eLong: 2.7 Million Room Nights Booked, Revenue Soars 19 Percent in Q3

Online travel company eLong (NASDAQ:LONG) has just posted some interesting statistics for the third quarter of 2011. This quarter saw a whopping 2.7 million room nights booked on eLong. That’s a 42 percent increase compared to the previous quarter, which recorded 1.9 million room nights booked.

Revenue also soared by 19 percent to RMB164.3 million (US$25.8 million), compared to US$20.6 million in the third quarter of 2010. The company is also making a US$1.5 million profit this quarter compared to a paltry $0.2 million in the last. All in all, it’s a very impressive leap of for the company’s financial stats. Or perhaps that’s just the trending cycle of the local travel industry. Note that the figure is unaudited, though. So take it with a grain of salt.

To increase bookings, eLong has been pretty innovative with its offerings. In the last quarter, it launched a “last-minute” booking feature which allows customers to enjoy additional savings for same-day bookings. Plus eLong also provides group-buy deals to help thrifty customers and bargain hunters enjoy more discounts too.

The company, which claims a network of 23,000 domestics and 145,000 international hotels, revealed that approximately 60 percent of its customers now book online at eLong.com or through its mobile applications (see shots of its iOS app below). Of course that indicates a growing (but not entirely surprising) trend of Chinese consumers increasingly booking hotels online.

In related news, we also recently covered a small start-up called Hotel Finder, which has a mobile-only hotel booking application which is gaining steam with over 1 million downloads. The edge that Hotel Finder has over eLong is small, mainly coming from its LBS booking feature and prettier interface.

But hey, China is a large enough market to house more of such similar services, and it will only get better as the number of Chinese folks using the Internet gets larger too.