Tujia.com, which is often dubbed the AirBNB of China, announced Wednesday that it has entered into a strategic agreement with Ctrip and Qunar to merge vocation home rental businesses of the two Chinese online travel services. It represents another strategic move by Tujia after its purchase of the short-term rental platform Mayi.com this June. Through this acquisition, […]
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Chinese Airbnb For Tour Guides Nilai.com Completes $2.3 M USD Funding
Chinese P2P platform for tour guide services Nilai.com announced the completion of a 15 million yuan ($2.3 million USD) pre-A round of funding on Tuesday. The funding was led by Beijing Fuyuan and will be used to improve the app and enhance the marketing outreach to attract more local guides in overseas countries. Nilai.com, whose Chinese name translates […]
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eLong Announces Privatization Bid From Tencent
ELong, one of China’s largest online travel services, today announced that its board of directors have received a privatization offer from existing shareholder Tencent, which hopes to acquire all remaining shares in the company. Tencent offered shareholders $18 per American Depositary Receipt (ADR), a 27 percent premium to Monday’s closing price in New York, according to […]
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Priceline Group Announces Additional US$250M Investment in Ctrip
The overseas online travel service company Priceline Group Inc. today announced that it will invest an additional US$250 million in Ctrip.com International, Ltd. , China’s leading online travel company. This investment follows a commercial relationship established between the two companies in 2012, which was expanded in August 2014 along with the US$500 million investment by The Priceline Group. Immediately following issuance of the […]
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Qunar or Alitrip: Which Will Be China’s Travel Taobao?
In yet another expansion into new markets, Alibaba launched Alitrip (or Qu’a (去啊) in Chinese) in late October. Like the e-commerce giant’s other market places, Alitrip is a platform for travel agencies big and small to set up online storefronts. Vendors on Alitrip have the same resources as Taobao and Tmall retailers, such as Alipay […]
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Qunar Joins Ongoing Open Platform Fight
Chinese online travel company Qunar launched a new cloud-based open platform recently, opening its data, access, resources, supply chain, customers, and capital to the entire travel industry. In terms of capital support, Qunar announced that it will provide a combined RMB1 billion (around US$161 million) incubation funding for projects under the platform. “We will offer RMB500,000 […]
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Travel App Developer Huoli Accelerates Monetization
Huoli, the Chinese app developer behind Flights Manager and Bullet Train Manager (our translation), has disclosed a gross merchandise volume of RMB6 billion (around US$1bn) in 2014, up from RMB700 million (around US$113m) in the previous year. The company claimed it has had some 60 million users, with 5 million monthly active users as of March 2014 (source in […]
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Chinese Travel Search Qunar Follows $15mn Series B Financing for Taxi-hailing App GrabTaxi
Chinese travel search Qunar (NYSE:QUNR) announced today it followed the $15 million Series B financing for GrabTaxi, a Singapore-based taxi-calling app targeting at Southeast Asia market. The round is led by GGV Capital with participation from existing investor Vertex Venture Holdings, which just invested an undisclosed amount of Series A financing a few months earlier. GrabTaxi is now operating in […]
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Chinese Travel Search Qunar Files for NYSE IPO
Travel search and service provider Qunar just filed with the SEC, planning to raise $125 million in an IPO on the NYSE under the ticker QUNR. Incorporated in 2005, the company received $306 million in investment in June 2011 from Baidu who now owns 61% of Qunar. As of June 2013, the company has 1699 employees. […]
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Qunar: A Proven Model of A Vertical Search Plus A Transaction-enabled Service?
When Baidu invested in Qunar in 2010 and asked about vertical search engines, Robin Li, CEO of Baidu, said he believed most users were lazy and would rather visit an all-in-one search service like Baidu for all types of information. Also he was confident that Baidu users would increasingly rely upon its service and brand. His comment […]
