Sorry in advance for going a bit off-topic!
As an investor and co-founder of UpTake (my day job, when I’m not blogging on CNReviews), I’ve had a front row seat to the continued evolution of the online travel space. Tomorrow, we are expecting TravelPost (owned by Kayak) to launch a hotel review meta-search site similar to us. I sincerely think the competition will be good for us, and will validate our overall approach. UPDATE: Looks like they launched with a pretty weak offering…for now. They scan 200+ sites compared to our 5000+. They cover 140k+ hotels compared to our 400+ lodging/attractions database. More detailed comparison to come on the UpTake blog.
Sam Shank, original founder of TravelPost who is now founder of DealBase, also highlighted the growing competition between TripAdvisor and Kayak in a recent post. I certainly wouldn’t want to position myself against TripAdvisor, but maybe Kayak thinks they are big enough to play against the big boys now. Here’s a screen grab from their new current site, which I’ll update as soon as they launch, showing hotel reviews from Yahoo! (which UpTake has had for almost a year):
Q: Who are likely players to experiment with hotel review metasearch in China?
The most well known player in travel price metasearch is Qunar.com. I’ve met with co-founder/CEO Fritz Demopoulos numerous times and he has been generous with his advice and thoughts about the space. Yen Lee, co-founder of UpTake, and I met with Fritz at the Starbucks at Tsinghua Science & Technology Park last November:
Its not trivial to move from price metasearch to hotel metasearch, but Qunar is a potential player. Biggest question is when there will be enough hotel review content available, and whether the “owners” of that content will think that its acceptable for metasearch sites to “scrape” their content.
Other players could include:
- Ctrip (NASDAQ: CTRP) – in 2008, Ctrip commanded over 50% of total “online” travel market share (source: Webintravel conference reported by Tim’s BOOT blog). However, 80% of these transactions are done exclusively through the call center. However, it is still very early innings in online travel. Ctrip’s 50% “online” share only represents 1.5-2% of hotel reservations and 5% of air ticketing (source: Maoxian).
- eLong (NASDAQ: LONG)- eLong is a much smaller #2 player that has Expedia as an investor and partner. They are focusing on skimming off the true online only traffic, so that makes them more directly competitive with Qunar.
- Kuxun.cn – Kuxun is also focused on meta-search but does this for numerous lifestyle categories, not just travel. They are partnered with Priceline.
- Other bit players include: Auyou.com, Yoee.com, 51766.com, Huochepiao.com (for trains).
Based on my conversations with Mark Inkster, founder of a travel review site called Yiquilai.com.cn, I believe that there are major differences between the China domestic travel market and more mature Western travel markets that would cause travel review metasearch to evolve in quite a different way.
Some related resources on CNReviews: A Q4 2007 report on 2007 China Online Travel Industry from Baidu. More on online travel later!
Photo: CC CNReviews, please credit as shown
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China Online Travel Industry Report of 2007 Q4 from Baidu 
As a frequent Kayak user myself, I think the weakest point in an otherwise pretty good price meta-search engine is indeed the lack of high quality hotel reviews. With the re-launch of TravelPost.com and linking the hotel review meta-search feature to its core price comparison web site (Kayak.com) in the near future, Kayak is really building the last puzzle for itself. Therefore, this re-launch makes a lot of sense from the strategic point of view for Kayak even though TravelPost.com alone is pretty weak by itself.
From a regular traveler point of view, Kayak doesn’t really compete head to head with TripAdvisor. Their primary focuses are different: For Kayak it is price comparison; for TripAdvisor it is hotel/destination reviews and information. Of course, they always try to make improvements in their weak spots.
In China the landscape for hotel review meta-search is quite different (as most of the time with other things:)). For now, travel price meta-search engine Qunar.com and Kuxun.cn mostly are viewed as for air fare comparison/search only. Their influence on the hotel side doesn’t materialize, at least not in the near future. Ctrip has been and still remains a dominant force in the online hotel reservation business. Not just their rates are the lowest most of the time and the online reservation process is very smooth from my personal experience, the combination of web site/call centers also fits the Chinese market perfectly (Chinese travelers are more mobile, internet access is less convenient and online payment is much less popular when compared to US. Also, as pointed out earlier in another CNReviews blog, mobile phones and SMS are the primary tools in Chinese daily communication in contrast to computers and emails in US).
In terms of hotel review meta-search in China, I am not sure what the future will look like. Compared to a much more diversified environment in US, currently 90 to 95% of all quality hotel reviews are posted in Ctrip.com. As a matter of fact, most of the hotel reviews returned by Qunar.com’s current review searches come from Ctrip and Ctrip hasn’t been really happy about that. Not sure Ctrip can do anything about it technically or legally. On the other hand, Ctrip may actually use it as a marketing opportunity for its own good:)
A meaningful meta-search only happens in a diversified and competitive environment no matter which field we are talking about. So a broader meta-search on destination reviews/travel tips makes more sense and therefore presents better opportunities in China from my point of view.