South Korea’s leading duty-free store operator Hotel Shilla has expanded partnership with China’s largest online travel agency Ctrip in its global drive.
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The Korean luxury hotel chain and duty-free outlet operator said its chief executive Lee Boo-jin on July 8, 2019 met with James Liang Jianzhang, a founder of Ctrip, and Jane Jie Sun, chief executive of Ctrip, in Seoul, Korea to sign a memorandum of understanding for closer marketing cooperation in the travel sector.
Ctrip is an online travel platform in China offering various services such as accommodation booking, flight reservation and tour packages. It has branched out to 17 cities in China with more than 300 million users and built the Korean entity of online travel agency Trip.com recently to provide better service in Korea.
In 2016, it also took over Edinburgh, Scotland-based Skyscanner, which provides price comparison data on flight, hotels, and car hire for about 60 million customers.
It is not the first time Lee, the eldest of the founding family of Samsung Group, has met with Ctrip executives. She visited Ctrip headquarters in China to bolster cooperation between the two companies on promoting Chinese tourists’ visit to Korea in 2015 and 2018.
Since joining hands with Ctrip four years ago, Hotel Shilla has been introducing various perks and discount options for Ctrip customers using Shilla Duty Free’s inner city and gateway stores in Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong.
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It also has partnered with Chinese payment service providers such as UnionPay, Alipay, and major banks including China Merchants Bank and Bank of Communications to pitch for more Chinese visitors to Korea.
(Source: Pulse News)