SHANGHAI, 12 January 2018: Booking restaurants while visiting North America will get easier for Chinese tourists now that Ctrip has aligned with Priceline’s OpenTable.
Ctrip, China’s largest online travel agent, announced Monday, that its domestic sharing platform, Ctrip Gourmet List that focuses on restaurants, will partner with global counterpart Priceline Group’s OpenTable.
The partnership with OpenTable will allow Ctrip mobile app users to book tens of thousands of restaurants across North America.
Ctrip is also the first OpenTable partner in the Mainland Chinese market.
Ctrip Gourmet List was introduced in 2016 to provide Chinese travellers with food and restaurant recommendations and an online channel to make restaurant reservations in major cities around the world. Currently, Gourmet List covers approximately 15,000 restaurants in 120 popular destinations both in China and globally.
Ctrip Gourmet List has enjoyed triple-digit growth since its launch and continues to rapidly expand the number of restaurants and destinations on its platform.
OpenTable seats more than 24 million diners per month via online reservations across more than 43,000 restaurants worldwide.
Available in six languages, OpenTable has bookable restaurants in more than 20 countries, including Australia, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, United Kingdom and the United States.
In the third quarter of 2017, 57% of OpenTable’s global seated diners originated on a mobile device.
North America is an increasingly popular destination for Chinese travellers.
According to Ctrip’s data, Chinese visitors to North America in 2017 spent on average 16,000 RMB per person. Both the US and Canada were included on Ctrip’s 2017 Top 20 Popular Country list, with three US cities in the top ten for long-haul trips, and Canada seeing over 60% growth year-on-year.
Ctrip Gourmet List CEO, Kimi Liu said: “Ctrip’s partnership with OpenTable is more about just food – the table brings together local culture, communities, lifestyle and travel. This partnership will improve the quality of Ctrip’s travel services and help to provide the growing number of Chinese outbound tourists with a richer and more efficient one-stop travel experience.”
