Qunar encouraged its OTA partners to join the TTS, an aggregation platform where online travel orders can be directly processed, in March with preferential terms, but it wasn’t appreciated. As we have covered, eLong, 17u.cn and a lot more removed their offerings to contend against Qunar.
In response to it, Zhuang Chenchao, Qunar’s CEO told media on April 23, “it brings consumers convenience. Previously they had to learn how to use other OTA sites, while now they don’t have to and only need to visit Qunar. To consumers, Qunar is a one-stop online travel service platform.”
Before TTS which was released in 2010, Qunar had long been regarded as a travel search engine that only charged CPC-based search ads. With TTS it also takes commissions of direct sales. Cui Guangfu, CEO of eLong, stated in public that he wasn’t happy with Qunar’s taking a 3% transaction commission and at the same time charge paid searches.
In less than half a month, disagreement emerged among OTAs that most except eLong returned to Qunar. But it cannot be the end of the war.
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