IHG expands its Japan-born LINE booking app to Thailand and Taiwan
IHG is exporting the LINE mini-app booking channel it built for Japan — now over 4 million followers strong — to Thailand and Taiwan, betting that Japan's messaging-app playbook travels to two of the only other markets where LINE, not a global rival, dominates.
IHG Hotels & Resorts is taking the LINE-based direct-booking channel it built for Japan and replicating it in Thailand and Taiwan, according to a 14 August announcement from IHG plc.
IHG says it was the first hotel company to launch its own LINE MINI App, debuting the format in Japan, where it has since drawn more than 4 million followers, the company said. It is now bringing the same app to two more of LINE's strongest markets, letting guests in Thailand and Taiwan book across its 7,000-plus hotels worldwide and manage their IHG One Rewards membership — a programme IHG says counts some 160 million members globally — directly inside the messaging app.
The expansion leans on how thoroughly LINE has taken root outside Japan. IHG cited LINE's own figures: 195 million monthly active users worldwide, 56 million in Thailand and 22 million in Taiwan, with penetration in both markets reaching 94% of the population — putting LINE's reach there on a par with its dominance in Japan rather than a distant second.
IHG is backing the rollout with market-specific promotions running through August, including gamified in-app experiences and a set of limited-edition, travel-themed LINE stickers designed with illustrator duo Sundae Kids, it said. "IHG has always championed a culture of firsts, and our digital acceleration is no exception," said Dean Jones, IHG's vice-president of commercial for East Asia & Pacific. Rita Jiang, chief commercial and marketing officer for Greater China, said Thailand and Taiwan guests are "deeply embedded in the LINE ecosystem."
The read here is Japan as applied template rather than special case. A distribution format proven inside Japan's LINE-centric consumer internet is being carried, largely unchanged, into two of the few other markets where a single messaging app — not WhatsApp or a global super-app — holds comparable sway. For IHG the appeal is distribution economics as much as convenience: a booking made and a loyalty account managed inside LINE trims reliance on third-party travel sites and the commissions that come with them, the direct-channel push hotel groups have leaned on since the pandemic. Whether Thailand and Taiwan guests build anything like Japan's four-million-follower base is the next number worth watching.