The company is eyeing expansion in Asian markets such as South Korea and Japan, and in regions further afield like London in the UK, said James Liang Jianzhang, the chairman and co-founder of Ctrip in an interview on Friday (July 20), South China Morning Post reported.
Ctrip, China’s largest online travel services provider, has plans to expand its overseas revenue from 2% to at least 20% in the next five years, using its recently-acquired Trip.com as a bridgehead for international expansion.
The company is eyeing expansion in Asian markets such as South Korea and Japan, and in regions further afield like London in the UK, said James Liang Jianzhang, the chairman and co-founder of Ctrip in an interview on Friday (July 20), South China Morning Post reported.
Nasdaq-listed Ctrip acquired Silicon Valley-based start-up Trip.com in November last year and relaunched it in the same month as the Shanghai-based company’s global brand.
Expanding its share in the global tourism market and beating competitors like Expedia are key priorities for Ctrip, which now offers more than one million packaged tour products in more than 2,000 destinations around the world.
Last year, global tourists made 11.9 billion trips, which generated US$5.3 trillion in tourism revenues, accounting for 6.7% of global GDP, according to the Beijing-based World Tourism Cities Federation.
The company is currently serving less than 5% of these trips, Liang said in a March conference call.
Established in 1999, the company has benefitted from the boom in outbound travel by Chinese tourists — a double-digit growth from 2002 to 2013, according to the World Tourism Organisation.
By 2020, the number of outbound trips by Chinese tourists is expected surge past the 130 million made last year to reach more than 200 million, according to estimates from the China National Tourism Administration.
Trip.com represents Ctrip’s latest attempt to tap into the international travel market. In 2016, Ctrip bought UK-based travel search engine operator Skyscanner for US$1.7 billion to “complement Ctrip’s positioning on a global scale”, Ctrip said in a statement at the time.
The company has also acquired three Chinese travel agencies which operate in the US and invested US$180 million in MakeMyTrip, an Indian online travel agency.