Transcript:
Hi, greetings from WildChina! My name is Zhang Mei, I’m the founder of WildChina and my colleagues from all over China asked me to relay a few messages of good cheers to you all.
First, WildChina not only survived the pandemic, we are thriving. We’ve built more offices. Aside from our headquarters in Beijing, we now have offices in Shanghai, Chengdu and Yangshuo. We also have staff working from the UK, US and other parts of China as well. And we also have new partnerships in education under brands such as Science Academy and Beyond Classrooms.
Second, it’s just wonderful to see sustainability taking a leading role in conversations on travel now. WTTC announced that 69% of travelers today are now actively seeking sustainable travel options. We are very happy to see that because when we first started 23 years ago, we were very much a community-based approach to travel without knowing the term “sustainable travel”. So now we’re making a very strong push to be back to our roots, and we will be working on a lot more nature and outdoor based trips going through villages in China. For example, the hiking trip along the Ancient Tea Horse Trail, is one of my favorite, and our GUDAO series trace the other ancient trails in China.
And three, we resumed our small group travel in 2023. The culinary trip with Fuchsia Dunlop was the first small group trip we had this year, and it was the first time that 50% of the travelers were from China and 50% were from overseas. And it was a smashing success. It became one of these safe and intimate platforms where people could exchange their understanding, cultures from different parts of the world. We hope to do a lot more. We’re launching more small group journeys in 2024, make sure to check wildchina.com.
Overall, it’s great to see China reconnecting with the world post-covid. And, the number of direct flights [increasing], visa requirements easing, and we sincerely hope the momentum will stay. We look forward to welcoming you to China in the coming year.
Wish you all a Happy New Year!
