Both Tencent and Alibaba are eyeing a stake in Bullet Train Networks, Ctrip joins a consortium in a bid for car rental firm eHi’s privatization, and more in this week’s Briefing.
The tours and activities sector is expected to double in gross bookings to $27 billion in 2020; Ctrip, Google and TripAdvisor are also with aspirations in tours and activities.
The platform can be a realizable asset once it has accumulated a sufficient amount of content.
This is the first time that Marriott has created a one-stop booking experience, and it is created exclusively for the Chinese market, since it acquired Starwood Hotels and Resorts in September 2016.
The OTA says it has seen flight bookings increase up to 50% “in some scenarios” and a 10% increase in the rate of customers adding ancillary products such as baggage, seats or insurance.
Having won financing from Civil Aviation Investment Fund, Caissa Tourism and CKGSB Chuang Fund, PKFARE will continue to exploit the supply chain and product inventories.
Meituan-Dianping was reported to be in talks to raise $3 billion to pave the way for a potential initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong this year, only to be denied by its CEO.
Islands pools together existing room inventories in centrally located neighborhoods and lease them at 80% of the operating cost, to help generate returns on otherwise unused room stocks.