BizTweet has recently integrated with WeChat, the most popular social app in the Chinese market. Made up predominantly of Chinese users, the app has grown significantly in popularity since its launch in 2011, and it now boasts a staggering one billion users.
So, what’s exciting about this integration and how could it benefit airports across the globe?
Airports are now able to target the Chinese speaking market
The main benefit of our integration with WeChat is that airports can now target Chinese passengers in their native language. Being able to offer customised updates in passengers native language is key to ensuring you get engagement from that market segment.
If they can’t understand your communications, or interacting in a second language is too much effort, the entire market segment will be unwilling to interact with your service. Opening up the Chinese speaking market to airports will provide a large boost in interaction for your automated messaging service.
What’s the size of the opportunity?
The number of Chinese passengers flying through international airports has risen significantly in recent years. Vancouver for example, has become a main hub for Chinese passengers and is being dubbed the “Gateway to the West”. Manchester Airport was also set to welcome over 22,000 Chinese passengers in December 2017, while Helsinki Airport saw a staggering 50% increase in Chinese passengers in 2015.
A total of 300,000 Chinese passengers visited Helsinki in 2015, making it the fourth largest nationality to visit the airport.
Chinese shoppers love to spend more than other market segments
And it’s not only the numbers, when travelling abroad Chinese passengers spend more than Western passengers. According to this Nielsen report, “Chinese tourists spent an average of USD 762 per person towards shopping on their most recent overseas trip, while non-Chinese tourists averaged USD 486”.
What this shows is that there is a huge, untapped potential to offer services directly at the Chinese speaking market.
But what exactly can BizTweet offer?
Boosting passenger loyalty and satisfaction
Our integration with WeChat helps boost passenger loyalty and satisfaction by delivering personalised, real-time updates directly within the social app of choice—in this case, WeChat (we also integrate with Facebook Messenger and Twitter). Your airport can keep passengers informed with essential notifications such as delays, gate changes and boarding announcements. The notifications are fully customisable, and our AI can help send messages based on passengers behaviour and preferences.
This allows you to create a more personal relationship with your passengers at scale. Personalisation is everything when it comes to customer satisfaction. While there are many competitors offering generic updates, BizTweet is one of the only companies to offer AI-based personalisation of messaging, in real-time and at scale.
Improving journey experience and generating revenue opportunities
If they aren’t communicated with, the Chinese speakers moving through your airport are likely to feel alienated and lost at times during their journey. Our solution allows you to make that connection.
The ability to let passengers know what is happening with their flight greatly improves their journey experience. Timely communications regarding delays and boarding updates, for example, ensure they never miss another flight again.
Sending automated, custom commercial messengers directly to passengers via WeChat
But it’s not only notifications that can be sent. You can also send commercial offers and suggestions to your passengers, based on their preferences and behaviour. While waiting in your terminal, passengers will enjoy receiving a surprise discount for the nearby coffee shop, or a one time offer for the duty free. Chinese travellers love to spend money while on holiday, so in the case of the Chinese market our commercial offer capability is a potentially huge opportunity for airports to generate non-aeronautical revenue.
Opening up the Chinese market to airports
For Chinese speakers, receiving these communications in their native language in an app they use daily at home will give a sense of being catered to and cared about while they are travelling far from home.
Up until now, airports have been been slow to move into integrating with WeChat due to the complexity of the integration along with translating updates into Chinese. However, smart airports that have adopted the technology are already experiencing the benefits of doing so.
Try the BizTweet / WeChat integration in your airport
Now that BizTweet has integrated with WeChat, airports can now ensure their updates and messages are delivered to passengers on all the three of most important social media platforms: Facebook messenger, Twitter and WeChat.
This allows you to cover the whole of the English and Chinese speaking traffic in your airport.
The software is easy to use, both from a passenger and airport perspective. To learn more about our WeChat integration and the benefits it provides, check out our WeChat service information page here, and to get an idea of how our service translates in Chinese, here’s our landing page targeted at the Chinese market.
