More than 300 million registered users who book trips through online travel agency Ctrip will now have more personalized options and service from AccorHotels as well. The Paris-based global hotel chain and Shanghai-based online travel platform have recently signed a memorandum of understanding to enhance their existing partnership.

The agreement has four components: more prominent promotion of AccorHotels on Ctrip, building a flagship store for AccorHotels, joint development of loyalty programs and cooperation on technology.

Commenting on the partnership, Jane Sun, CEO of Ctrip, said, “With the ever-growing number of outbound Chinese travelers, we are always looking for ways to provide better services for our customers, and with the deepened AccorHotels relationship, we are able to offer magnified experiences and property choices. With the diverse range of hotels offered by AccorHotels, Ctrip customers will have access to a vast majority of its hotels globally.”

AccorHotels’ portfolio currently offers 4,300 hotels and 10,000 private homes in 100 countries, ranging from luxury brands to mid-scale and budget properties.

Chinese outbound tourists have long been a high-priority group for many luxury brands, but the demands and habits of younger travellers are changing rapidly, as they seek out more digitally personalized experiences, including superior guest services and smart device integration.

Image source: Luxuo

A report titled ‘Chinese Luxury Traveler 2016’ states that the continued growth of China over the next several years will ensure that its consumers remain prime targets for brands for the foreseeable future, as even a slowed China exceeds the growth rate of western nations. As a result, travel brands will need to make a connection to this group, the first born in a fully modern China, in the interest of long-term success.

According to the report, personalized service is still the biggest consideration in travelling for luxury Chinese travellers. Besides a liking for amenities, being able to choose pillows of different firmness and having a butler or personalized service through digital channels are also important. While 73 percent demand WiFi, 55 percent want smart TVs, while unique art and design are also high draws. AccorHotels, with its CRS, mobile app, loyalty programs and products like Adobe that it uses to personalize the guest experience with targeted offers and other information, is best suited for this crop of Chinese travellers.

Additionally, China’s travellers, especially the young ones, get most of their travel information digitally, largely from official WeChat accounts. Ctrip, Qunar and Tuniu are popular third-party platforms in the country, making this MoU worth the while for AccorHotels that is aiming to position itself on the Ctrip website and in the Chinese travel market.

AccorHotels will also launch its own program to train and certify at least 250 hotels by 2020 on Chinese Optimum Standards. These properties will be trained to answer major Chinese guests’ expectations. Ctrip says it may invite additional partners to be featured on its platforms as it pursues its goal to provide members with “dedicated experiences and better services to become a one-stop travel shop.”

Chinese residents will make 90 million outbound trips in 2020, with that number increasing by an additional 36 million over the following decade, according to a report by Euromonitor, making them one of the most lucrative audiences for travel providers across the world. By tapping into personalization such as mobility, language customizations and other services, many other brands like AccorHotels can create differentiated experiences that will eventually help enrich services and gain valuable customer insights in the process.

The post The Ctrip and AccorHotels MoU is tapping into the Chinese traveller’s need for personalization appeared first on TravHQ.

Over the past decade or so, there has been a great deal of interest in the travel, hotels, and travel accommodations sectors, especially by startup investors. The travel industry has become extremely competitive and hundreds of startups have created entirely new markets for accommodations, even as many others work on new ways of booking travel and making it accessible to more people, primarily using technology.

This year was bigger and better for the global travel industry. According to CB Insights, while travel tech had an uneven year, emerging markets stood out as bright spots. As of October 2017, deal activity was on track to surpass last year’s record-breaking 316 deals, while equity funding in 2017 YTD had already nearly matched the 2016 total.

Let’s take a look at some of the top travel deals of the year:

1. Airbnb remained an investor favourite (San-Francisco, Online marketplace and hospitality service)

Sharing economy behemoth Airbnb claimed one of the top spots for the largest deals to travel tech startups, closing its Series F round raising roughly $450 million and taking their Series F total to a little over $1 billion. This valued the travel giant at approximately $31 billion.

2. Traveloka raised US$350 million (Indonesia, Online travel agency) 

Southeast Asia’s leading online travel company Traveloka raised US$350 million from Expedia. The round valued the company at $2 billion, making it the second most valuable tech startup in Indonesia.The partnership gave Traveloka travellers access to a diverse set of international accommodations, and conversely, Expedia managed to leverage Traveloka’s local knowledge to deepen its presence in Southeast Asia.

3. OYO closed a $250 million funding (India, Budget-hotel aggregator)

With plans to expand abroad, starting with countries in Southeast Asia, and hopes of doubling their revenue in 2018, budget hotel startup OYO continued to remain an investor favourite. The company closed a $250 million Series D funding round, backed by Sequoia Capital India and SoftBank Group, among others. It then followed this funding with an additional $10 million in funding from Chinese hotel management firm China Lodging Group.

4. Xiaozhu gets Jack Ma’s blessing with $120 million in funding (China, Home-sharing platform)

Another Chinese counterpart of Airbnb, home-sharing site Xiaozhu received $120 million in funding. Yunfeng Capital, run by famous investor Jack Ma, led the investment. Joy Capital, Morningside Ventures, and Capital Today also participated in the Series E round, and placed a more than $1 billion valuation on the company. This Beijing-based startup is more like the original peer-to-peer short-term rental model that Airbnb pioneered.

5. Klook net $60 million (Hong Kong, Tours and Activities marketplace)

Hong-Kong based Klook, a service for finding and booking travel activities, closed a $60 million Series B funding round led by Sequoia China. Existing backers Matrix Partners and Welight Capital, a firm founded by former Tencent executives, also took part in the funding round. The company, which introduced services such as local transfer options and WiFi device rental, would also soon add options for restaurants, wellness, shopping and more.

6. Goomo inched ahead with a $50 million investment (India, Omnichannel travel-tech)

Omnichannel travel-tech startup Goomo raised $50 million from a Mauritius-based fund manager, Emerging India, to build Goomo’s online platform, products, marketing, and establishing its offline partner network. Founded in March 2017 by Varun Gupta, Goomo has launched its services with bookings for flights and holidays, and trade fairs and will soon be expanding it to include hotels, trains, buses and visas online.

7. Trip.com raised $39 million; got sold to CTrip (California, Online travel agency)

CA-based travel planning and local discovery app Trip.com had raised $39 million in funding, from Expedia, Battery Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, MySpace founder Chris DeWolfe, Square CEO Keith Rabois and angel investor Oren Zeev. However, in probably one of the most spoken-about buyouts of the year, the startup was lapped up by China’s largest online travel agent, Ctrip for an undisclosed amount.

8. Treebo snapped up $34 million in funding (India, Budget Hotel Chain)

Budget hotel chain Treebo snapped up $34 million in fresh round of funding. The Series C funding came more than a year after Treebo had secured its Series B funding. Hong Kong-based hedge funds Ward Ferry Management and Karst Peak Capital led the latest round.

9. GoFro received a $10 million backing (India, Tours and Activities marketplace)

Holiday marketplace GoFro received $10 million in funding from Japanese major H.I.S. Co., Ltd., a travel agency with its headquarter in Tokyo and India’s largest OTA MakeMyTrip. The company said it plans to utilize these funds by building its tech platform, expansion to new geographies and growing its supply and agent network.

10. GuestReady added $3 million to its war-chest (London, Rental property management)

GuestReady, the close contender to Airbnb that manages rentals on behalf of property owners, closed a $3 million seed round to grow its presence in Europe and Asia. The round was led by Impulse VC, the Russian fund that is backed by billionaire Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich, with participation from Australia’s Xponova and Boost Heroes, a VC led by Lastminute founder Fabio Cannavale. Existing backers Swiss Founders Fund and Senn and Partner were among others in the round.

What are the other deals that grabbed your attention? Let us know.

The post The top 10 travel startup funding around the globe in 2017 appeared first on TravHQ.

Earlier this month, Chinese OTA Ctrip acquired US startup Trip.com, a travel planning app and website. According to Trip.com, the metasearch site Skyscanner (also owned by Ctrip) will launch personalized travel recommendations powered by the former’s recommendations and reviews. Ctrip also ported the travel recommendation service it acquired to a new domain, www.trip.skyscanner.com, and turned Trip.com into an English-language version of Ctrip’s online travel agency content.

So, what drove Ctrip to bet on using the Trip.com domain to expand its online travel agency business? Travellers have different ways of shopping for the best travel deals. The key to monetize this traffic to your website is adding a layer of intelligence that can ascertain how they would like to travel, which is basically Trip.com’s specialization – algorithm-driven curation of travel recommendations. This was simply complementary to Ctrip’s brand outside of China, which is Skyscanner.

Trip.com uses its Tribes feature to offer results to each traveller to suit their style. The team has extensively worked on contextual recommendations, so when a user opens the Trip.com app, there is information about who the user is, their tribe, their location and other contextual details. This helps the app adapt the content in the form of recommendations, accordingly.

The race to reach and own the customer as early as possible in the booking funnel is one area that sees intense battles in the travel ecosystem. With the help of contextualisation, like in the case of Tribes, companies can easily target even anonymous visitors with content or recommendations. If it resonates with a traveller, it can also result in a conversion.

Ctrip CEO Jane Sun

The deal also means that Trip.com’s expertise would reach out at a global level via Skyscanner. This will lead to more refinement in algorithms, as people everywhere travel differently. This will help Ctrip gear up for personalisation for different markets across the world, thus capturing more consumers.

As the company goes deeper into its algorithms, it would soon be about strengthening the association across the booking funnel, and winning more customers, faster than competition.

The post How Ctrip might win the race to reach customers appeared first on TravHQ.

One of the key talks from the TravelDaily China session at ITB Asia on Day 1 was a presentation by Jenna Qian, Head of Destination Marketing at Ctrip. The session offered some interesting insights on the growth of the company and some of their innovative marketing solutions.

Founded in 1999, the company had its IPO on the Nasdaq in December 2003. Currently Ctrip is Asia’s largest OTA and world’s 2nd largest OTA only behind Priceline in-terms of Market Cap. With over 30,000 employees across China and rest of the globe the company currently has 300 million members with over 70% bookings coming from the mobile apps. On Social Media, the company has 20 million WeChat fans and 2.3 billion cumulative downloads.

With strategic investments in Qunar.com, Tujia, Travelfusion, Skyscanner, Makemytrip and several other travel companies trip has a consolidated share across the online travel-ecosystem in China and other major markets in the world.

The growth has been significant for Ctrip in the context that the English version was launched in 2007, the same year when they touched monthly volume of 1 million flight tickets.

Jenna Qian, Head of Destination marketing, Ctrip

Ctrip group at a glance:

• USD 2.85B 2016 Net Revenue
• CNY 430B 2016 GMV
• 520K Domestic Hotels and 670k International Hotels
• 150M+ Average Monthly Active Users
• >70% Booking Volume via Mobile
• 425 International Airlines with connectivity for 5,000 cities

A look at the China Outbound Tourism Market:

• China is ranked Number 1 in Outbound Tourism expenditures
• 122 million Chinese tourists travelled abroad in 2016
• 62 million Chinese tourists travelled abroad in first half of 2017
• Only 10% of Chinese tourists have passports.
• Cumulative Outbound visits is expected to reach 700mn in Next 5 Years

With its massive growth during these years, Ctrip also offers a one-stop holistic marketing approach with its set of offerings. They have a multi-media content platform, customized sales channels, product experts, Big Data and AI solution, Abundant Marketing Resources, Intelligent Media Platform and more. In-terms of service level innovation for customers, the company offers a WeChat Guide, 24 hour Global SOS and Luggage Delivery.

The post Decoding Ctrip for Overseas Markets: Lessons from Jenna Qian’s talk at Travel Daily China session at ITB Asia appeared first on TravHQ.

With eyes set on the global market, Ctrip has signed a definitive agreement with the majority shareholders of Skyscanner Holdings Limited to acquire Scotland based flight metasearch engine Skyscanner. The deal values Skyscanner at approximately £1.4 billion (USD 1.74 billion) and the acquisition consists primarily of cash along with Ctrip ordinary shares and loan notes. The transaction has been approached by the boards of directors of both the companies and is expected to close by the end of 2016.

However, the acquisition won’t affect the operations of Skyscanner and its current management team will continue to manage operations independently as part of Ctrip group. The news of acquisition comes not long after the flight metasearch raised USD 192 million valuing the firm at USD 1.6 billion to fuel expansion in new markets. It was also being reported that Skyscanner was planning an IPO in 2017 however this acquisition certainly eliminates that possibility.

“Skyscanner is one of the largest travel search platforms in the world,” said James Jianzhang Liang, co-founder and Executive Chairman of Ctrip. “We are excited to welcome Skyscanner into the Ctrip group. Ctrip and Skyscanner share the same passion and dedication in providing travellers around the world with better services. This acquisition will strengthen long-term growth drivers for both companies. Skyscanner will complement our positioning at a global scale, and we will leverage our experience, technology and booking capabilities to help Skyscanner.”

“Ctrip is the clear market leader in China and a company we can learn a huge amount from,” said Gareth Williams, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Skyscanner. “Today’s news takes Skyscanner one step closer to our goal of making travel search as simple as possible for travellers around the world. Ctrip and Skyscanner share a common view – that organizing travel has a long way to go to being solved. To do so requires powerful technology and a traveller-first approach. In taking the next step to achieving our goal, Skyscanner will remain operationally independent and our growing global team will continue to innovate and deliver the products travellers know and love. It’s an exciting time for our business, our partners and the travellers who use us.”

Here is what Skyscanner CEO Gareth Williams had to say about this development.

Ctrip has been actively looking at markets outside China and earlier this year, the company spent USD 180 million to buy shares in MakeMyTrip. The acquisition of Skyscanner is yet another step for the Chinese firm to explore past the home borders.

The post China’s Ctrip to acquire flight metasearch Skyscanner for USD 1.74 billion to fuel global ambitions appeared first on TravHQ.

Founded by James Liang, Neil Shen, Min Fan, and Ji Qi in 1999, Ctrip has launched its first branding effort to further explore and derive the benefits of a growing online travel market in Hong Kong.

GrowthRing & Co, an independent creative shop, initiated this drive with an interesting online video series featuring 20 people from varied social backgrounds and walks of life. Individually, they convey their meaning of freedom in an aesthetically soothing manner.

The clips below will amaze you as you discover the uncommon connotations of ‘Freedom’ as per the people of different ages, job natures and even races.

Asha Cuthbert, a YouTuber, defines ‘Freedom’ in her own words:

Louise Lam, an artist by profession, shares her perception of ‘Freedom’:

According to the article, Hillman Lam, general manager of international business at Ctrip Hong Kong and Taiwan, said:

“The travel market in Hong Kong is used to traditional storefront travel agencies. We’d like to shift the travel booking behaviour from offline to online so that consumers can benefit from the convenience that online travel booking brings.”

Elaborating on this innovative campaign, he stated:

“Everyone has his or her own view of freedom when it comes to travel – it can be cycling abroad, cherishing every opportunity to see the world or conquering the task of feeding sharks in South Africa. The campaign aims to introduce Hongkongers to our convenient and easy booking site which can enable travellers to freely create their own perfect trips. We believe video and print are two powerful ways to tell personal stories and to convey our brand. As some of the storytellers are influential people in their respective industries, the campaign will also ride on the viral effect from being shared on social media.”

The campaign runs across social media, websites, mobile apps and print. A set of MTR visuals and digital panels will be placed in the online market space starting this Thursday.

Do watch the clips above and let us know what you think about the new online campaign by Ctrip.

The post Ctrip targets Hong Kong online travel market with an innovative campaign on ‘Freedom’ appeared first on TravHQ.

The internet is buzzing with the news of Ctrip investing USD 180 Million in the Indian OTA MakeMyTrip. Ctrip will take an initial position through convertible bonds and MMT also gave them permission to acquire the common stakes in open market. The news of investment has pushed the stock prices of MakeMyTrip northwards with a growth of over 20 percent on Thursday. Ctrip will eventually build a stake of up to 26.6 of MMT’s shares giving them right to name a director.

The entire travel industry has got eyes set on China and India as both the markets hold huge potential for growth. MakeMyTrip clearly stands to gain more as the investment comes soon after they announced that they plan to bear losses for another two years in a bid to acquire more customers. They plan to push the hotel and packages business for it to account for around 70% of their total revenues over the next two years. This was important for the company as the number of internet users in India is growing fast (17% in first half of 2015) and every ecommerce company is aggressively trying to attract the new customers. The capital from Ctrip would help them have an upper hand in the competition.

India is an interesting proposition for Ctrip and many other Chinese brands for the same reasons mentioned above. The smartphone sales and number of internet users are going up fast and nobody wants to give the huge opportunities a pass. Another reason for the interest of Chinese giants in India is because of the fast growing economy. In contrast, pessimism is clouding the Chinese economy which is clearly indicated by the stock market.

Commenting on this new association, James Liang, Co-founder, Chairman, and CEO of Ctrip, said, “Today’s announcement marks the beginning of the strategic relationship between Ctrip and MakeMyTrip. Through this transaction, Ctrip has now gained exposure to India’s fast growing online travel market.”

Ctrip was earlier working with Alibaba but the association came to an end recently. It could be because Alibaba’s own product Alitrip competes with Ctrip and also because Ctrip had partnership with Qunar which was partially owned by Baidu. Even though the combination of Ctrip, Qunar, Baidu and Priceline (invested USD 500 million in Ctrip recently) is a strong force in travel industry, there is hardly a prediction one can make. The industry is fragile and the size and scale of Alibaba can be a major problem for Ctrip.

Alibaba has been an investor in the mobile payment platform Paytm and recently increased its holding in the company. Backed by Alibaba, Paytm is also making moves in the Indian travel industry. It was also reported that the Chinese search giant Baidu is planning to invest in Indian startups. With these Chinese companies fast moving outside of their home country, we can certainly expect an interesting year for the Indian travel industry.

The post Ctrip invests in MakeMyTrip: Will this be the year of Chinese investors for Indian travel brands? appeared first on TravHQ.