A niche market
As it turns out, Didi was not the first Chinese ride-hailing service to drive into the U.S. market. Yongche.com, which started as a car rental website in Beijing, started operating in major U.S. cities including Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York in 2014, a PR representative of the company told the Global Times on Friday.
Both Didi and Yongche are betting on the U.S., which is expected to draw more and more tourists from China in the coming years as the two countries have worked to make it easier for each other's citizens to come visit.
In 2014, the U.S. government decided to extend the validity of multiple-entry tourists visas for Chinese visitors from one year to 10 years.
The change led to "a 53 percent increase in visas in the first year [of implementing the new policy] alone," U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker said in a speech at the 2016 World Travel and Tourism Council Global Summit on April 6.
In 2015, 2.67 million Chinese tourists visited the U.S., way up from 400,000 in 2007, according to media reports. By 2025, the number is expected to nearly double.
Six travel agencies led by the San Francisco Travel Association gathered in Guangzhou, capital of South China's Guangdong Province, on April 12 to promote the tourist attractions of the 4th largest city in the U.S. to Chinese travelers.
At the same time, Chinese people are becoming more willing to spend a couple of weeks on their own in a single U.S. city, rather than taking group tours across the country, in which experiencing in the country is often limited to glancing out the bus window, Zhang said.
"This could spur growth in demand for ride-hailing services in the U.S. from young Chinese travelers," he told the Global Times on Friday.
So more Chinese tourists visiting the U.S. will likely mean more independent tourists visiting the U.S. And most of them will need rides, especially in cities with public transportation systems that close early and taxi services that don't range far from downtown.
Chinese tourists who are well-educated and can speak English will create a niche overseas market for China's ride-hailing services, said a spokesperson for Tuniu Corp, a NASDAQ-listed Chinese online travel service firm based in Nanjing, capital of East China's Jiangsu Province.
"But middle-aged tourists and seniors will still prefer group tours abroad," the spokesperson told the Global Times on Tuesday.
Taking on Uber
In the competition for Chinese tourists, Didi and Yongche believe they have an edge over their U.S. competitors in terms of user experience.
For example, both companies provide a Chinese language option in the U.S. versions of their apps and pledge around-the-clock bilingual customer service so their users can communicate with drivers.
Didi has also sought to provide more convenient payment options than its competitors in the U.S. Its adoption of Alipay, China's popular third-party payment tool, appeals to Chinese travelers like Han Tao, a Beijing-based engineer who got a 10-year visa to the U.S. in 2015.
For the young man who traveled to the U.S. on his own last October, it was a hassle to hail a ride in the U.S. with Uber, even though he is an Uber user in China. Specifically, the payment system is a bit complicated for his liking.
"Unlike its Chinese app, which supports Alipay, Uber overseas app requires me to bind my Visa credit card with my Uber account to pay," Han told the Global Times on Thursday.
Zhang was optimistic about the prospects of Didi's service in the U.S.
"In addition, Lyft may obtain new customers and incomes through Didi's U.S. app, enabling the U.S. ride-hailing service to fast-track its expansion and encroach on Uber's market share," Zhang said.
For it part, Uber doesn't believe Didi has much to offer in the U.S. market. The company does not consider a Chinese language service a must-have in the U.S., according to statement from an Uber spokesperson.
"Uber offers global coverage in over 400 cities in 69 countries and regions worldwide, enabling users to push a button and get a ride anywhere - even if they don't speak the local language," the spokesperson said in a statement sent to the Global Times on Tuesday.
"Thanks to the advanced mapping technology, the user doesn't need to call the driver as they can see where the driver is and the expected arrival time directly from our app," he noted.
Uber already gained some popularity among Chinese tourists. According to Uber, Chinese users used its app to hail rides in 319 cities in 65 countries and regions during the seven-day Spring Festival holidays in February 2016.
