Edison Chen has spent over a decade at Trip.com Group converting culture, events, and technology into bookings. His thesis is straightforward: reaching a market is not the same as landing in it. Proximity—cultural, temporal, linguistic—is what turns browsing into action.
Chen, who now serves as a judge for the Skift IDEA Awards, is looking for ideas that move beyond static inventory and create experiences travelers want to participate in. It’s a framework that applies whether you’re selling hotel nights in Tokyo or concert packages in Mumbai.
From Reach to Resonance
Most platforms optimize for reach: how many cities they cover, how many languages they support, how fast they can scale. Chen argues that depth matters more. A platform that understands local holidays, payment preferences, and what drives demand in a specific market will outperform one that simply translates its homepage.
Trip.com has built its growth on this principle. The company tailors campaigns around events—festivals, concerts, sporting matches—that create spikes in travel intent. Instead of generic destination marketing, they lean into moments when people are already planning to move.
This approach mirrors what other platforms are attempting. As we covered earlier, Klook is betting on AI to surface experiences that match traveler intent, not just availability. The challenge is the same: how do you show people what they want before they know they want it?
Culture as a Demand Signal
Chen’s strategy treats culture as infrastructure. If a K-pop group announces a Seoul concert, that’s not entertainment news—it’s a demand signal. Flights, hotels, and ground transport become part of a package built around the event.
The same logic applies to religious festivals, art biennials, or food weeks. Travelers increasingly want to time visits around happenings, not just see static landmarks. Platforms that can package the logistics around these moments have an edge.
This shift is visible across the industry. Saudi Arabia’s tourism strategy now emphasizes events and seasonal experiences to pull in regional visitors. AlUla is tripling hotel capacity ahead of festivals and cultural programming designed to fill those rooms.
AI That Understands Intent, Not Just Keywords
Chen’s role as a Skift IDEA Awards judge gives him a window into where the industry is experimenting. He’s looking for platforms that use AI not to automate existing workflows, but to anticipate what a traveler might want based on behavior, seasonality, and local context.
The AI discovery gap is real: hotels and experiences that don’t feed data into the right channels become invisible to next-generation search tools. Trip.com’s model suggests that the fix isn’t just better SEO—it’s embedding yourself in the moments and platforms where decisions actually get made.
That might mean partnering with ticketing platforms, syncing with local event calendars, or offering dynamic packages that update in real time as concerts, matches, or exhibitions are announced.
What This Means for Travelers
For travelers, especially those booking cross-border trips, this evolution means more curated options but also more noise. The platforms that win will be the ones that feel local even when you’re booking from abroad.
If you’re an Indian traveler planning a trip to Japan, a platform that knows when cherry blossom season peaks, which festivals overlap with your dates, and how to bundle a Sumo tournament ticket with a Ryokan stay will feel more useful than one that simply lists hotels by price.
Chen’s framework also applies to how platforms handle payments, customer service, and post-booking support. Proximity isn’t just about content—it’s about the entire user journey feeling like it was designed for you, not translated for you.
The Proximity Test
Chen’s proximity principle offers a useful test for any travel platform: does it feel like it was built for your market, or does it feel like a global product that happens to be available in your market?
The distinction matters. Travelers are more likely to book when they see their holidays recognized, their payment methods accepted, and their questions answered in their time zone. Platforms that treat localization as a checklist item will lose to those that treat it as a strategy.
As AI tools and real-time data make it easier to personalize at scale, the gap between reach and resonance will only widen. The platforms that land deeply—rather than just landing—will be the ones travelers return to.
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