Tao Xuexuan, Vice President of Meituan: This year is a year of rapid growth for the overseas business of Dianping.

Author | Ren Cairu

Editor | Qiao Qian

On August 26, 2026, Dianping held the latest award ceremony for its overseas "Must-Eat List" and "Must-Play List" in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. This year, the overseas "Must-Eat List" has added 20 new cities, and the "Must-Play List" covering 33 cities and regions including Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan of China and overseas markets has been launched for the first time. This is also the first public move of the business overseas since Tao Xuexuan, Vice President of Meituan, was transferred to General Manager of the Dianping Division in mid-April this year.

In Meituan's globalization layout, Dianping is demonstrating a business rhythm different from the mainstream narrative of going global.

Different from Keeta, which focuses on local overseas food delivery and instant retail and directly targets local users, Dianping's overseas business has a clear positioning at this stage — its core is not localized operation, but to anchor its core user group on Chinese tourists traveling abroad. Inside Meituan, Dianping and Keeta share POI data infrastructure, but operate independently in C-end scenarios.

In terms of the rhythm of overseas commercialization and transaction conversion, Dianping maintains a restraint that matches its product genes. Tao Xuexuan said, "Transaction has never been Dianping's KPI." In their logic, the launch of overseas group-buying supplies is essentially a "gripper" for verifying merchant information, enriching the merchant base table and driving users to leave real reviews; compared with the "front-end grass-planting" led by social media platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Douyin, Dianping still tries to hold the "real decision-making" and "avoiding pitfalls" links that are closer to actual consumption.

In the past year, Dianping has established a dedicated overseas business department, and began to systematically meet a series of needs of Chinese tourists traveling abroad: further consolidate accurate, reliable and comprehensive POI information, reconstruct the access and assessment mechanism for agents, and promote the governance of overseas reviews and star ratings. In the overseas business that highly depends on the precision of offline information and trust accumulation, Dianping is trying to rely on its unique community gene and star rating system to expand the overseas market following the footsteps of Chinese tourists.

After the award ceremony, media including 36Kr had an exchange with Tao Xuexuan, Vice President of Meituan and General Manager of Dianping Division, Zhao Yan, Head of Dianping Star Rating Lists, and Li Tianlei, Head of Dianping Overseas Business. They elaborated on Dianping's overseas business logic, the trade-off between commercialization and trust relationship, as well as the boundary and rhythm of this product with strong "community attributes" in the process of going global.

The following is the edited conversation:

The value of the list is "decision-making", which is closer to actual consumption than "grass-planting"

Q: Many overseas merchants do not have teams and experience to operate Dianping. What support will the platform provide after they are selected into the list?

A: After the merchants are selected into the list, together with the medal, we will provide them with a set of merchant operation service manuals, which list the precautions and operation suggestions after being selected. We also operate the official assistant of "Dianping Must-Eat (Play) List", which is a WeCom account with dedicated personnel in charge of contacting merchants and answering questions in the operation process.

Dianping has city operation teams that can connect with merchants offline. We will also regularly make the selected merchants into excellent merchant cases, which are open to all selected restaurants and selected entertainment venues for reference.

Q: Social media platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Douyin also have a lot of grass-planting videos of overseas store exploration. Compared with them, what is the difference in the impact of Dianping's overseas lists on consumption decision-making, and will it be impacted?

A: The main value of many other products is called "grass-planting", but the value of the list is called "decision-making" — decision-making is a more important link that is closer to actual consumption. After seeing the sharing of others, many users will eventually come to Dianping to complete the final consumption decision and confirm the merchant information, which is a very stable link of Dianping in the entire life service decision-making chain.

Grass-planting content often presents the most brilliant and attractive side of merchants, but the list is based on a large amount of data from real in-store users, presenting all the good and bad status. Its advantage is that it can help users judge and screen very efficiently.

Dianping is not a typical transaction platform

Q: Dianping has been working hard around "trust". What is the commercialization effect brought by trust? For example, many overseas merchants have not launched group-buying packages yet. What is the internal priority of such transaction conversion, and how to enrich the transaction-related supplies?

A: Transaction supply does not have the concept of priority for us, because transaction supply has never been our goal. To be precise, it can be understood as a driving factor that helps us achieve full coverage of basic information, real and rich decision-making information such as review lists.

When a merchant provides transaction supply on the platform, we will verify its real information, such as store name, address, phone number, business hours, etc. In addition, we will ask the merchant to provide the menu, and we will help them supplement the information such as recommended dishes and in-store photos. Therefore, the process of launching transaction supply itself is enriching information; after the launch, we encourage users to leave real reviews after actually consuming in the store. We are doing this whole process, and will invest more resources in the future.

Therefore, the supply is not a matter of priority for us, but a driving factor in our creation of real content and information.

Q: At present, are most of the group-buying packages launched actively by merchants, or are you actively expanding such functions?

A: Yes, we now have several channels, but the purpose of setting these channels is not to boost transaction volume, but to better enrich overseas merchant information, get in touch with merchants, and help them solve the difficulties of online operation and answer questions through the platform's accumulated data.

There are several channels: first, we have local agents in many countries around the world, including Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, etc. They will go to the door to negotiate cooperation with merchants and launch supplies; in addition, we just established a telesales team in Chengdu, China this year, to negotiate with merchants remotely, and some AI technologies are also applied in this process.

Q: Which countries or regions have relatively rich transaction supplies at present?

A: In terms of quantity, Singapore and Thailand are slightly more. Across all overseas regions, the one with the highest richness should be Hong Kong, China.

Q: Transaction is ultimately a natural result of "trust". When do you expect Dianping's overseas transaction conversion to emerge like that in China?

A: Dianping has established a dedicated overseas business department in the past one or two years, but in fact we are relatively cautious in the expansion of overseas transaction businesses. As mentioned earlier, we hope that in the process of all business development, we must not damage the foundation of user trust.

Dianping is not a typical transaction platform, which is the difference between it and other Meituan products. A very important feature of Dianping is that its main vitality does not come from the attention and cooperation of merchants, but from users who love Dianping, are willing to take Dianping to many places and leave real information. Based on the information left by users, we see their needs, and then help users find cooperative merchants.

This is a mutually promoting process. Before commercial cooperation, we already have a large amount of basic data, which can tell merchants why they need to cooperate with Dianping and how much Dianping's users need their services, so that this chain can be verified.

Dianping can only be understood on this logic. Our users not only need merchant information, but also hope to have convenient and reliable transactions and services with merchants. Therefore, for us, group-buying service is also part of offline merchant information, not "transaction" as many people understand.

We have always said that transaction has never been Dianping's KPI. The launch of overseas group-buying packages is actually driven by both user needs and merchant needs.

Q: Some selected merchants mentioned that they have placed advertisements on Xiaohongshu, but not on Dianping. How do you evaluate Dianping's overseas commercialization progress? Is it still in the stage of building infrastructure?

A: I am very happy to hear such voices from merchants at the scene today. As everyone just mentioned, these merchants are not selected into the list because they have spent money on Dianping. On the contrary, they have not placed any advertisements on Dianping. This reflects why this list has had widespread credibility for as long as ten years, because the Must-Eat List is not interfered by any commercial cooperation.

If we regard overseas business as a "business", we will inevitably pursue the scale of revenue and profit; but if we treat it as a service that users need in overseas scenarios, what we should pay more attention to is the user penetration rate among Chinese tourists. As just mentioned, business is only the support and gripper for us to do a good job in this user scenario.

Of course, we will also see many overseas merchants launch group-buying packages on Dianping, have real business contacts with us, and are willing to provide more convenient services for Chinese tourists on Dianping. This is different choices and judgments of each merchant.

In fact, the entire Meituan is not particularly keen on paying attention to what others are doing, but is customer-centric, seeing what we should do and how to make users really have a worthwhile trip easily in overseas scenarios.

More focused on Chinese tourists, localized operation is not the priority for the time being

Q: Is Dianping's overseas user positioning mainly Chinese tourists, or does it also target local users?

A: Our current main focus is still on Chinese tourists traveling abroad, and localized operation is not within the priority of the Dianping Division for the time being. The entire Meituan also has other businesses such as Keeta and Keemart, which will focus on local business.

Q: In cities where Keeta has been covered, what kind of collaboration will Dianping have with Keeta?

A: First of all, within the company, everyone can share infrastructure, such as POI construction, which is the most difficult, most detailed, and most inconspicuous work in the entire industry, but we think it is the most important thing. It ensures that our products are reliable, trustworthy and sustainable. We will have clear collaboration in this regard.

On the more user-centric part, products like Keeta and Keemart will pay more attention to the needs of local users, while we are more concerned about the travel needs of Chinese tourists.

Q: With the opening up of outbound tourism in the past two years, what changes in overseas consumption trends have you noticed, and what problems do Chinese consumers need to solve overseas?

A: The first is the change in the composition of outbound travelers. After the epidemic, the proportion of independent travelers relative to group tours is getting higher and higher, which gives us better market opportunities, because users' needs for consumption decision-making will be more clear.

The second is the stratification of user needs we feel. Some users like to experience some popular merchants, while some users, especially high-level Dianping users, are actually pursuing some old stores that are not popular among tourists but have existed locally for many years.

Aiming at these, on the one hand, we will increase investment in the construction of merchant information and user review content in the future, and on the other hand, we will launch a plan to help these small local stores that have existed for a long time be found and discovered by Chinese tourists on the platform through operational means.

This year is a year of rapid growth for Dianping's overseas business

Q: Dianping established a dedicated overseas team last year. What was the main work of this team in the past year? Did it achieve the goals set in the first year of its establishment?

A: Last year, we mainly looked for more opportunities for user penetration and user growth, including enriching the basic information of overseas merchants, encouraging users to share reviews through operations, building lists, etc., as well as standardizing business operation methods, including the assessment, access and exit systems for agents, so as to better achieve cooperation with overseas merchants. On the whole, I think last year was a year with relatively fast growth rate.

Finally, from the perspective of data, whether it is user data, transaction data or list browsing data, the overseas team is a team with rapid growth and constantly achieving higher new goals.

Q: What is the direction and plan of this overseas team this year?

A: The focus of this year will still be on user penetration and growth. Because without users, it is impossible to go far in business and commercialization, users must be our first priority. In addition, we will increase the construction of reviews and star ratings, including our creator operation.

Q: Are there more specific goals in opening new cities and user growth?

A: In fact, we do not have the concept of "opening new cities", because with the telesales team, we can operate in any city around the world, the core is to see where our users are. If users have needs, we need to build the local content and information well. The current number is that our basic information and star rating review content have covered more than 3,000 cities around the world, basically penetrating the outbound travel destinations of Chinese users. Even some very niche cities have merchants with hundreds of reviews, such as Reykjavik in Iceland, Bergen in Norway and other very small places, where merchants have hundreds of reviews.

Q: What is the key strategy to improve user penetration this year?

A: This returns to the question of what value our platform provides to users. The first layer, I think, is the value of POI, that is, to help users find and discover these merchants well with more accurate merchant information.

The second layer is the value of content, accumulating a large number of real user reviews, and helping users better identify whether each store is worth visiting through the presentation of star ratings. In this process, the list will also play a role.

The third layer is the value of online services, which is the group-buying package mentioned earlier. In our view, transaction supply itself is also a kind of information. First, it can help users better solve the problem of ordering in the store, and the next layer of value is the discount. In addition to discounted group buying, we will also have some free small tools, such as menu translation by taking photos, direction card and other small functions, which are very useful in the scenario of outbound tourism.

Therefore, we will carry out a series of work around these three layers.

Q: From in-store catering to Meituan platform, and then to the head of Dianping, what is the biggest difference you feel? What do you hope to leave or create in Dianping?

A: This is a relatively personal question. In fact, I have experienced several in-depth closed-loop business lines in Meituan, and also had the experience of working on the Meituan platform. This year I returned to a closed-loop business line again.

I really think Dianping is a very special, affectionate and lovely product in the entire Meituan system. Its gene is not a transaction product, but relies on unique altruistic sharing and communication between people, with a certain sense of community. Therefore, Dianping's users have stronger identity, sense of belonging and emotional trust in this product, which is a very precious and scarce trait in this era.

When I came to Dianping, I saw that old users who have used it for 5, 10, 20 years and new young users all love it. This is a very happy journey for me. I think Dianping is a product that wants to make the world a little better.

From my personal point of view, what I most hope to do is to realize Dianping's vision of "helping everyone find, discover and experience the beauty of the real world" from paper to the product. Corresponding to the product presentation, I hope we can become younger, more open and more interesting, and hope the presentation of this product can be smoother, simpler and more exquisite.