Ep 177: A New Era of Chinese & Global Travel Payments, with Dr Cherry Huang, Alipay+, Ant Group

Chinese tourists are returning to South East Asia in greater numbers.

The recent May Labor Day holiday brought more passenger flights and travellers from cities across China into the region. But how will innovations in mobile payment technology over the last three years influence how Chinese and global travelers pay for products and services while overseas? And how should travel providers, retailers and merchants prepare for this new era?

This week, Gary welcomes Dr Cherry Huang, General Manager of Alipay+ Offline Merchant Services, Ant Group, to discuss the Chinese travel recovery so far and emerging spending patterns. We discuss how Alipay enables Chinese travellers to book hotel rooms and flight tickets, buy meals at Singapore hawker centres, make purchases at Bangkok night markets and treat themselves to tailor-made perfumes at duty-free stores. Dr Cherry also outlines the latest trends in Chinese outbound travel, and the outlook and hot destinations in Asia Pacific and worldwide for the rest of 2023.

Plus, we discuss the new Alipay+ solution that enables Chinese and global travellers to use their own preferred digital wallet from home while travelling in different countries.

There are so many rich insights to pick out. if your destination or travel or lifestyle-oriented business wants to understand how Chinese travel is changing, you may want to listen to this podcast more than once.