Moving away from mundane heritage walks, Eesha Singh, co-founder of No Footprints, brings a new take to storytelling through tour experiences.
25.08.2023 - 13:19 / skift.com / Peden Doma Bhutia
Trip.com Group, the largest online travel company in the world, looks to address China’s population decline and aging demographic by offering cash incentives to employees to have kids.
Recognizing the need for a supportive working environment and the challenges posed by the population decline, the company has introduced a childcare subsidy program for its employees.
Under this program, employees who have been with the company for three years or more will receive an annual cash bonus of $1380 (RMB 10,000) for each newborn child from the child’s first birthday until the age of five.
This initiative, with a budget of $138 million (RMB 1 billion), aims to support employees in their family planning journey while promoting a healthy work-life balance.
The shift in perspective reflected by Trip.com Group signifies a broader awareness in China regarding the demographic imbalances and future challenges.
During the Skift Megatrends event in New York City in January, Skift had highlighted the significant implications for the travel industry as India surpasses an aging China as the world’s most populous country this year.
James Liang, the executive chairman of the Board of Trip.com Group and a prominent demographer in China, emphasized the importance of this childcare benefit in empowering employees to pursue both their professional ambitions and their aspirations of starting or expanding their families.
After years of advocating its one-child policy, China now grapples with the significant challenge of population decline and an aging population.
Demographers, including Liang, express concerns about the imbalance between an increasingly aged population and a diminishing number of young people, which could potentially disadvantage China in international competition.
Government projections estimate that by 2035, 30% of China’s population, or 400 million people, will be age 60 and over.
In 2019, 254 million people in China were aged 60 years or older.
In January, China’s National Bureau of Statistics indicated that the country’s population stood at 1.4 billion at the end of 2022, marking a decrease of 850,000 from the previous year.
The decline in China’s population, the first in nearly 61 years, has become a reality. The burden of supporting an expanding elderly population falls on a diminishing number of young people, raising pressing concerns about elderly care, Liang noted in a blog post earlier this year.
Moreover, a decline in the young population can hinder economic innovation and lead to a decline in entrepreneurial activities and creativity, similar to Japan’s experience, he said.
Furthermore, a shrinking young population can impede economic innovation, entrepreneurial activities, and creativity, as seen in
Moving away from mundane heritage walks, Eesha Singh, co-founder of No Footprints, brings a new take to storytelling through tour experiences.
Six casino companies have agreed to invest a total of $15 billion in Macau over ten years, with more than 90 percent of the money pledged to non-gaming activities.
China’s latest loosening of its stringent zero-Covid policy, mostly for domestic tourism, comes across as too little too late, at a time when the rest of the world is living with the virus.
Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines have agreed to consolidate Air India and Vistara by March 2024.
Even though China’s recent relaxation of Covid measures is widely seen as a step forward for travel, Trip.com is still cautious in the very near term as winter is usually a slack season for both business and leisure travel.
India is making a PCR Covid test mandatory for inbound arrivals from China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, Japan, and South Korea, from January 1.
Indian online travel agency EaseMyTrip announced this week that it has acquired a 55 percent stake in hotel booking marketplace cheQin, owned by Gleego Innovations, for around $370,000.
Having started as a mom-and-pop travel agency, EaseMyTrip today figures among the largest online travel agencies (OTA) in India with a market capitalization of $1.1 billion while being completely bootstrapped.
Online travel agency Trip.com Group hopes that cross-border travel capacity for China will be back to normal by the third quarter of this year.
American comedian and actor Kevin Hart is a man on a mission as he is looking to hire an ambassador for Abu Dhabi’s Yas Island. Hart, who was appointed Yas Island’s first-ever chief island officer in May, announced the job opening on social media on Monday, calling it the “world’s best job.” The salary being offered for the two-month role is $100,000. Anyone aged 21 years or above can apply for the job, the last date for receiving entries is January 23. “No CV, previous experience or cover letter needed, just your video up to 60 seconds (videos over 60 seconds will be disqualified),” the website mentioned. Once hired, the ambassador will take part in a variety of tourism activities for Yas Island while being put up at the W Abu Dhabi for 60 days. Yas Island has also made all the video applications public in its website.
While EaseMyTrip’s core business is scheduled air travel, the Indian online travel agency now wants to grow its non-scheduled air travel business and further democratize it.
A listing in India, where the market is now more receptive to e-commerce platforms, is still on the agenda for MakeMyTrip, even as the online travel agency said it is not looking at any fundraising immediately.