iClick Interactive (NASDAQ: ICLK): Setting New Standards in the Travel Retail Industry

The 'Chinese Travel Shoppers 2022' whitepaper presents how China's travel retail market showed unmatched resilience compared to the global landscape in the face of pandemic-driven disruptions. While the country's four largest international travel retailers (The Shilla Duty-Free, Lotte Duty-Free, Dufry Group, and DFS Group) saw at least a 38 percent drop between 2019 and 2020, China's travel retail market only saw a 4.8 percent drop, followed by a 66.8% growth the following year. The reason for this growth was the shift from outbound travel to domestic tourism and duty-free initiatives to help businesses stay agile and bounce back after the pandemic. This whitepaper was developed by Ernst & Young (EY) in collaboration with one of China's leading Enterprise and Marketing Cloud Platforms, iClick Interactive [NASDAQ:ICLK].

Founded in 2009, iClick Interactive is a leading enterprise and marketing cloud platform in China. iClick's mission is to empower worldwide brands to unlock the enormous market potential of smart retail. With its leading proprietary technologies, iClick's full suite of data-driven solutions helps brands drive significant business growth and profitability throughout the full consumer lifecycle. Headquartered in Hong Kong, iClick currently operates in eleven locations across Asia and Europe, serving 300 multinational companies, 3,000 direct marketers and agency clients.

iClick has many proprietary technologies and a data-driven approach to unravel the actual market potential and boost profitability for a strong, diverse, and loyal clientele comprising multinational travel retail companies and online travel agencies (OTA). Its collaboration with Chinese OTAs and internet giants enables the implementation of omnichannel marketing for travel retailers, allowing better engagement with travelers throughout their journeys.

"Our data-driven online marketing and SaaS-based solutions are backed by extensive travel retail know-how, which helps us deliver tailor-made digital advertising capable of connecting travel brands to Chinese audiences," states Frankie Ho, President, International Business, iClick Interactive.

iClick's digital marketing product family, iSuite, comprises iAudience, iAccess, and iNsights that empower long-term ad campaigns across multiple markets. iAudience is a market intelligence and audience identification platform that uses internet data to provide real-time insights of new travelers or shoppers to retailers. It creates audience profiling, market segmentation, and competitive landscapes to open new business opportunities and improve digital marketing strategies.

iAccess is an omnichannel demand-side platform that links marketers with a target audience via premium Chinese publishers and ad exchanges like Tencent and Adview. At the same time, iNsights obtains insights from websites and the WeChat—mini-program for retailers to optimize return on investment decisions.

iSmartGo, the flagship product by iClick from its enterprise solutions, effortlessly scales marketing strategies by creating cross-border channels via Tencent's proprietary application programming interface, the WeChat ecosystem, and private domain traffic marketplaces.

Recently, iClick assisted Park Hotel Group (PHG), one of Asia's leading hospitality groups, in developing and implementing a hotel solution capable of capturing a significant share of the Chinese travel market. In this instance, iClick leveraged iSmartGo to enhance PHG's booking system with a wide range of premium travel packages for nine PHG hotels across China, Japan, Singapore, and the Maldives. It built an intuitive search engine to plan personalized travel itineraries, accommodation, activities, and dining options while the promotion tools drove sales conversion. In addition, iClick formed an e-redeem system for the hotel operation teams to handle online package redemptions and transactions. The solution helped PHG develop strong customer relationships and cross-border sales channels with Chinese travelers.

The key aspect that sets iClick apart from contemporaries is its anonymously-profiled Chinese consumer dataset on omnichannel audiences with 98 percent internet coverage across China (more than 1.3 billion users). Its highly sophisticated and automated platform powered by innovative technologies and big data analytics builds a scalable and reliable cloud-based infrastructure. Their global account management teams are dedicated to exclusively serving travel retail clients. They consist of experts with profound knowledge and extensive experience in digital China to assist the growth of international business accounts in the lucrative Chinese tourism market. The GAM Team has received growing regional industry recognition, such as being highly commended in the category of "Best Buy Side Team" at The Drum Awards for Digital Advertising APAC, and also the Gold Stevie Award at Asia-Pacific Stevie® Awards, "Most Innovative Advertising or Marketing Team of the Year."

Above all, iClick aims to develop advanced online marketing and enterprise SaaS solutions that address the evolving needs of travel retailers worldwide.