese outbound market is big as 97 million China residents travelled out of the country last year, a 16.8% increase from a year before. As of August this year, the year-on-year increase for the corresponding period is a staggering 17%.
Tune Hotels group CEO Mark Lankester said: “As more mainland Chinese citizens begin to look towards outbound travel to see and experience different parts of the world, the question is who do they rely on? This is a natural synergy whereby Plateno will be able to help their members in their outbound journeys by recommending hotels overseas that are in the same category as, for example, their 7Days Inn brand.”
He added that China is historically a very important market for Tune Hotels, and its properties are popular with mainland Chinese due to the connectivity provided by its sister companies, AirAsia and AirAsia X.
Plateno founder and co-chairman, Alex Zheng said, “Through this collaboration with Tune Hotels, Plateno looks forward to building a new business model that connects our members through a common platform towards achieving mutual benefits. I believe this will result in a significant impact on the travel industry in China.”
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