Articles tagged “trip.com”

The TripAdvisor-Trip.com Group deal is both a shocker and a non-shocker. When Ctrip decided to change the parent company name to Trip.com Group, you could see a certain affinity with the TripAdvisor brand. On the other hand, Booking Holdings has been Ctrip's longtime best friend in China.

The name change to Trip.com Group is not a bad idea for Ctrip as it increasingly comes out of its shell and becomes a global force in online travel. A catchy domain name, though, doesn't guarantee anything.

Buying a compelling travel domain like Trip.com and thinking it ensures success is like the people who buy a restaurant and think they can run it because they are foodies. Several major travel companies squandered the Trip.com domain because it was a side hustle. Moral of the story? A brand is only as good as the real-world business behind it.

Ctrip, or the company soon-to-be known as Trip.com Group Ltd., is banking on international growth as a key driver of its business, primarily in Asia. But short term, at least, difficulties in Hong Kong and Taiwan and with the White House are complicating that game plan.

It's no surprise to see Skyscanner absorb the last bits of the user-generated reviews brand formerly known as Gogobot. But the price-comparison search company's bet on soliciting reviews from its own customers remains intriguing. The move highlights its ambition to become a superapp for travel.

We had speculated before that Ctrip might use its newly acquired Trip.com domain for its own agency listings, displacing the travel recommendation service it recently bought. By de-emphasizing its Chinese origin, it may hope to ingratiate itself with more Western travelers.

Two deals in the space of a week show how serious Skyscanner is about improving the content it offers to customers. The days of it being a pure price-comparison site are definitely over.

Ctrip-backed Skyscanner will tap in-destination content from social reviews company Trip.com. But is the acquiring company's true plan to further mobile engagement? Or is it to nab a domain name that may be appeal more to Americans than Ctrip.com -- or Alibaba's Fliggy?

The bottom line is that several of President Trump's policies and his rhetoric are a big turn-off to many foreigners and the result is a measurable adverse impact on the U.S. and global travel industry.

We've known this day would come for quite some time now. The only question left to ask is this: Can Airbnb succeed in becoming a "super brand of travel" like it aspires to be?