October has been an interesting month for the travel industry. Brands got into festive mood, investors poured in funds, unicorns grew bigger, interesting startups came up, established players started fighting for market share and some major events were held. We looked back at the month and picked out our most popular stories. Here is a short roundup just in case you missed them:

#1- Conversation with Stephen Ho, President APAC, Starwood Hotels

Asia is the fastest growing travel market and the habits of Asian travellers are changing fast. Hotels are adapting to the change to stay competitive with new businesses pouring in. We got a chance to have a conversation with Stephen Ho, the man at helm of Starwood Hotels in Asia to know more about these industry trends. Read the full story: “We have to constantly keep evolving & innovating”- Stephen Ho, President, APAC, Starwood Hotels.

#2- OTAs block OYO and ZO Rooms from listing

With the kind of pace OYO Rooms picked up while expanding its footprint, it was very clear that they will be a threat to the OTAs in future. With more players joining the game, the OTAs couldn’t just wait. They finally decided to block OYO Rooms and ZO Rooms, two of the biggest budget hotel aggregators from listing on their platforms to save their market share. Earlier some OTAs also launched their own budget hotel brands to compete in the fast growing space. Read the full story: OTAs hit back at the hotel startups, block ZO and OYO Rooms from listing.

#3- Sherri Wu on the future of Alitrip

Alitrip, the travel business of Alibaba quickly gained momentum in the Chinese market. At this point, almost every global travel brand is trying to woo the Chinese travellers because of the fast growth that market has been experiencing. Sherri Wu spoke during Web In Travel Conference 2015 in Singapore about the journey of Alitrip and their future growth plans. Read the full story: “What we want to do is: Innovation, Innovation and Innovation” – Sherri Wu

#4- Jonathan Hardy on Adara’s plans for South-East Asia

Big data is the most commonly used phrase in travel industry these days. Business are exploring the possibilities of serving their customers better by offering tailored options by utilising big data. Adara is one company that is helping them analyse customer data and derive strategic insights. We had a chat with Jonathan Hardy about Adara’s expansion plans for this region. Read the full story: Travel Data Company, Adara has big plans for South-East Asia & Pacific

#5- FlyZilla: Flight metasearch that drives direct bookings to carriers

On metasearch websites, the results are usually flooded with options from OTAs. TripZilla introduced flight metasearch engine FlyZilla which offers results from airlines only and drives more direct booking to their website. It could be something disruptive in the metasearch space which has been largely dominated by the heavy bidding OTAs until now. Read the full story: TripZilla introduces flight metasearch engine FlyZilla to drive direct bookings to airlines

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Alitrip, the online travel marketplace, has a significant foothold in the Chinese market. It has focused on signing up travel agencies to reach more customers with its products and services. Distinguishing itself from other brands, it plans to drive a C2B marketplace and thereby transform it into a consumer-driven business.

Sherri Wu at WIT Singapore 2015

Sherri Wu, the Chief Strategy Officer of Alitrip, attended WIT 2015 to share her knowledge and experience of the travel industry and Alitrip. She pointed out that today most of the Chinese travellers are young, affluent, educated and independent by nature. They are ready to spend a sufficient amount of money at international destinations. Last year, Chinese tourists had spent a whopping sum of US$164 billion overseas. This clearly shows that money is not the limiting factor anymore for the modern Chinese traveller. As most of them are digital natives, they embrace technology and rely on mobile devices for their travel bookings. As a matter of fact, 70% of their travel bookings come from mobile devices alone.

Most of the businesses, especially startups, neglect storing data. Alitrip has realized its importance. It has accumulated a large amount of data over the last 16 years. With the help of this data, Alitrip wishes to create and design the best products and services according to the customer..

Social websites like Facebook, Twitter, G+ are being used extensively by many brands to reach to their customers. According to Sherri, the content on social media should be converted from user-generated content (UGC) to professional-generated content (PGC). This professional guide will be viewed as a more reliable and useful source for strategically bringing supply and demand together.

China’s Singles Day sale is believed to be biggest online shopping festival in the world. Alitrip celebrated this occasion for the first time in 2014. Giving exclusive offers to its customers, its total sales reached USD 9.3 billion in the 24-hour time period. The company had sold goods worth USD 1 billion in 17 minutes only, and touched the USD 2 billion mark in just above an hour. Its record-breaking achievement on a single day grabbed the attention of international audience.

Future of AliTrip:

Alitrip aims to further develop products and services that better meet the needs of customers. It plans to make travel a ‘natural extension’ for its customers. As described by Sherri Wu, the brand believes on ‘Innovation, Innovation and Innovation!’. Sherri quoted:

“Now the customer doesn’t even have to pay at check-in or checkout; Alitrip does it behind the scenes. It saves customers time and saves hotels front desk labor.”

Alitrip does a form of re-conciliation with the hotels through bank accounts. This is very convenient for the customers. Additionally, they have pushed out the online credit-based visa application for mainland Chinese residents to promote the enhanced offering.

Alitrip is an independent business unit of Alibaba – a giant Chinese e-commerce company and was created in October, 2014.

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