Articles tagged “alibaba”

More Chinese travelers than ever before are traveling to the U.S. and Alitrip is looking to provide custom, mobile-booked itineraries through its relationship with North American hotels, airlines and tour operators. It helps that its parent company is the preeminent Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, giving them near-unlimited resources to compete in a crowded Chinese travel market.

It's all about the numbers and execution so we'll be able to view Qunar's quarterly reports over the next few years to see if CEO Chenchao “CC” Zhuang can make good on his boast that the company will out-execute Ctrip, Alibaba and everyone else. Let's see if all the confidence adds up.

Alibaba's announcement marks a major investment in the online travel market and will compete with Ctrip for the rapidly increasing customer base in China.

There have been a flurry of acquisitions in hotel tech B2B solutions companies in 2014, and cash-rich Alibaba is going to be a player in the category.

To some extent, the shift in geographic focus of the travel IPO market from the U.S. in 2013 toward Europe and Asia Pacific so far in 2014 reflects where the burgeoning investment and market opportunities are opening up, although it is somewhat surprising that Latin America has yet to be heard from in a very meaningful way.

Just as we've seen the blending of business and leisure travel over the years, we are now entering a period where "travel" and local, from hotels digging into community culture and travel providers offering restaurant services and tours, will get mashed together in new ways.

This script is getting very familiar. There is a helluva competition going on in China's online, mobile and call center travel businesses, and the biggest players (Ctrip, Qunar, eLong and now Taobao Travel) are coming to the U.S. to raise some big bucks, intensifying the competition.