Jin Jiang, the state-owned tourism and hospitality company headquartered in Shanghai with more than 8,000 properties across the county, and Tencent, the technology conglomerate that owns WeChat and dozens of other internet-related services and products, have kicked off a multi-prong partnership aimed at accelerating the development of new technologies to serve the travel and hospitality industry.

The two companies have created an open API bank, or iPaaS (integration platform as a service), that makes it much faster and easier for SaaS companies to connect to hotel property management systems, IoT devices and other SaaS solutions. 

Lio Chen, senior vice president of the Jin Jiang Innovation Center, says Tencent expressed interest to use an iPaaS system across verticals but had been hesitant to try it in hospitality because of concerns the industry lags when it comes to innovation.

“It’s no different than in the U.S. market where the hospitality industry is notoriously slow. We have the same situation here. It creates a bad reputation in the marketplace,” Chen says.

To persuade Tencent to make hospitality its first vertical for the iPaaS, Jin Jiang is also launching an accelerator that will create a pool of startups to use the platform to test solutions across its brand portfolio in China.

The accelerator did a batch zero trial this fall and will kick off officially in March, with Jin Jiang and Tencent working together to identify five companies every six months to create solutions in areas such as payments, IoT, sustainability and voice.

Those startups will use the iPaaS system to integrate with Jin Jiang’s hotel systems, reducing the time, complexity and cost for the startup to test its solution.

“There are lots of these software companies that calculate their opportunity cost very carefully, so if they think entering hospitality will take three months versus the financial industry which would take one month, then obviously they are going to spend most of their resources on the financial industry,” Chen says.

“Having an iPaaS is one way for us to reduce their barrier to entry so they don’t view hospitality as a dinosaur compared to other industries. We are trying to change that image slowly but surely.”

Chen says Jin Jiang’s size is also an advantage.

“We have now five or six PMS vendors working with us... so it creates the ability for us to dictate and say Oracle or Shiji, if you work with Jin Jiang you have to join this [iPaaS] platform,” he says. 

“So then the [startup] can simply work with Tencent and us to hook their system up to this platform and then downstream this platform can talk to any of those PMSs that Jin Jiang has.

And while an investment is not guaranteed for accelerator participants, Chen says he is hopeful that Tencent, which invests billions through its corporate venture capital arm, will find some attractive opportunities. 

Along with the accelerator and iPaaS system, Jin Jiang has announced plans to host a hackathon in September 2022 at its Global Innovation Center in Shanghai.

BY MITRA SORRELLS