How can you ensure you live a life you can be proud of when your time is up? One of the most common regrets of the elderly is not traveling enough, and it seems as though China’s millennial class has taken note. Despite an economic slowdown, China’s millennial class spent 53% more on travel in 2017 than they did the year prior.
The popularity of travel in China continues to rise, but this isn’t exactly a recent development. In fact, the number of Chinese outbound travellers surpassed the U.S. to become the world’s largest in both tourist numbers and spend back in 2014. The rise of Millennial travellers, whose travel preferences are rapidly leapfrogging towards adventurous, authentic and off-the-beaten path experiences, as well as growing middle class and increase in number of Chinese passport holders will see China outbound traveller numbers rise to 220 million by 2025.
The digital age of increased connectivity has enabled longtail merchants to open up shop and provide niche products and services. These offerings weren’t financially viable before the internet began to facilitate discovery of the longtail. Before the internet, it wouldn’t make sense to open up a clothing store that sold only green jackets. It’s unlikely your local town of 90,000 residents would generate enough demand to cover operating costs, let alone make a profit.
Now, with the internet acting as a discovery engine, your audience is no longer limited to your immediate surroundings. By conducting international business via the internet your shop is exposed to the entire world, therefore massively increasing the addressable market of people interested in purchasing green jackets.
Blockchain Meets Travel With WeGold by WEGOGO
A generation of Millennial travellers have been forged by these conditions to seek adventurous, authentic, off-the-beaten path experiences. These travelers tend to look beyond the image of a sunny beach, instead looking to get a true taste of foreign culture. Travel blockchain startup WeGold, a creation of social travel platform WEGOGO, has deemed this rising demographic as “Aspirational Travellers”.
WeGold plans to connect this group with truly authentic providers and promoters currently left unserviced by existing ‘broad strokes’ travel platforms. The new generation of travelers seek exciting adventure and activities capable of immersing themselves into a new culture.
The WEGOGO platform is an already-made social travel app currently available on WeChat and iOS, with an Android release soon to be released. The app opens up the world of long tail travel (via Aspirational Service Providers, aka ASPs) to Chinese tourists. By using the app tourists will able to discover and book their experiences directly with ASPs.
WEGOGO will soon launch WeGold (WGD); an ERC-20 token capable of rewarding and incentivising all members of the ecosystem to effectively grow and scale the platform. Content creators (Pathfinders) will earn WGD for creating original content, while WEGOGOers can buy travel services from ASPs on the platform by spending WGD.
WEGOGO intends on increasing the visibility of authentic longtail travel experiences the new generation of Asian travellers demand. You won’t find these kind of experiences on TripAdvisor.
To learn more about WEGOGO’s upcoming WeGold ICO, including how you can participate, visit the official ICO website here.