Boats racing in the Love River for the Dragon Boat Festival in Aberdeen, Hong Kong in June, 2023. Photo caption: Shutterstock

This week, Alibaba’s online travel platform Fliggy reported that travel orders placed during the 6.18 mid-year shopping festival jumped 160% year-over-year as China celebrated its Dragon Boat Festival.

Results and analysis from the 6.18 mid-year shopping festival rolled in from around the Alibaba Group ecosystem. A clear theme was the critical role that content has played in merchants’ campaigns this year.

For Alibaba Group, a change in leadership is underway after Alibaba Group Chairman and CEO Daniel Zhang announced that he would dedicate his full attention to Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group.

Tourism Looking up In China During 6.18

Wanderlust is building in China as households’ finances and confidence recover from the pandemic.

Among the shopping trends spotted during the mid-year 6.18 shopping festival were purchases of holiday gear. On Alibaba’s digital marketplaces, 180,000 people bought watersports shoes, 1.65 million people snapped up suitcases and 930,000 people bought sunscreen masks.

Alibaba’s online travel platform Fliggy reported that travel orders placed during the 6.18 shopping festival jumped 160% year-over-year and the number of people who made purchases doubled year-over-year.

Alibaba kicked off 6.18 pre-sales on May 26, with a shopping window open between May 31 and June 3 and another between June 15 and June 20.

“We stocked 1,000 units and hoped they would sell out during 6.18. However, they sold out within two days of going online,” said Wang Yan at Hi-Road, a Chinese online travel merchant.

Fliggy said that during 6.18. the turnover of four merchants on its platform topped RMB100 million ($13.9 million), and nearly 80% of merchants’ turnover improved by over 50% year-on-year.

The value of domestic tour package products sold via Fliggy’s platform during 6.18 was six times higher than last year, and the number of travel agencies with a turnover of over RMB10 million tripled year-over-year. On June 18, the turnover of Fliggy’s luxury hotel package products increased by 128% year-on-year.

“Consumers’ expectations for travel products during 6.18 this year greatly exceeded our expectations,” said Cheng Chen at Fliggy.

Discover more about 6.18 here

Daniel Zhang to focus on Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group

Alibaba Group Chairman and CEO Daniel Zhang announced that he would dedicate his full attention to Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group as its spin-off is underway, in an internal memo to employees on Tuesday.

The Alibaba Group board of directors approved Zhang’s plan to transition from the role of Chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group, and appointed Joseph C. Tsai, current Executive Vice Chairman, to succeed Zhang as Chairman and Eddie Yongming Wu, Chairman of Taobao and Tmall Group, to succeed Zhang as Chief Executive Officer and director of the board.

Read more about the leadership changes here

Apple To Prada’s 6.18 Livestreams Prove Content is King In China

Content was key for a host of retailers during the 6.18 shopping festival.

For China’s largest e-commerce platform, Alibaba’s Taobao and Tmall Group, 6.18 was also an early test of its aggressive new strategy to attract users with “historic” levels of investment to defend its leadership in the world’s largest e-commerce market.

So far, the campaign is working. As 6.18 drew to a close, Taobao and Tmall said a record number of merchants had participated in the festival while merchants’ GMV generally rose two to three-fold year-over-year. Overall GMV for 6.18 rose 14.8% to RMB798.7 billion ($111.35 billion), according to third-party data provider Syntun and broker CMB International.

Find more statistics from one of the world’s largest retail events here

Nobel Laureates, Alibaba CEO Discuss Role of AI at Work

Three Nobel Prize winners weighed up the opportunities afforded by AI during a panel led by Alibaba Group CEO and Chairman Daniel Zhang this week.

The discussion was part of the annual Digital Economy Conference hosted by Alibaba’s collaborative open-research institute Luohan Academy in Hangzhou. The three speakers are also Luohan Academy Committee Members.

Founded in 2018, the institute works in collaboration with scientists from around the world to study the social and economic effects of emerging technologies like generative AI, which can be used to create new content from videos to text.

Read a summary of their thoughts here

Alibaba Wows at VivaTech 2023

Alibaba took to the halls of technology and startup conference VivaTech to share how its innovations are making it easier for people to do business anywhere.

Over 150,000 people from across 174 countries attended the four-day event in Paris to hear from keynote speakers including Alibaba Group Director and President Michael Evans, and Tesla founder Elon Musk.

Other executives like the group’s Chief Marketing Officer Chris Tung and Co-managing Director Michelle Lau also made appearances at Alibaba’s VivaTech booth to lead explainer sessions about the group’s latest retail technologies and more.

Check out more events and Alibaba’s cultural activities here

Alibaba’s Grocery chain Freshippo Courts Overseas Retailers Ahead of IPO

Alibaba’s high-tech grocery chain Freshippo spoke with over 40 Australian brands about importing their produce to China during a recent sourcing trip to Australia, part of its push to bring global brands to Chinese consumers.

Freshippo received the green light in May to pursue a public listing.

During the one-week trip in early June, the platform’s top executives crisscrossed the Australian states of Victoria and New South Wales to meet with local brands.

Read more about Freshippo here