Poland Hotels Booking

PayPal has announced that Chinese online travel agency Ctrip International will now accept payment for air tickets booked via its website through the PayPal secure payment system.

This is an excellent idea which will increase the utility of Ctrip by a considerable margin. PayPal insures all transactions up to $500. It will take a while to work but it will massively improve the utility of Ctrip while cutting its costs.

Ctrip has placed a link to its travel site on PayPal’s Chinese language website indicating it hoped to gain a significant advantage not only from being able to attract users who wished to pay for their travel through PayPal but also overseas PayPal users that might be attracted to its own website through the link on the PayPal. In that Ctrip is probably right.
Source: Trading Markets

author Gareth Powell, source www.chinaeconomicreview.com

Buzz Technologies, which refers to itself as the prime competitor to Baidu, Sina and Google in China, is set to launch an Expedia powered travel portal across Asia with a focus on the 120,000 PC’s Buzz www.12buzz.com sits on in China’s Internet Cafes.

Accepting that CTrip dominates China’s online travel market Buzz aims to have over 300,000 PC’s hardwired to its site this year. It states ‘and will certainly impact on the growing China travel market.’

If we were talking about Wales then 300,000 PCs would be total control. But this is not Wales and the number, though significant, is nowhere near domination.

We are told: ‘Buzz’s Online marketing has already replaced Google as Thailand’s premier online ad supplier and now has its eyes firmly set on China.’ (Perhaps. But the writer has just spent three weeks in Thailand using the Thai Internet, searching for information and sorting out his travel bookings. Buzz did not enter into the picture. Not once. That is a very small sample but it might be indicative.)

Buzz will release the service in China not only on 12buzz.com but also on www.yourtravelagents.com and www.airtravelltd.com .

Expedia is an online travel company, which lets travelers do booking. Again, as the writer’s son worked for the company for many years, he is able to agree with the statement that it has created a global travel marketplace used by a range of leisure and corporate travelers.

Buzz states that Expedia makes available, on a package basis, travel products and services provided by airlines, lodging properties, car rental companies, destination service providers, cruise lines and other travel product and service companies.

True again. But it works almost exclusively through credit cards.

Which is not the way, at the moment, it works in China, where, as yet, credit cards are not a major part of the scene. Yes, Expedia is big but it is not designed for the travel market in China as it stands today. CTrip is designed for the China market which is why it has such a dominant position.
Source: PR Inside

author Gareth Powell, source www.chinaeconomicreview.com

Ctrip, China’s leading online travel agency has entered the US market.

With more than 19 million registered users, Ctrip processed more than 9 million hotel room nights and 10 million air tickets in 2007. However, more and more English-speaking leisure and business travelers are on the site making enhanced English-language services and amenities a necessity to facilitate China travel and booking.

Ctrip limits itself to its strong point, the China travel business from the US, worth more than $150 billion in 2007. At the same time, Expedia is entering the China market. That is going to be an interesting battle, since Expedia has a strong international brand name, but Ctrip seems almost unbeatable on the China business.
Source: China Herald

author Gareth Powell, source www.chinaeconomicreview.com