TripAdvisor®, the world's largest travel site, today unveiled a new global brand name for TripAdvisor in Chinese - Mao Tu Ying（猫途鹰) and new China mobile app as part of its strategy to better serve Mainland Chinese outbound travellers, Chinese-speaking users from Hong Kong, Taiwan, as well as the rapidly growing diaspora of Chinese natives living and studying around the world.
Today, TripAdvisor operates three Chinese language sites for traditional and simplified Chinese users, living in and outside of Mainland China. In addition to a Taiwan site and a Mainland China site, TripAdvisor launched a new international simplified Chinese site in March this year, further extending the reach of its services for overseas Chinese living outside of the mainland China firewall. Already, TripAdvisor logged over 60 million sessions from Chinese users worldwide in the first four months of 2015 and Chinese language reviews posted in the past month have grown fivefold over the same period last year.
The new Chinese name, Mao Tu Ying（猫途鹰), which means “owl” and “journey”, leverages the globally recognised TripAdvisor brand and growing popularity of the owl logo and reinforces that TripAdvisor provides smart advice for travellers by travellers around the world. TripAdvisor’s existing service in Mainland China - which has operated under the local brand daodao.com since 2009 - will adopt this new global brand platform to provide a unified proposition to global Chinese users.
“In addition to projections that Mainland Chinese outbound travellers will grow by double digits from 110 million to 230 million by 2020[1], we recognise that there is also nearly 50 million people of Chinese descent globally.” said Stephen Kaufer, President and CEO at TripAdvisor. “As the world’s largest travel site, TripAdvisor can deliver a comprehensive and trusted way to research, plan and book travel for the global Chinese community.”
“We are delighted to announce this new Chinese name for TripAdvisor – and it is not just a new name but it represents our commitment to provide a truly unique proposition to the global Chinese community,” added Lily Cheng, President, APAC at TripAdvisor. “To many of our existing Chinese users, TripAdvisor is a great travel tool and the brand represents a point of view about what it means to travel. Travel is about discovering the world, engaging with new people and new cultures – and TripAdvisor gives our users the information, the freedom and confidence to go beyond prefab itineraries and discover the world for themselves.”
New Chinese name and tagline for the brand
TripAdvisor’s new Chinese name Mao Tu Ying is a phonetic word play combining the Chinese characters for “owl” with the Chinese character for “journey”. The direct reference to the TripAdvisor owl logo leverages on the growing visual recognition of the brand, helping the brand to be recognised and remembered by Chinese travellers. The tagline, when translated literally, means “Experience the World through Different Perspectives”.
New TripAdvisor app for Chinese travellers
To coincide with the unveiling of the new name, a new version of TripAdvisor’s Chinese mobile app was also released this week. The updated app version will newly include support for the Apple Watch as well as deliver a fully native iPad experience. In addition to popular global features such as hotel price comparison, Near Me Now, Offline features and access to millions of reviews, it also comes with China-only special features such as WeChat integration and Chinese language travel guides. To date, the app has already become one of the leading travel apps for outbound travel in China with over 70 million downloads[2] in Chinese app stores.
Visit the new TripAdvisor Chinese website at www.tripadvisor.cn or download the new Chinese TripAdvisor app athttp://www.tripadvisor.cn/MobileApps.
