Adding to the group buying frenzy in China and around the rest of Asia, Chinese travel service Ctrip just jumped into the fray with its own group-buying service for special hotel deals. The service can be found at deals.ctrip.com/group.
While group buying tends to work well for restaurant deals or for certain retail products, the travel industry may not be such a lock when it comes to promoting deals. For most people, travel is not an impulse buy, nor is it something that you usually do often.
And then there’s the danger of not being able to meet demand. Take the Singaporean service deal.com.sg as an example, which sold flight/hotel packages to Thailand recently. When customers had difficulty redeeming their vouchers they expressed their anger on a Facebook page titled DEAL.com.sg – Refund our BKK Tickets.
How much Ctrip will benefit from its new deals site remains to be seen. As for the rest of its business this past year, if you’re interested to hear how the company is doing, the Ctrip 2011 earnings call is scheduled for the middle of this month.
Via iChinaStock
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