Award-winning sales and marketing company Travelbeat has announced a new strategic partnership with China, Japan and Korea market specialist, Hippo International.
The new partnership cements Travelbeat’s global reach and creates new opportunities for its partners to establish themselves and achieve the best possible return on their investment in markets with proven pent-up demand for travel.
With local offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo and Seoul, Hippo International is a specialist travel and tourism sales and representation company with years of experience in B2C and B2B marketing and PR across Asia. Hippo International brings a strategic, creative and entrepreneurial spirit to the projects they work on.
The partnership was formed after a chance call between the companies’ managing directors, Lian Liu and Symeon Vasileiadis, when they realised they already had a significant number of partners in common. The shared value of providing top quality, results-driven and client-focused representation and marketing services is at the core of both businesses.
The creation of the partnership comes at a time when global travel plans are paused, but both businesses are optimistic. With many promising travel intent statistics being published around the world, particularly in China, the partnership gives tourism businesses the opportunity to create a robust an truly global recovery strategy, ensuring they are visible and can say ahead of the game across all core markets.
Symeon Vasileaidis, Managing Director of Travelbeat, said, “I’m delighted to be announcing this partnership. It’s something that Lian and I have been discussing for a little while. The relationship grew organically after we found ourselves representing the same companies in our respective markets. Knowing that our existing partners were the first cheerleaders of us working together, we are confident that we can deliver jointly and bring a complete tourism solution that now covers North America, the UK, continental Europe, China, Korea and Japan to partners old and new as they look to begin their recovery from the pandemic. We want to help.”
The partnership gives Travelbeat’s clients best-in-market access to press and media, influencers and travel professionals such as travel agents and tour operators throughout China, Japan and Korea, in addition to benefitting from social media strategies and platforms such as WeChat, and unrivalled knowledge of, and access to, Chinese payment methods such as UnionPay.
Hippo International is also behind Tixgoto, the new ticketing segment on UnionPay’s app which has over 300 million daily active users. Tixtogo, which will launch later this year, provides an entry point for global suppliers to work with UnionPay and to have direct access to UnionPay’s massive user base, something which has often intrigued and excited Travelbeat’s existing client base.
Lian Liu, Managing Director at Hippo International, said, “Travelbeat and Hippo International share a common vision to provide our partner with innovative and unique marketing solutions and high-quality services. This unprecedented time has brought on unprecedented challenges, but also presented unprecedented opportunities. Both of our teams remain committed to creating diverse, effective and culturally impactful strategies that resonate and matter. And we know that they way travellers research, shop for and consume travel products is changing – so we are making our partners easier to access than ever before through this important collaboration that will offer a much-expanded global outreach.”
The additional capabilities expand TravelBeat’s already comprehensive roster of services across Europe and North America of travel trade representation, press and PR, full-service digital marketing, social media, media buying and copywriting. It creates a truly one-stop-shop approach for partners to take advantage of, whilst maintaining a boutique ethos, employing the best in-market local knowledge all over the world.
To learn more visit travelbeat.co.uk or email [email protected].
