“Made in Anhui” Takes the Global Stage

HEFEI, China, Sept. 17, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — The 2026 World Manufacturing Convention will bring global business leaders, government officials and technology experts to Hefei, Anhui Province, from September 20 to 23 for four days of business engagement, technology showcases and discussions on the future of manufacturing.

Held under the theme “Intelligent Manufacturing for a Better Future,” the convention will feature an opening ceremony and keynote addresses, business-matching sessions spanning key industrial and supply chains, investment and project meetings, the release of major industry reports, and exhibitions highlighting the latest manufacturing technologies and achievements. Organizers have identified 946 potential partnership projects to date, representing more than RMB 400 billion in combined investment.

More than 1,000 prominent guests from around the world are expected to attend, according to the World Manufacturing Convention Executive Committee Office. They will include foreign political leaders and ministerial-level officials; representatives of the guest country of honor and international partner provinces, states and cities; diplomatic and consular officials based in China; and heads of international organizations.

The convention will also welcome more than 500 international delegates, including C-suite executives representing Fortune Global 500 companies and other multinationals, among them Merck, Mitsubishi Electric and Air Liquide.

The United Kingdom will serve as this year’s guest country of honor, while more than 40 companies from the United States, France, Russia and other countries will participate as exhibitors. A series of international business programs will connect Chinese and overseas companies, with sessions devoted to the international expansion of small and medium-sized enterprises, cross-border industrial and supply-chain partnerships, China-Europe manufacturing cooperation, and the future of industry in China and France. Dedicated programs will also feature the guest country of honor and Anhui’s international partner provinces, states and cities.

By bringing together companies and resources from across the industrial value chain, the convention aims to translate Anhui’s manufacturing strengths into new commercial partnerships and investment opportunities. Provincial delegations have also promoted the event and pursued potential projects in Germany, Morocco and other international markets.

The program will spotlight growth sectors including smart and connected electric, plug-in hybrid and fuel-cell vehicles, advanced information technologies and artificial intelligence, along with emerging fields such as quantum technologies, embodied AI and biomanufacturing. Leading scientists and industry experts from China and abroad will examine advances in these technologies and the trends expected to drive the next wave of industrial transformation.

Among the major industry publications to be released are the Annual Report on the Development of the Industrial Base (2025–2026) and Manufacturing Digital Transformation Capabilities 2026. The reports will provide data, analysis and practical insights for manufacturers and policymakers worldwide.

This year’s program comprises four flagship events, six major project and business-matching events, and 21 specialized programs. Flagship activities will include the opening ceremony, keynote addresses and an official tour of the exhibition.

The six project-focused events will bring together centrally administered state-owned enterprises, multinational companies, companies with investment from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, businesses backed by overseas Chinese investors, and privately owned manufacturers. They will include a partnership event for Chinese private-sector manufacturers, a business-matching program connecting multinational companies with Anhui’s emerging industries, a forum promoting cooperation between Anhui and Taiwan in complementary sectors, and a project-matching event for overseas Chinese entrepreneurs.

The convention will also partner with leading think tanks and research institutions, including the National Manufacturing Strategy Advisory Committee, the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology and the China Electronics Standardization Institute. Jointly organized programs will include the 2026 Forum on Building China into a Manufacturing Powerhouse, an event focused on the digital and intelligent transformation of manufacturing, and a forum on innovative approaches to smart manufacturing standardization.

Several related industry events will take place elsewhere in Anhui during the convention. Wuhu will host the 2026 Low-Altitude Economy Development Conference; Chuzhou will stage a business and technology-matching event showcasing advances in photovoltaics and next-generation energy storage; and Tongling will host the China Copper Processing Industry Annual Conference together with the China (Tongling) Conference on High-Quality Development of the Copper Industry.

Anhui enters this year’s convention with a rapidly expanding industrial economy. Among businesses in the province’s industrial sector with annual revenue of at least RMB 20 million, combined revenue has risen from RMB 3.8 trillion to RMB 5.9 trillion, moving Anhui from 12th to fifth place nationwide. The province also ranks fifth nationally on an index measuring the high-quality development of manufacturing, firmly establishing it as one of China’s major industrial centers.

The exhibition—traditionally one of the convention’s principal attractions—will occupy 70,000 square meters, according to the Anhui Provincial Department of Industry and Information Technology.

A 20,000-square-meter exhibition devoted to manufacturing development and innovation will comprise 10 themed zones. These will include an introductory pavilion, a showcase of China’s manufacturing capabilities, a guest province pavilion, an international pavilion, a smart and connected vehicle zone, and a robotics and embodied AI zone.

A further 50,000 square meters of commercially operated exhibition space will be divided into five industry-specific zones covering areas such as automotive supply chains and semiconductors, as well as artificial intelligence and robotics. More than 900 companies have been selected to participate, with over 10,000 items expected to be on display.

Luogang Park will host a separate interactive showcase devoted to integrated unmanned systems operating across air, ground and other environments. Outdoor displays will include demonstrations of unmanned aircraft and autonomous vehicles.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/2026-world-manufacturing-convention-opens-sept-20-in-hefei-302882811.html

SOURCE World Manufacturing Convention

–     Trip.Biz launches Agent ONE, at Transform 2026
–     Agent ONE is four connected, specialised agents supporting the end-to-end business travel lifecycle
–     Improves OBT adoption and reduces travel program leakage worldwide

SINGAPORE, Sept. 18, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Trip.Biz, the business travel brand of Trip.com Group, welcomed 200 senior leaders from travel, procurement, finance, and HR to Transform 2026, held at the Mandarin Oriental, Singapore.

The half-day summit set out to challenge one of the most persistent assumptions in global travel management – that Asia Pacific is intrinsically too complex to manage consistently – while unveiling its new Agent ONE AI tool.

Transform 2026 opened with an address from Trip.Biz CEO Tao Song, titled “A New Day One for Business Travel”. Song set the tone for the afternoon by framing Trip.Biz’s next chapter around simplicity and trust, describing a company built on local depth across Asia Pacific and continuing to grow in Europe and around the world.

“Trip.Biz aims to become a leading global AI-powered travel management company (TMC) rooted in APAC and built for the complexity of global business travel”, said Tao Song. “We are building for the new world, in which digital adoption pushes the boundaries of what’s possible, and gives way to innovative tech solutions that help fix real-world challenges”, he added.

Complexity Isn’t the Region, It’s the Model

For multinational travel, procurement and finance teams, APAC has long been treated as the exception that breaks the global travel program – a patchwork of markets with different regulations, payment standards, languages and supplier ecosystems.

Trip.Biz’s position, delivered in the event’s keynote by General Manager, Southeast Asia Eugene Tan, is that this diagnosis is wrong. “The complexity isn’t the APAC region, it’s the model”, Tan explained during his “Rethinking APAC as ONE” keynote. “Every model on the market today breaks somewhere, because none of them delivers consistency and depth at the same time.”

The company points to three structural gaps that persist:

Legacy TMCs offer deep local expertise, but execution depends on the local office involved, resulting in different standards in every market.Digital-only platforms are fast and familiar for routine bookings, but go silent the moment something isn’t routine.In-house, self-managed programs offer full policy control, but no system to catch it when that control breaks down.

Each model delivers one piece of the puzzle, but gaps remain, costing global travel programs time, money, and control.

Trip.Biz’s answer is a single, digital-first, full-service platform, designed to give global programs consistency across markets while absorbing the complexities of APAC – from contracting and settlement to entities and supplier ecosystems – rather than passing them on to the traveller or the program owner.

In practice, this means a single enforced service standard across every market, one consolidated view spanning booking, approvals, and reporting, and a consistent end-to-end experience. This consistency has delivered a 90% SLA compliance rate and an 80%+ satisfaction score across the region Trip.Biz serves.

Product Director Terence Eng built on this during his “Closing Leakage with One Platform” keynote, stating that the model alone doesn’t fully solve the problem, a challenge that extends across global travel programs. “Even with one platform, leakage doesn’t disappear automatically,” Eng said. “To actually reduce it, that platform needs the right content and genuinely good usability. Without both, travellers will still book off platform, even with the right model in place.” Getting this right, Eng noted, is what ultimately increases adoption.

Launching Agent One: Built to Improve OBT Adoption and Fix Leakage

Trip.Biz CEO Tao Song took the stage to launch Agent ONE during his “Building Trust through Simplicity with Agent ONE” keynote, positioning it as the next step in closing the leakage gap. “A platform with the right content and usability gets you most of the way there”, Song said. “AI is how we go further; by continuing to improve the user experience itself, we can drive an even higher adoption rate.”

Agent ONE is a team of four connected, specialised agents supporting the end-to-end business travel lifecycle:

Planning Agent: ends the multi-site search struggle. Drawing on a broader, multi-source range of content, it converts natural-language requests into personalised, policy-compliant recommendations, understanding traveller preferences, trip purpose, and itinerary logic to simplify search and boost online adoption.Booking Agent: replaces friction-heavy TMC booking flows with guided, conversational booking, keeping more trips inside the OBT. Early performance targets show average booking time dropping from around 45 minutes to 2 minutes, a +90% efficiency improvement, while keeping bookings natively connected to Trip.Biz inventory, pricing, approval, and payment.Approval Agent: auto-approves low-risk requests and routes only exceptions to human review, cutting approval wait times from over an hour to under 3 seconds.Insight Agent: goes beyond static dashboards to proactively surface hidden data patterns and actionable cost-saving opportunities, often missed due to rigid, fixed-view reporting. Insight Agent generates a full travel analysis report, complete with leakage patterns and savings opportunities, in under 7 minutes, a process that previously took analysts up to a week using legacy tools.

The real opportunity for AI is to remove the complexity travellers experience. When AI can understand what a traveller needs, find the right content, and automatically apply company policy, the managed program becomes simpler and more trusted. This helps drive greater adoption and reduce leakage, removing the complexity that has stood in the way of managed travel’s original promise: one place for every trip. “Unlike generic AI assistants, Trip.Biz positions Agent ONE as a purpose-built AI solution”, Song said. “We drive greater business efficiency across each stage of the business travel lifecycle, and help solve the practical challenge faced by our industry.”

Trip.Biz positions the Agent ONE launch not as an incremental product update, but as a marker of how it intends to compete globally: combining the local depth required in complex markets with the consistency, simplicity and intelligence multinational travel programs increasingly expect worldwide. Agent ONE is now available globally across all Trip.Biz-supported markets.

END

About Trip.Biz

Trip.Biz, a digital-first full-service travel management company (TMC) powered by Trip.com Group, provides an all-in-one solution that streamlines business travel with human-centric technology and a people-first approach, offering extensive global content, exceptional service, and ESG solutions. As the fastest-growing TMC in the last few years, we have been trusted by over 15,000 multinational corporations and more than 1,000,000 small to medium-sized enterprises globally.

At Trip.Biz, we are dedicated to providing cost-effective and time-efficient travel solutions, empowering businesses to focus on what truly matters – growth and success. By saving on travel costs and time, our clients can invest more in their core operations and achieve their business outcomes.

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Four times a year, the new signature event brings affordable luxury, beauty, fashion and spirits to travelers at special duty-free prices.

SEOUL, South Korea, Sept. 18, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Shinsegae Duty Free is launching ‘Shin Duty Free Sale,’ a new signature shopping event designed to give travelers four opportunities each year to discover exceptional duty-free deals on luxury, beauty, fashion, spirits and more.

Held around Korea’s major holidays and extended travel periods, Shin Duty Free Sale brings together customer-favorite brands, best-selling products and exclusive offerings available only at Shinsegae Duty Free. The event will become a recurring quarterly promotion, giving both domestic and international travelers a new reason to shop with Shinsegae throughout the year.

The inaugural Shin Duty Free Sale runs September 17 through October 11, both online and at Shinsegae Duty Free’s Myeongdong store, timed to Korea’s extended Chuseok holiday period and the consecutive public holidays of National Foundation Day and Hangeul Day.

The name ‘Shin Duty Free Sale’ uses ‘Shin,’ a friendly shortened reference to Shinsegae Duty Free, to create a more approachable and memorable name for the company’s flagship promotional event.

Affordable Luxury Takes Center Stage

The inaugural event centers on “Affordable Luxury,” offering a curated selection of luxury brands and best sellers at attractive duty-free prices. The promotion spans fashion and accessories, leather goods, cosmetics and fragrance, spirits and other popular categories.

Online, a total of 3,800 products from 277 brands will be available at discounts of up to 70%.

Among these, approximately 2,200 highly sought-after cosmetics and fragrance products from 173 customer-favorite brands will be offered at discounts of up to 60% off.

Participating brands include major international beauty brands include names such as YSL Beauty, Lancôme, Kiehl’s, Prada Beauty (Fragrance), and Swiss Just, alongside THOME, a highly popular beauty device brand.

Yunjac: up to 40% offVIDIVICI: up to 49% offSwiss Perfection: up to 30% offAMUSE: up to 48% offDEWARSOME: up to 49% off

In addition, Shinsegae Duty Free’s exclusive brands will also offer major savings:

 The A Effect: up to 50% off Sunshuruup: up to 50% off

Beyond cosmetics and fragrances, the online sale showcases approximately 1,300 highly preferred products from 83 brands across fashion, accessories, and leather goods. To further elevate the shopping experience, a selection of 160-plus exclusive products and specialized promotional items from Shinsegae Duty Free’s sole brands will be featured, adding a distinct and differentiated value.

At Shinsegae Duty Free’s Myeongdong flagship, shoppers can explore approximately 290 products from 85 premium brands—including Sulwhasoo, The History of Whoo, Anua, and Biotherm—all at discounts of up to 40%.

To keep the selection fresh throughout the 25-day event, Shinsegae Duty Free is tailoring product assortments to each sales channel based on customer preferences and will rotate featured products and benefits during the promotion.

Special Experiences for Travelers

The inaugural Shin Duty Free Sale will also feature a series of themed promotions that go beyond traditional price discounts.

Through “Captain Ttager PICK,” a spirits-focused campaign created in collaboration with Captain Ttager, one of South Korea’s leading travel content creators with more than 770,000 YouTube subscribers, shoppers can discover special offers on popular spirits including Glenfiddich and The Balvenie.

The “Amore Beauty Shinsegae” Brand Week, presented in partnership with Amorepacific, will showcase best-selling products from leading brands including Sulwhasoo, HERA and AESTURA, along with Shinsegae Duty Free-exclusive sets and special purchase benefits.

Two Waves of Offers During Korea’s Golden Holiday Season

The inaugural Shin Duty Free Sale will be divided into two promotional waves to coincide with travelers’ holiday schedules.

Wave 1: September 17–30Wave 2: October 1–11

Featured products and benefits will change between the two waves, giving travelers additional opportunities to discover different products and offers depending on when they travel.

“Shin Duty Free Sale brings together the products our customers love—from luxury and beauty to fashion and spirits—along with exclusive experiences and offers that can only be found at Shinsegae Duty Free,” said a Shinsegae Duty Free representative. “We plan to make Shin Duty Free Sale a signature shopping event, returning four times a year around Korea’s major holidays and peak travel periods.”

The first Shin Duty Free Sale runs September 17 through October 11, 2026, online and at Shinsegae Duty Free Myeongdong.

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SOURCE Shinsegae Duty Free