More Chinese boarding planes, the cyber way

By Jason Tan

When Dreama Tsai missed her train from Shanghai to Guangzhou on the first day of the week-long Golden Holiday in October, she decided to call up Ctrip.com on the spot to purchase a flight ticket.

The 25-year-old architect, a Taiwan national working in Shanghai, rushed to the airport and settle her bill directly over the Ctrip counter.

“The service isn't bad,” she said. “Lots of my friends popped up the company's name when I asked them where to get flight tickets.”

A growing number of expats -- especially locals -- are now flying via Web-based agencies in China, either through clicks on the Internet or calls to the call center.

With 162 million people online, China has the world's No. 2 population of Internet users after the US, and this made online travel a booming business.
Set up in 1999, Ctrip.com has now ruled over China's cyber travel space, thrusting away smaller rivals including Elong.com and China-sss.com.

The Nasdaq-listed Ctrip.com reported profit of US$18 million in the third quarter, 68 percent up from the same period last year, thanks to more airway ticket purchases and hotel bookings from travelers.

“Ctrip.com moved into the market very early, launching advertisements in the airport and membership cards for certain privileges. This made it build up a loyal fan base since the early stage,” said Chen Wen, an Internet analyst with CCID Consulting in Beijing.

Seventy-percent of the company's sales are from call center, while the rest through online reservations, she said.

With around 2,000 staff managing queries, manpower of the firm's call center is believed to be the largest among all Web-based travel agencies in Asia, she said.

Indeed, these Chinese online tour firms are innovative in reaching out to the crowds.

Most of the them offer ticket delivery to clients' doorsteps, meaning consumers can lay back while courier men come sending you the ticket while picking up the tab, either to pay in cash or plastic cards.

They also tie up with various hotels in the country, or those abroad, and users who book through these agencies are ensured of cheaper check-in rates than the advertised fees.

In the case of Ctrip.com, it claims to work with to over 28,000 two- to five-star hotels in 134 countries for such service.

Another perk for those money conscious. Surfers of Elong.com, which is also Nasdaq-listed, could key in their house or mobile numbers on the Web site, which will then route the calls instantly to the company's hotline -- for free.

Elong.com's Web page also highlights certain flights when the seats are running low.

Meanwhile, travoo.com partnered this month [November] with C-store to offer consumers 24x7 direct purchase of tour packages at the latter's 200-plus convenience store outlets.

Despite more affluent Chinese could now afford to fly, they are getting picky in choosing the best services.

“These marketers have to innovate by leveraging the Internet to reach consumers as conventional online advertising method is not adequate now, considering increasingly tech-savvy Chinese netizens,” Grace Pan, Nielson China's head of travel and leisure research, said in a recent report.

Attractive and informative online content are a must to facilitate Chinese travelers in making destination choices, and after that, a user-friendly and trustworthy mechanism will be needed to facilitate bookings, Pan said.

Nielson released a report in late October, revealing that 29 percent respondents did online bookings with travel agents and 16 percent went cyberspace to reserve hotels or transports.

Though the bulk of respondents, or 61 percent, still relied on traditional travel agents, the Internet power is on the rise, it said.

Seven in 10 Chinese travelers would do homework on the destinations via the Internet, while six in 10 would gather information from online travel forums before jetting off, according to the poll, which questioned 1,500 respondents from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou -- the three most affluent cities.

Ango Shao, a 24-year-old Shanghai native, is in the tech savvy pool.
One of his favorites is China-sss.com, a Chinese airline offers cheap domestic flights for online reservations.

“Sometime when I am feeling down, I would just purchase flight to Hainan island to enjoy the sea view,” the lawyer said. “It is, after all, a cheap way to fly.”