At nearly every NAJ RTO Summit and Active America China Summit for the past five years, every leading China market expert has spoken of the power and presence of Ctrip.com, the world’s third largest and China’s largest online travel agency (OTA). At NAJ’s recently convened Eighth Annual Active America China Summit held at the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas, Ctrip itself made the point.
In a report that opened the conference, Rose Wu, manager, American Tour Department for Ctrip, went through a series of numbers—their size, in reference to a single overseas source market, had never been seen by the U.S. travel suppliers attending the summit as delegates—that were, at the very least, daunting. INBOUND culled its way through Wu’s report and arranged the figures so as to give justice to their statistical dimension. But first, a chart that best illustrates importance in the market to the USA.
Ctrip by the Numbers: Here is a breakdown of some of the key data points as they refer to Ctrip.
- 250 million: The number of Crtip members to whom Ctrip provides travel services in China—both online and through traditional travel service (this number would just about tie the agency’s client base with Indonesia for the fourth largest population in the world—behind that of China, India and the USA)
- 60: Percentage of the quarter billion Ctrip members that are classified as middle and high-end consumers
- More than 50: Ctrip’s percentage share of the online travel service market in China
- 7: The only small number in the presentation, it represents the OTA percentage share of total online penetration in China is small—compared to 31 percent globally—which means that there is considerable room for growth.
- 350 million: This is the number, so far, of downloads of Ctrip’s app, which has been used primarily for hotel bookings (45 percent) and flight tickets (35 percent)
- 10,000 (almost): The number of customer services representatives available 24/7.
- 1,026: Number of Ctrip packages to USA, including Group tours, FIT, cruises, day tour, transportation, ticket, etc
- About 48,000: Number of USA packages booked by Ctrip in 2014 (in 2012 it was 20,000).
Working with Brand USA: Wu made it a point to note the mega-agency’s partnership with Brand USA in promoting the U.S. both as a national destination and as a mega-brand backing up individual destinations, such as Chicago (below, right) within the U.S. She wanted to illustrate, particularly to DMO delegates to Active America, a channel open to them in order to promote their products through the Ctrip channel.
