Expedia, the largest online travel agency in the US, will try for a share of China's booming travel market by investing at least $50 million in the country by next year, the company's CEO said at a press conference Wednesday in Beijing.
"In the next two to three years, Expedia will increase inputs in China and the company will continue to purchase some Internet companies to strengthen its footing," Dara Khosrowshahi told the Global Times Wednesday on the sidelines of the press conference.
Expedia does business in China through three branches: NASDAQ-listed eLong, China's second-largest online travel company; Daodao.com, the local website of online travel review company TripAdvisor; and travel search engine kuxun.cn.
Though it occupies the No. 2 slot in China's online travel market, eLong's market share is over 40 percentage points lower than that of leader Ctrip. Elong's sales revenue in the first quarter was only 108 million yuan ($15.82 million), far below Ctrip's 627 million yuan ($91.82 million).
An iResearch report released earlier this year predicted revenue from online flights, hotel and package tour bookings in China will hit 4.75 billion yuan ($695.8 million) this year, up 27 percent from last year.
The figure will reach 9.01 billion yuan ($1.32 billion) by 2013, the report said.
Many other companies are also eying China's promising travel market. The country's largest online retailer, Taobao, launched an online travel service May 19.
Khosrowshahi, however, is expecting a narrow gap between eLong and Ctrip, saying the huge China market cannot have only one major player, and as China's online booking accelerates with more consumers using online travel services, eLong will win greater market share.
Commenting on Ctrip's upstream hotel purchases, including Shanghai-based Home Inns, elong's CEO Cui Guangfu said eLong would focus on working as a third-party platform to avoid competition with hotels.
ELong has rolled out several strategies to win hotel partnerships, including cell phone booking services and electric consumption vouchers.
Cui said eLong now has partnerships with 11,200 hotels, compared with Ctrip's 10,600.
