Articles tagged “meituan”

The sure bet is that the major online travel agencies will use some cash to buy back shares in 2023 unless the economy tanks. Less sexy than acquisitions, but good for shareholders. Still, that leaves plenty of money for some possible headline-making deals.

Agoda's new CEO appointment highlights the need for online travel agencies to be continually reinventing experiences from a technology point of view. If only the company would now balance it out by bringing in someone who understands the hoteliers’ perspective.

After Airbnb decided to exit the local Chinese market, local players are rushing in: Tujia, Meituan, Muniao, Fliggy and Xiaozhu are large local Chinese online travel and short-term rental players that…

The old boys network is still as strong as can be in online travel and elsewhere. It shows up in several ways, although it was far from a decisive factor, in the pending Vacasa SPAC deal. But those decades-old ties sure didn't hurt, either.

The Chinese government, for better or worse, is exacting a toll on online platforms in its anti-monopoly drive. Meituan's penalty amounted to 3 percent of revenue, and it is being forced to implement additional reforms.

Did Airbnb, Booking Holdings, Tripadvisor, Oyo, and Marriott, among others, squirm a bit upon learning of Chinese regulators' latest antitrust crackdowns, this time against ridesharing giant Didi and food-delivery and hotel booker Meituan? If not, they should.

Regulators in China, Europe, and the U.S. can certainly screw up on execution of their goals with over-regulation, under-regulation, or initiatives that are off-target. But there's something happening around the globe that points to a new and potentially hopeful era for competition and innovation.

Sometimes CEO views of where online travel is headed seem more about the capabilities of their companies than anything else. Will pandemic-induced travel preferences make for dominant trends five or 10 years from now? Highly doubtful.

An unfortunate first-mover in the pandemic, China, in turn, got an early start on its travel recovery. But officials at major travel companies there view a robust bounce back as taking a year or longer — and much of that pace depends on how quickly coronavirus gets neutralized in the rest of the world.

Cleanliness standards will guide guest preferences in the years ahead. Short-term rental host practices will have to undergo significant enhancements to cope with that changing consumer behavior — a heightened sensitivity to just how clean their surroundings are as an outgrowth of the coronavirus pandemic.