Invite colleagues
Many have predicted further consolidation in the online travel sector and it looks that this maybe bearing out with news that TripAdvisor, is committing itself further to the Chinese market, by agreeing to acquire Kuxun.cn, a flight and hotel search engine and the country’s second largest travel site.
This will see TripAdvisor own two of China’s top ten travel websites along with Daodao.com who it acquired in April. The combination of DaoDao.com and Kuxun.cn will more than double traffic for TripAdvisor Media Group properties in China.
Steve Kaufer, founder and CEO of TripAdvisor says “With both DaoDao.com and Kuxun.cn under our umbrella, we will enhance our ability to deliver trusted content that travelers seek, and further position TripAdvisor for expansion in this fast-growing market segment.”
Founded in February 2000, TripAdvisor was purchased by InterActive Corporation in 2004 and spun off into its travel group of businesses under the Expedia, Inc. name in August 2005.
With Kaufer still with the company, The TripAdvisor Media Group now operates 14 popular travel brands including TripAdvisor, Virtual Tourist, Cruise Critic, Seat Guru and TravelPod. The network of sites reportedly has over 10 million members over 25 million visitors a month.
Given the research findings that Dr Grace Pan spoke about yesterday at Dr3 on the domestic travel fortunes I am not surprised that TripAdvisor, (owned by Expedia), plans to invest more than US$50 million in China through late 2011.
Written on Saturday, 31 October 2009 09:56 by Matt McDougall