Chope, the Southeast Asian restaurant booking platform, will use the partnership to target Chinese tourists in the region. 

Singaporean restaurant platform Chope announced today a regionally partnership with the Chinese lifestyle service company Meituan-Dianping to focus on Chinese tourists in the region.

Chope will be integrated into the Meituan-Dianping app, which gives it access to a potential market of 290 million users (although obviously not all of them will be travelling to Southeast Asia). Meituan plans on incorporating a “fast and free reservation” button that will be shown for Chope partner-restaurants.

Chope will provide Chinese tourists with a more localised travel-dining experience through Meituan-Dianping’s restaurant discovery and reservation booking service.

“We are confident that Meituan-Dianping’s platform will contribute significantly to outbound destination discovery and that the integration will help match tourist dining demands to our network of over 4,000 restaurants regionally. Ultimately, we believe the partnership will strengthen our vision of creating seamless and memorable dining experiences for more people, more often,” said Chope’s Founder and CEO, Arrif Ziaudeen.

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It is important to note that Meituan is going through a rough patch in China right now. Its delivery drivers went on strike across the country in protest of lower wages, which appear to be driven by a necessity to tighten Meituan’s significant loss numbers (the company lost US$626 million in the first half of 2018).

That being said, access to the Chinese tourist market in Southeast Asia is a boon for any company. Thailand is famous for the economic impact created by Chinese tourists, but other countries across the region have felt the increased numbers (and spending power) over the past few years.

Chope operates in a lot of these places (Singapore, Bali, Jakarta, Bangkok, Phuket, and Hong Kong) and hopes to take advantage.

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Chope was founded in 2011 and boasts partners like The Lo & Behold Group, JUMBO Group, Soho Hospitality, Lost Heaven, and The Union Group.

To date, the company claims it has over 4,000 restaurant partners across eight cities.
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