More Chaos Yet to Come in OTA Market.docVIP

More Chaos Yet to Come in OTA Market 　　When it comes to online travel， Chinese tourists， by and large prefer to travel in groups with carefully-planned itineraries and Chinese-speaking tour guides every step of the way. China’s online travel marketplaces have grown to accommodate this. Where western online travel agents（OTA） mostly offer deals on flights and hotels， their Chinese counterparts offer deals on full tour-guide-led trips. 　　But of course， this means that instead of just working with airlines and hotels， China’s OTAs also need to work with other agencies that coordinate and operate those group trips. That means in a price war， things can get ugly， and that’s apparently what’s happening now. 　　In the past few weeks， the battle between China’s OTAs has upgraded itself to a TV drama version. Plot thickens day by day. First we saw international online specialists LY.com and T fought over their suppliers. Apparently， Tuniu demanded all of its suppliers gave it lower prices than they gave to LY or stop working with LY altogether. LY’s CEO then fired back to Tuniu by issuing an internal memo saying “LY.com will take twelve months to completely surpass you professionally”. It is said that many suppliers have been told to choose a side and that they couldn’t provide tour services for both sides. Then Tuniu announced a followon offering plan to raise fund. 　　On December 4， Ctrip， China’s biggest OTA in terms of market value who had been remaining silent in the wrestling of Tuniu and LY， unexpectedly announced its plan to invest 1 billion yuan （$16.2 million） in 2015 to take on the competition. The company also launched a huge promotion laced with special discount on December 12 which is another Chinese shopping festival other than 11.11. In the same month， L， another fast-growing OTA of China， announced its plan to build an one-stop O2O travel service platform and the fact that it had already raised 10 billion yuan （$162.03 million） credit granted by three