Ascott to make rooms available on Alibaba
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Ascott, the serviced apartment operator, will make its global network of rooms available on Alitrip, the online travel platform operated by Chinese e-commerce giant, Alibaba.
In a first for any serviced residence company, the new partnership will provide Ascott with access to the more than 100 million Chinese travellers who currently use Alitrip. The company’s global network of more than 26,000 apartment units will become available on the online travel platform by June this year.
“Ascott is delighted to be the world’s first serviced residence company to form this global partnership with Alitrip,” said Lee Chee Koon, Ascott’s CEO. “Chinese travellers can look forward to even more travel options on our Alitrip store, when Ascott doubles our portfolio to 80,000 units globally by 2020.
“China is the world’s second largest economy, and rising incomes are driving domestic travel and making it the world’s biggest outbound travel market. These are potential customers for Ascott and our penetration of the Chinese market is already contributing to Ascott’s business worldwide.”
Ascott’s partnership with Alitrip follows the company’s recent investment in Tujia.com International, the online apartment sharing platform that has been labelled the “Chinese Airbnb”. The company’s properties outside China will also be made available on Tujia.com in the coming months.
“As Chinese travellers become increasingly tech-savvy and independent, they prefer to customise their travel itineraries, with more than 70% of outbound travellers in 2014 booking trips on their own rather than joining tour groups, we foresee further growth in independent travellers,” Lee added.
“Our strategic partnerships with Alitrip and Tujia.com International reinforce Ascott’s commitment to create a seamless O2O (offline-to-online and online-to-offline) experience for our guests as we reach out to these hundreds of millions of internet and smartphone users in China.”
China is now Ascott’s biggest market, in terms of portfolio size, and the company is also the largest international serviced residence operator in China, with more than 14,000 units across 24 Chinese cities.
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