China has become closer

China has been a strategic market for the subagent business of the holding for several years already. Since 2016, Vipservice has a special group to support the Chinese subagents. At least twice a year, the holding's top management visits China to develop business. We study the country not only for purposes of market, but also culture. Members of the support team learn Chinese.

2017 was marked by a qualitative breakthrough, the number of Chinese customers exceeded a dozen. It led to a deeper understanding of specifics of the work of colleagues, issues arising between markets in the sale of passenger transportation. For a lasting partnership, you shall constantly work on relationships, spend resources and energy, and have a willingness to provide professional assistance. A long, almost two-month long business, trip of Ekaterina Kravchuk, the employee of the subagent business, was an investment into the professional relations with China. Kate spent January and early February in China, where she acquainted Chinese subagents with the peculiarities of ticketing in the Russian market. Returning to Moscow, she shared her impressions on the trip.

"In January, I visited four cities and met with representatives of seven companies. After that, there was a break, which I used for a deeper study of the Chinese. And in early February, there were new meetings with two more subagents from different cities. The trip was preceded by a long preparatory period: the support team collected information about mistakes and difficulties in the issue, analyzed the directions, tickets for which were often written by Chinese colleagues, and prepared new product offers. As a result, several documents were ready: instructions on issuing, information presentations, and new commercial offers.

I am sure that I managed to find a common language, remove many issues of console sales, introduce and get very interested representatives of Chinese companies in our online booking system Portfolio 2.0," Ekaterina told us.

Chinese partners hosted our employee very warmly and interested. In China, a dear guest is invited to share a meal. There is a suspicion that Ekaterina returned from the trip, putted on a couple of kilograms :)