Ctrip buys train ticket app Suanya for US$16M

“All aboard! Next stop, acquisition station!” That’s what employees at Chinese train ticket app Suanya might be yelling (if they’ve got a cheesy a sense of humor) following travel giant Ctrip’s announcement that it has acquired the company for approximately RMB 100 million (US$16 million).

Suanya is a train ticket purchase app that allows users to easily browse and book train tickets online. Technically, the official government website 12306 is the only way people are allowed to buy train tickets online, so what Suanya does is allow people to input their 12306 login and payment details in Suanya. Then they can browse and purchase tickets in a much more friendly and less buggy UI – 12306 is notoriously terrible – and Suanya will do the legwork of actually booking via 12306’s system behind-the-scenes. And because tickets are only available at certain times, you can even set Suanya to buzz and remind you as soon as the ticket you want becomes available, so you don’t miss the boat, er, train.

It’s easy enough to see why a company like Suanya would interest Ctrip. Domestic travel is a huge part of Ctrip’s business, and it feels that bringing its massive userbase over to Suanya’s service will make both parties even more successful. Ctrip already offers train ticket bookings, but in acquiring Suanya it has both eliminated a competitor and given itself access to Suanya’s excellent mobile UI. It’s also worth pointing out that while Ctrip already has a one-stop-shopping type app right now, it may benefit from having a totally separate app focused just on booking train tickets, since a lot of Ctrip’s app’s content is related to travel for leisure, but booking train tickets is often just about commuting, visiting, home, etc. Users may be looking for a slicker, more focused experience when they get on their mobiles to book train tickets, and Suanya certainly provides that.

This isn’t the first time Ctrip has acquired a mobile app that operates in its own industry; two years ago the company bought a hotel booking app for apparently similar reasons.

Of course, the acquisition of Suanya hasn’t eliminated the many other competitors in China’s train-ticket booking space. But since ticket prices and sales are controlled by the government, train ticket sales aren’t an area of huge profit potential anyway, so Ctrip may see this acquisition more as a way to improve its own user experience and provide users with a slick, dedicated train ticket app rather than a strong weapon to use in the battle for Chinese travel supremacy.