Ctrip to use China's railway network for tourism business growth

SHANGHAI - Leading Chinese online travel agency Ctrip will launch a tailored service channel catering to tourism spending in destinations along the country's high-speed railways in its latest efforts to tap the domestic tourism market.

The company on Monday announced a plan to start a new sub-platform in its mobile app, offering one-stop booking services ranging from hotels to scenic spots tickets which cover all cities along high-speed railways.

James Liang, Ctrip's co-founder and executive chairman, pointed out that Chinese people are capable of traveling more than their global peers as China's high-speed railway network enables them to travel to faraway places for less money and time.

China had more than 25,000 km of high-speed railways by the end of 2017. The country aims to increase high-speed railway mileage to 30,000 km by 2020, covering over 80 percent of China's big cities.

Liang predicted China's high-speed-railway-based tourism market would exceed 100 billion yuan ($14.6 billion) by 2020 and over half of the estimated 3-billion passenger trips on high-speed railways will be made for tourism purposes by 2025.

The Nasdaq-listed company saw its net revenue gain 13 percent year-on-year to hit 7.3 billion yuan in the second quarter of this year, while net income attributed to Ctrip's shareholders soared 564 percent year-on-year to reach 2.4 billion yuan.

Liang is upbeat about the future growth of China's tourism market as well as the overall economy, as the country's infrastructure keeps improving and consumption continues to play a more prominent role.

Tourism has become an emerging contributor to China's economic growth as the sector raked in about 5.4 trillion yuan in revenue last year, up 15.1 percent year-on-year. Tourism revenue stood at about 2.45 trillion for the first half of 2018, up 12.5 percent year-on-year, data showed.