Chinese travel site Qunar had a good year last year. It broke even — not a small accomplishment considering how rough things were for some Chinese startups in 2011 — and this year, things are looking even better. How much better? Double better. Qunar expects to double its earnings from last year, which should result in profits of “hundreds of millions of RMB,” according to CEO Zhuang Chenchao. (Perhaps that’s why Baidu invested $300 million in Qunar last year).
So what’s next for Qunar? An IPO in the US, according to Zhuang. Of course, the company recognizes that the market has been, er, less than friendly to Chinese tech stocks recently, and it plans to wait for things to settle down a bit. Zhuang wouldn’t specify a timeline for the IPO, but did say that the company would be seriously considering one as soon as “the market stabilizes.”
Qunar is one of China’s leading travel sites at a time when China’s travel market — both domestically and internationally — is exploding. Some experts expect China’s tourism market to surpass Japan’s in size as soon as 2013, making it second only to the United States.
[Via Sina Tech]
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