Meituan, China’s leading e-commerce platform for services, has appointed SiteMinder, the global hotel industry’s leading guest acquisition platform, as its online distribution partner. The appointment marks Meituan’s first partnership with a hotel distribution technology provider as the company looks to expand its hotel inventory beyond its home market of China.
On 1 May 2019, Meituan set an industry record by processing over 2.8 million domestic hotel room nights in one day. By strategically partnering with SiteMinder, the e-commerce giant now has a complete hotel technology stack to attract international hotel markets, beginning with South-East Asia.
For SiteMinder’s 35,000 hotel customers, the partnership with Meituan provides greater access than ever before to market their rooms to the lucrative Chinese traveller market.
“As an uprising international hotel reservation platform in China, Meituan will bring new energy to the market with its huge young generation customer base. SiteMinder’s global presence, combined with its appeal to both large hotel chains and independent hotels, made it the perfect partner for us as we grow our international hotel supply and build on our multi-level technology service platform,” says Mr Zhong Qiang, General Manager of Meituan’s Overseas Accommodation Department.
“SiteMinder is pleased to partner with one of the most respected household names to come out of the Chinese market, and to support them in their growth journey. This partnership represents a great opportunity for hotels globally to further broaden both their distribution options and feeder markets via SiteMinder’s platform and, in particular, further benefit from the ever-growing outbound Chinese travel market,” says Mr James Bishop, Senior Director of Global Demand Partnerships at SiteMinder.
Compass Hospitality, which operates hotels, serviced apartments and resorts across Thailand, Malaysia and the UK, is among the first beneficiaries of the Meituan-SiteMinder partnership. Says the group’s corporate general manager of digital marketing, Mr Rabin Gupta, “I am delighted that SiteMinder and Meituan have struck this new partnership. It is a great opportunity for us at Compass Hospitality to enhance our engagement with the Chinese market.”
Meituan’s technology service platform today has more than 410 million transacting users. The company is publicly-listed in Hong Kong and holds a recent market value of approximately US$52 billion.
