Exclusive | China travel giant Ctrip wants to book a bigger seat in international markets with Trip.com brand

Ctrip, China’s largest online travel services provider, plans to boost the proportion of total revenue it makes from overseas customers from 2 per cent to at least 20 per cent over the next five years, using its recently-acquired Trip.com brand as a bridgehead for international expansion.

While capitalising on the massive outbound Chinese tourist market, Ctrip also wants to grow its overseas business in Asian markets such as South Korea and Japan, and ultimately places like London in the UK, said James Liang Jianzhang, the chairman and co-founder of Ctrip in an interview on Friday.

“The travel market is a global market,” said Liang. “If you’re just doing one market, you can’t realise the economies of scale to compete. If you want to be a player (in the market), you have to reach the same scale as your competitors – the hot destinations are the hot destinations, and travel will be a winner takes all game in the end.”

Nasdaq-listed Ctrip acquired Silicon Valley-based start-up Trip.com in November last year and relaunched it in the same month as the Shanghai-based company’s global brand.

Taking a big slice of the global tourism market and beating competitors like Expedia is now a key focus for Ctrip, which offers more than 1 million packaged tour products in more than 2,000 destinations around the world.