Meituan’s Dianping grows overseas by catering to Chinese tourists

Dianping held an awards ceremony in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on August 26 for the latest overseas editions of its “Must-Eat List” and “Must-Visit List.” The overseas Must-Eat List added 20 cities this year, while the Must-Visit List debuted across 33 cities and regions in Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and overseas markets. It was Dianping’s first public overseas initiative since Meituan vice president Tao Xuexuan became general manager of the business unit in mid-April.

Dianping is taking a distinct approach within Meituan’s international expansion.

Keeta provides food delivery and on-demand retail services directly to local consumers abroad. Dianping’s current priority is Chinese tourists traveling overseas. The two businesses share Meituan’s data infrastructure but operate independently in their services to consumers.

Dianping has also been cautious about monetization and turning overseas visits into purchases. “Transactions have never been a KPI for Dianping,” Tao said.

The company sees overseas group buying deals as a way to verify merchant information, improve business listings, and encourage authentic reviews. While social platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Douyin help users discover places, Dianping aims to remain the service they use to decide where to spend.

Over the past year, Dianping established a dedicated overseas business unit to address Chinese travelers’ needs more systematically. It has worked to make location information more accurate, reliable, and comprehensive; revise how agents join the platform and are evaluated; and improve oversight of overseas reviews and star ratings.

That expansion depends on accurate information about physical businesses and trust built over time. Dianping is following Chinese travelers abroad, using its community and rating system to establish a presence.

After the ceremony, media outlets including 36Kr spoke with Tao, Dianping ranking head Zhao Yan, and overseas business head Li Tianlei. They discussed the rationale for overseas expansion, the balance between monetization and trust, and how far and how quickly a community-based service should expand internationally.

The following transcript has been edited and consolidated for brevity and clarity.

Q: Many overseas merchants lack teams or experience managing a presence on Dianping. What support does the platform provide after they make the rankings?

After a merchant makes the list, we provide an operating guide along with the award plaque. The guide sets out what the merchant should pay attention to after selection, along with operating recommendations.

We also provide an official Dianping assistant through a WeCom account for businesses on the list. Dedicated staff contact merchants and answer questions that arise while they operate their businesses.

Dianping has city operations teams that can work with merchants in person. We also regularly develop case studies of high-performing merchants on the lists and share them as references with all selected restaurants and attractions.

Q: Social media platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Douyin also have many recommendation videos featuring overseas restaurants and stores. Compared with those platforms, how do Dianping’s overseas rankings influence consumer decisions differently?

The main value of many other products is what we call “discovery,” but the value of a ranking is “decision-making.” Decision-making is more important and closer to the point of actual consumption.

After seeing someone else’s recommendation, many users still come to Dianping to make their final spending decision and confirm merchant information. That remains a consistent part of Dianping’s role in helping people choose local services.

Discovery content often highlights a merchant’s most distinctive and appealing features. Rankings, however, draw on data from large numbers of users who have visited the locations. They present both the good and the bad. Their advantage is that they help users assess and filter options very efficiently.

Q: Dianping has long focused on building trust. How well has that translated into monetization? Many overseas merchants, for example, still do not offer group buying deals. How much priority do you give to converting visits into purchases, and how do you plan to expand the offerings users can buy?

We do not think about the availability of transaction offerings in terms of priority, because those offerings have never been our objective.

More precisely, they help us improve the coverage of basic information and make reviews, rankings, and other information used in decisions more authentic and comprehensive.

When a merchant offers something users can buy on the platform, we verify its business information, such as its name, address, phone number, and opening hours. We also ask for its menu and help complete details such as recommended dishes and photos of the premises.

So putting transaction offerings online is itself a way to enrich information. Once the offerings are available, we encourage users to visit the merchant, make a purchase, and leave genuine reviews.

We are already doing all of this, and we will invest more resources in it in the future.

So for us, the availability of these offerings is not a question of priority. It helps us build authentic content and information.

Q: Do merchants mainly upload group buying deals themselves, or are you actively expanding this service?

We are actively expanding it. We currently have several channels, but their purpose is not to generate transaction volume. The first goal is to enrich information about overseas merchants, engage them more effectively, and use the data accumulated on the platform to help them resolve online operating challenges and answer their questions.

We have several channels. First, we have local agents in many countries, including Malaysia and Singapore. They visit merchants in person to discuss working together and bring offerings onto the platform.

In addition, we established a telesales team in Chengdu, China, this year. It works with merchants remotely and also uses some artificial intelligence technology.

Q: Which countries or regions currently have a relatively wide range of offerings that users can buy on the platform?

In terms of volume, Singapore and Thailand probably have somewhat more. Across all overseas markets, Hong Kong probably has the richest supply.

Q: Transactions can be a natural outcome of trust. When do you expect Dianping’s overseas business to convert visits into purchases on the same scale as its domestic business?

Dianping established a dedicated overseas business unit over the past one or two years, but we have remained relatively cautious about expanding offerings that users can buy overseas.

As we mentioned earlier, throughout the development of the business, we must make sure we do not damage the foundation of user trust.

Dianping is not a typical transaction platform. That is what distinguishes it from other Meituan products.

One of Dianping’s most important characteristics is that its vitality does not primarily come from merchants paying attention to it or working with it. It comes from users liking Dianping, taking it with them to many places, and leaving authentic information behind.

Based on the information users leave, we can identify their needs and then help them find merchants that are willing to work with us.

It is a mutually reinforcing process. Before any commercial cooperation begins, we already have a large amount of basic data. That lets us explain to merchants why they should work with Dianping and how much our users need them. Only then can we validate the whole process.

You can only understand Dianping through that lens. Our users not only need information about merchants, but also want convenient and reliable transactions and services with those merchants.

So for us, group buying services are also part of the information available about physical businesses, rather than simply transactions as many people understand them.

We have always said that transactions are not a KPI for Dianping. Adding overseas group buying deals is driven by demand from both users and merchants.

Q: One merchant on the list said it advertises on Xiaohongshu but not yet on Dianping. How do you assess Dianping’s monetization progress overseas? Is it still in the process of building infrastructure?

We were delighted to hear merchants say that at the event today. As everyone just mentioned, these merchants did not make the rankings because they spent money on Dianping. In fact, they have not spent anything on promotion with Dianping.

That demonstrates why the ranking has maintained broad public credibility for ten years. The Must-Eat List is not influenced by any commercial partnerships.

If we treat overseas markets as a business, we would inevitably pursue revenue and profit at scale. But if we treat them as a service users need abroad, we should focus on reaching more Chinese travelers.

As mentioned, the business itself is only the supporting mechanism and tool that helps us serve those users well.

Of course, we also see many overseas merchants adding group buying deals to Dianping, establishing real business relationships with us, and choosing to offer Chinese travelers more convenient services through Dianping. Every merchant makes its own choice and judgment.

Meituan as a whole is not particularly interested in watching what everyone else is doing. It focuses on customers. We concentrate on what we should do ourselves and how to make it genuinely easy for users to get the most out of their experiences abroad.

Q: Does Dianping’s overseas business mainly target Chinese tourists, or do you also want to serve local users?

Our primary focus at present remains outbound travel by Chinese tourists. Localized operations are not currently a priority for the Dianping business unit.

Meituan also has other businesses such as Keeta and Keemart, which are more focused on local markets.

Q: In cities already covered by Keeta, how does Dianping work with it?

First, we can share infrastructure within the company, such as the work of building information about places and businesses.

This is some of the hardest, most painstaking, and least visible work in the industry, but we believe it is also the most important. It makes our products reliable, trustworthy, and sustainable. We have a clear arrangement for collaborating in this area.

For the more user-facing parts of the business, products such as Keeta and Keemart focus more on the needs of local users, while we care more about the travel needs of Chinese tourists.

Q: Since outbound travel reopened over the past two years, what changes has Dianping observed in spending trends abroad? What problems do Chinese consumers still need help solving overseas?

The first change is in the composition of outbound travelers.

Since the pandemic, independent travel has accounted for a growing share relative to group tours. That gives us a better market opportunity because users have clearer needs when deciding where to spend.

The second change is that we have seen user demand become more segmented.

Some users like to visit popular merchants. Others, especially higher-level Dianping users, are more interested in long-established local businesses that may not be popular among tourists.

Going forward, we will respond in two ways.

First, we will increase investment in merchant information and user review content.

Second, we will launch an initiative focused on these longstanding local businesses and use operational tools to help Chinese travelers discover and find them on the platform.

Q: Dianping established a dedicated overseas team last year. What was the team’s main work over the past year, and did it meet its first-year targets?

Over the past year, we mainly looked for opportunities to reach a greater share of travelers and grow our user base.

That included enriching basic information about overseas merchants, encouraging users to share reviews, building rankings, and standardizing business operations. The latter included systems for evaluating agents and standards for admitting and removing them, so we could work more effectively with overseas merchants.

Overall, I would say the growth rate last year was relatively fast.

Whether measured by user data, transaction data, or ranking page views, the overseas team is one of our fastest-growing teams and continues to meet increasingly ambitious targets.

Q: What are the overseas team’s priorities and plans this year?

This year, the focus will remain on reaching a greater share of travelers and growing our user base.

Without users, it is impossible to go very far in either business development or monetization. Users must come first.

We will also increase investment in reviews and star ratings, including work with content creators.

Q: Does Dianping have more specific targets for launching in new cities or growing users?

Now that we have a telesales team, we can operate in any city around the world. The key question is where our users are.

If users need services in a particular place, we need to develop the local content and information there.

Our basic information and ratings currently cover more than 3,000 cities worldwide. We essentially cover the overseas destinations Chinese users visit.

Even in some relatively niche cities, there are merchants with hundreds of reviews. In places such as Reykjavik, Iceland, and Bergen, Norway, which are relatively small destinations, some merchants already have hundreds of reviews.

Q: What is Dianping’s main strategy for reaching a greater share of users this year?

It comes back to the question of what value our platform provides to users.

The first layer is the value of information about places. More accurate merchant information helps users discover and find those businesses more effectively.

The second layer is the value of content. We accumulate large numbers of genuine user reviews and present star ratings to help users determine whether each location is worth visiting. Rankings also play a role in that process.

Only the third layer is the value of online services, including the group-buying deals we discussed earlier.

In our view, offerings that users can buy are themselves a form of information. Their first value is helping users solve practical problems, such as what to order at a restaurant. Discounts come only at the next level.

Alongside discounted group buying deals, we offer free tools such as photo-based menu translation and direction cards. These are very small features, but they are extremely useful when traveling abroad.

We will carry out a series of initiatives around these three layers.

KrASIA features translated and adapted content that was originally published by 36Kr. This article was written by Ren Cairu for 36Kr.

...