Take a stroll through the centre of London, Paris or San Francisco, and you will hear the same, unmistakable sound: Mandarin. The Chinese have become the world’s biggest tourists and are on track to spend $160bn on overseas visits this year.
Priceline wants a piece of the action: it will invest $500m in Ctrip, a Chinese travel booking company, through a convertible bond. Rival Expedia already owns a significant stake in Ctrip’s competitor eLong; now Priceline also has its foot firmly in the door.
Priceline Group’s presence in China is small: the company has access to just 8,000 hotels there, compared with half a million in the rest of the world. Moreover Priceline.com has no website specifically for mainland Chinese customers (though Kayak, part of the Priceline Group, does have a Chinese site). Ctrip is a natural partner, with links to 70,000 China hotels, and business has been soaring. Hotel bookings were up 60 per cent by volume year on year in the most recent quarter; transportation bookings nearly doubled.