Ctrip has become the first OTA in the world where mobile has surpassed the browser as a booking channel – making me wonder if perhaps a new term will soon enter our industry – MTA (Mobile Travel Agency).
At this morning’s Travel Distribution Summit in Guangzhou, James Liang, chairman and CEO (pictured left), announced that in July and August, mobile has become the market leader’s biggest booking channel, surpassing the web.
“This is a great milestone and we’re probably the first OTA globally to see this trend,” he said, as he outlined Ctrip’s strategy of “finger + mortar”.
Mobile now accounts for 65% of same-day bookings compared with 35% of web users, said Liang.
This leapfrogging is putting China ahead of markets like the US and Liang said that whatever PhoCusWright predicted for the China’s mobile travel market in 12-24 months time was already playing out right now.
“PhoCusWright predicted that mobile in China would have these features in 12-24 months – special price offers, location-based services, mobile coupon, integration with social media, mobile payments and mobile rescue. All these functions have been achieved already – our Ctrip app is leaps and bounds ahead of our Western counterparts.”
He was referring to the newly-launched Ctrip mobile app for FIT flights and hotels (pictured right), the first OTA in China to do so.
Liang is excited about what mobile can do for travel – he said it would help the industry simplify and focus, but it would take a very different discipline to customize for the small screen.
“With the web, we are used to putting a lot of content on it, we take it for granted, but with the small screen, you have to be very disciplined and focused, and think about scrolling and navigation,” he said.
Two factors work in China’s favour in terms of mobile adoption, he said.
One, the Chinese language is easier to fit into a small screen. “On Twitter, you can only do status updates in English but even with that limitation, we can write a small article in Chinese.”
Two, mobile and call centres go well together. “There are still a lot of customers who like to use call centres for booking and changing flights.”
In his summary, Charlie Li, founder of the TDS event, said that 98% of Chinese travellers, totaling 256 million (defined as someone who’s booked a flight or hotel in the last 12 months), own a smartphone.
And 42% of Chinese travellers were using smartphones to source information on travel compared with 14% for the US. There are predictions that mobile will form 21% of total online travel market in China by 2015 but as Liang said, “It is hard to predict the future. What I know is that technological innovation will continue, we will witness new possibilities which are very difficult for us to conceive right now.
“Let’s work together to come up with better products for our customers – my work at Ctrip tells me that we are really at an transformational moment. Let’s make history together.”
Or be consigned to history – with the rapid rate of technological innovation, no one is safe. For instance, Tencent has tried to move its QQ platform from the web to mobile and in the process, was overtaken by WeChat.
So who could emerge as the new-breed MTA, displacing players like Ctrip, eLongand Qunar, who were born on the browser?
In Guangzhou, I am meeting lots of new faces – some are going into outbound luxury, some launching same-day booking apps. What’s sure is, expect intense competiton as innovation and disruption continues to happen in Asia’s largest and most exciting travel market.
