Hottest Travel Websites—ctrip.com, Elong.com and Qunar.com
As statistics shows, for the past few years, the traveling industry in China has been growing steadily. In 2011, the total revenue for China’s traveling industry reached 2.25 thousand billion RMB. Riding on this wave of industry prosperity, many travel sites have appeared among which Ctrip.com, elong.com and Qunar.com take the leading positions with the largest number of users. The service they provide includes information about travel destinations, online booking of train tickets, flight tickets and hotels. As China’s leading travel new media, Qunar.com advocate a “self-serving, self-managing, and free” travel style, enabling users to choose personalized travel products according to their specific needs after searching and comparing information on their website.
Ticket Group-buying and Experience Sharing—lvmama.com, mafengwo.cn
Lvmama.com was founded in 2008, specializing in DIY tours. It sells discount entrance tickets to attraction spots which is also called ticket group-buying and designs DIY tour routes for its users. Unlike ctrip.com, who mainly focuses on getting tourists to their destination, which in other words, making possible the trip, lymama.com focuses on helping its users better enjoy the trip by offering detailed contents about where to see, what to see and how to get there cost efficiently. Different from lvmama.com, mafengwo.com is more like an online society for travel enthusiasts. People post and share blogs, photography works and videos. The sharing of experience and happiness in traveling is what makes this site resourceful and popular.
52huzhu.com—Mutual Help in Traveling
Another popular site among young people is 52huzhu.com. Its core value is based on mutual help. The site provides a platform for its users to make friends and then offer help to each other in traveling and job-searching. It blends the elements of traveling, job-hunting, friend-making and mutual help altogether to create a channel and access to easier and more enjoyable life. For example, it I participate in this site, I will receive others who travel to my hometown, take them to the best cuisine and show them around. In return I will be able to receive help from other users when I travel as well.
Written by Amy Wang for Daxue China Marketing Research
