Capturing Pre-Trip Intent through AI
Context
Industry: Beauty / Travel Retail / AI Commerce
The Problem:
During Chinese New Year, Hainan becomes one of the most competitive travel retail environments in China. By that point, the challenge is no longer simply visibility, it is timing.Travelers complete their shopping lists, compare prices, and make purchase decisions well before departure. By the time they arrive at duty-free, much of the category battle has already been decided. The shelf is no longer the place where intent is formed. It is where intent gets fulfilled.For Estée Lauder, this created a double constraint. First, the brand needed to break through a market saturated by seasonal mass-media noise during peak travel season. Second, it had to reach travelers not at the store, but at the precise moment they were planning the trip itself.
Solution
We created an industry-first OTA AI collaboration with Qunar, embedding Estée Lauder directly into the trip-planning journey and turning itinerary-building into a conversion opportunity.
- AI as a Travel Retail Entry Point: Integrated the brand into Qunar’s AI trip-planning assistant, allowing Estée Lauder to appear contextually while travelers were organizing Sanya itineraries during the pre-trip phase.
- Intent Interception at Planning Stage: Rather than waiting for store traffic, we inserted the brand upstream, at the exact moment consumers were making decisions about where to go, what to do, and what to prioritize.
- Contextual Presence, Not Interruptive Media: Positioned the brand as part of the travel experience itself, making Estée Lauder feel less like an ad and more like a useful, relevant layer within the itinerary.
- Value Exchange Mechanism: Introduced instant coupons framed as “Travel Rewards,” creating a direct incentive to visit CDF’s Sanya duty-free locations and connecting AI discovery to physical retail action.
- From Impression to Destination: Reframed the duty-free store as a planned stop within the traveler’s journey, not a passive retail endpoint.