Meituan Travel has unveiled the strategy for its air ticketing business, one year after acquiring Flightroutes24 in November 2016.
Meituan Travel embarked on air ticketing business in October 2015, relatively later than its hotel and attraction ticket businesses. Thanks to the traffic of Meituan-Dianping and the acquisitions and investments, its air ticket business has taken off quickly.
Meituan reported that the transaction volume of air tickets for this year has increased by 328% over the previous year and the number of paid air tickets transacted on the site increased by more than 340% year on year.
The acquisition of Flightroutes24 has helped fuel Meituan’s international air ticket business volume –it has contributed 20% to Meituan’s international air ticket transaction volume in 2017.
Flightroutes24, founded in 2015, provides a one-stop customized multilingual and full-process ticket purchasing and distribution service. It is able to access global air ticketing through direct connections with airlines and with global GDS systems. Its proprietary JET-X trading system is also able to calculate exchange rates and provide language-barrier-free communication.
At present, Flightroutes24 not only provides a standardized B2B transaction site for business operators, but also offers diversified products such as open platform and SaaS services based on individual customers' needs, in its endeavor to support the global air ticketing business with the most comprehensive transaction information and to create transaction opportunities for both buyers and sellers.
Meituan Travel’s acquisition of TripAdvisor’s Beijing branch Kuxun.cn, completed before 2016, has enabled Meituan to improve and perfect the business chain and data information, the air ticketing area in particular, leveraging Kuxun’s Internet technology system. The acquisition of Flightroutes24 in 2016 offered Meituan Travel global access to good air ticket supplies and develop its online travel business.
In addition, Meituan Travel is collaborating with Singapore-based Scoot and other overseas carriers. Through the airlines’ official flagship stores on Meituan, users can access air tickets at the prices offered on the airlines' official websites.
Meituan Travel currently features ticketing for more than 100,000 overseas flight routes, and users can book tickets from more than 400 international airlines through Dazhong-Dianping and Meituan-Travel apps.
