Hotels, restaurants, retail stores and other outlets wanting
to reach the large and lucrative pool of Chinese outbound tourists have a new
option to make themselves visible in popular Chinese apps.
Yext is an online brand management platform, and its latest
update adds integration with four popular Chinese apps: Fliggy, Baidu Map, CK
Map and PIRT.
When Chinese tourists travel outside their home country, their
mobile phones are still restricted by what is known as the “Great Firewall” -meaning they can’t access certain sites and services such as Google and
Facebook.
Instead they use Chinese apps to find businesses and
services. With Yext’s update, brands can display information including their physical
address, a map marker, business description, hours of operation and a link to
their website in these Chinese apps. They can also publish their content in simplified Chinese to optimize their exposure.
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"We work with a lot of the world’s biggest global brands,
and many of our customers have a footprint in many locations across the globe,”
says Erin Jaeger, Yext’s director of product marketing.
“When they are thinking about managing data about their business
in the United Kingdom and in the United States and in Germany and across the
world, the notion of Chinese tourists being a consumer population in all these
markets … is something they haven’t taken steps to optimize for.”
Yext says Chinese tourists spent $261 billion while overseas
in 2016, ranking first in the world.
“We view this as an untapped opportunity for many businesses
across the globe. With just a few steps … this could be the difference between
showing up as an option to these tourists versus not showing up at all,” Jaeger
says.
In 2017, Yext added WeChat integration so brands can push
out information about their businesses in China through WeChat Location Mini
Programs.