Outbound travel company Utour reported stable growth, with 46.92% y-o-y growth in revenue for its wholesale operations and 42.03% growth in retail operations for 2014, having actively developed new travel products, expanded its departure points and conducted O2O marketing.
Its wholesale revenue last year totaled RMB2.521 billion (approx: US$407 million) and revenue from retail operations exceeded RMB1.014 billion (approx: US$164 million). Its MICE operations also grew 18.45% y-o-y to RMB682 million.
Board of Directors report
Utour’s board of directors and management aim to continue to improve the competitiveness of its core services and bolster its existing resources and platform to leverage internal resources and competitive edge for expansion. Internally, it will continue to diversify its products and structure, improve quality, provide satisfying customer experiences, launch projects, improve its market position and regional distribution, set up more channels in its marketing network, and consolidate its upstream resources and its suppliers to improve performance.
Externally, it will leverage the channels, products and services and destination resources of its platform and increase interfaces to make it more competitive. It also will foster initiative and innovation among its core management team while attracting and retaining talent, empowering them to implement its strategic plan. The company has introduced a limited equity incentive plan for employees during this period.
Operations highlights
Utour’s operational revenue grew 40.32% y-o-y to RMB4.217 billion (approx: US$681 million), and profits attributable to shareholders increased 24.32% y-o-y to RMB109 million (approx: US$17.6 million) . Operational costs also grew 42.23% y-o-y as revenue scale expanded
Utour set up branches in Kunming and Qingdao and launched local products. Utour is also determined to expand its market share in the wholesale segment and made the significant move of restructuring with Chinese outbound wholesaler Vista to form a large-scale national outbound travel business.
Beijing-based five-A-rated Vista is a leading outbound wholesaler in China established in July 2014. It was ranked 12 in the top 100 Chinese travel companies in 2013.
Utour organized MICE events for a leading Chinese direct sales group, and successfully serviced a delegation of 2,600 Chinese attendees to a Russian awards ceremony in 2014. The group has won the tender for a company’s 20th anniversary corporate celebration in France in 2015 that will involve 6,400 delegates. This is the largest Chinese delegation organized by a single operator.(Translation by David)
