AsiaPac AdTechinno Thailand Seminar Recap: Connecting Chinese Travellers with Regional Brands Through Amap & Xiaohongshu

Conventional travel agencies are taking a backseat as technologically fluent Chinese tourists increasingly use social media and location-based mapping apps to plan their trips. From discovering destinations to navigating to a restaurant, hotel, or retail store, Chinese travellers now move across multiple digital touchpoints throughout their journeys, making it more important than ever for brands to be more than just visible online.

To help brands capture this high-value cohort, AsiaPac, along with AdTech Innovation (also known as AdTechinno), hosted an exclusive seminar focused on China outbound tourism and regional marketing titled “Mapping the New Chinese Traveller: The Power of Xiaohongshu and Amap in Thailand". Held in Bangkok, the session featured Crystal Xiao (Xiaohongshu), Jansen Li (Amap), Alex Mo (AsiaPac AdTechinno), and Jutamas Onwiset (AsiaPac AdTechinno). Together, they covered how brands can use platform-native strategies, location intelligence, influencer marketing, and performance advertising to connect with Chinese consumers at various points of the planning phase, from travel inspiration through to in-market action.

How Chinese Tourists Are Changing Travel

The seminar highlighted a major shift in how Chinese tourists plan trips abroad. Travel decisions increasingly begin online, with consumers researching destinations, discovering places to visit, reading recommendations, and evaluating brands before they arrive in-market. This creates an opening for marketers to engage travellers at multiple stages of the journey.

Amap/Gaode Map, in particular, sits at an interesting point here. With nearly one billion global MAUs, the platform has transformed from just a navigation tool to an all-in-one lifestyle ecosystem handling everything from route planning and restaurant bookings to hotel reservations and ride-hailing.

For regional brands, its overseas audiences also represent a valuable consumer segment. Because Amap's overseas base heavily skews toward younger, high-spending consumers hungry for self-guided exploration, marketers can no longer rely on last-minute conversions. Success requires engaging tech-savvy travellers across multiple touchpoints as they discover, navigate, and buy within these platforms.

Igniting Inspiration with Xiaohongshu

Meanwhile, at the top of the funnel, Xiaohongshu shapes the user journey much earlier, capturing consumers when they are still dreaming about their next trip. More than 350 million MAUs now treat the app as their go-to travel planner, driving a powerful wave of search interest for Southeast Asian destinations like Thailand. To tap into this momentum, the seminar also explored how brands can use the platform’s KFS (KOL, Feeds, Search) Framework to turn passive inspiration into active travel decisions.

Crucially, using this framework relies on matching creator partnerships with real-world travel scenarios (family vacations, solo trips, hidden-gem getaways) rather than just chasing large follower counts. With the right influencers along with localised narratives, targeted feeds, and strong search visibility, this approach allows brands to naturally become part of the travel conversation and give tech-savvy consumers a compelling reason to choose them.

Connecting Both Platforms

Connecting Xiaohongshu’s inspiration engine with real-time, actionable navigation on Amap allows regional brands to establish a continuous loop of engagement. For marketers, capturing travellers from China today requires moving past reactive advertising and building an integrated strategy across the apps and platforms that shape their everyday decisions.

This is also where Amap’s suite of services becomes particularly relevant.

Turning Location Intelligence into Foot Traffic

Amap’s location-based infrastructure allows brands to capture travellers at the exact moment of purchase intent. Using targeted location tools, physical storefronts, commercial complexes, and hospitality venues can actively convert nearby searches into verified foot traffic:

• Amap Business Connect: An all-in-one portal for POI management, business analytics, and local traffic growth. Allows brands and commercial centres to claim digital profiles, manage reviews, and display official store assets.
• Ad Boosting - CPC: Drives targeted traffic directly to the venue's POI with pay-per-click efficiency.
• Brand Map: Provides a unified global store locator tailored for multi-location brands and retail chains.
• Brand Ads: High-impact formats including open splash screens and navigation-end banners designed to capture high-intent travellers en route.

Scaling Cross-Border Growth with AsiaPac & AdTechinno

Executing an integrated, multi-platform campaign across China’s digital landscape requires localised strategy and data intelligence. Supported by proprietary tools (APHub, OptAdEasy, KOOLER AI, Kolsify), AsiaPac and AdTechinno continue to provide end-to-end solutions to help brands capture high-intent travellers from initial discovery to final purchase.

Ready to elevate your cross-border marketing strategy? Reach out to the AsiaPac team today to explore customised campaign solutions for your brand.