New partnerships facilitate tourism for Chinese travelers and businesses

China’s travel market is projected to grow 9 to 11% annually for the next several years according to Phocuswright’s China Online Travel Overview from December 2017.

The growth is being driven by a variety of factors, including an increase in the number of Chinese citizens that can afford to travel for leisure, improvements in transportation infrastructure and customized offerings from suppliers and intermediaries.

Two separate partnerships announced this week are targeted to this expanding market, one directed at Chinese travelers and the other at businesses providing services to them. 

For travelers, VisaHQ is collaborating with Fliggy to expedite outbound travel by Chinese citizens to 11 countries in that region.

Fliggy is a travel service platform owned by Alibaba Group, reaching 580 million monthly mobile users across Alibaba’s China retail marketplaces.

VisaHQ is now a service partner in Fliggy’s Online Visa Center, which launched in October 2017. The partnership will facilitate access for Chinese citizens to countries that offer e-visas: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Georgia, India, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Turkey and Vietnam.

VisaHQ will work with the embassies and consulates in those countries to ensure their visa rules and policies are always up to date in the Fliggy platform.

"We are proud to help expand Fliggy’s online visa processing service with our solution and believe this collaboration will contribute toward expediting outbound travels for Chinese consumers,” says VisaHQ CEO Alexander Yaroshenko.

VisaHQ has opened an office in Shanghai and will soon open offices in Beijing and in other major cities in China.

In separate news, Worldpay will now offer merchants access to payout and settlement capabilities in Chinese Yuan, thanks to a partnership with Lianlian Pay.

Lianlian Pay is a mobile payment service provider that offers cross-border payment and money transfer solutions to Chinese and international businesses. The partnership will open local services to businesses across retail, travel and airline sectors.

“As China continues to cement its position as the largest e-commerce market in the world, the expansion of our settlement and pay out services to include CNY [Chinese Yuan] will have huge impact for businesses in China and beyond,” says Shane Happach, executive vice president and head of global enterprise e-commerce at WorldPay.