HUBS1 cries Ctrip monopoly unacceptable
- Source: Global TImes
- [09:46 April 15 2010]
- Comments
A customer checks out Ctrip's website. Photo: Andre Chua
By Shen Weihuang
A Shanghai-based online hotel booking website claims they are unfairly being ousted from the market just ahead of the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai by industry giant Ctrip.com.
Expo partner HUS told the Global Times Wednesday that China's largest online airline and accommodation provider has for a second time pressured mutual hotel business partners to match the price lows guaranteed by HUS, or risk having Ctrip terminate existing contracts with them.
The controversy follows a promotional campaign launched by HUS on April 1 that offered rooms at 42 city hotels for prices up to 70 percent lower than those provided by Ctrip for the same establishments.
Ctrip hours later pulled nearly 30 of these hotels from its website and demanded that the hotels provide them with the same low rates given to HUS.
Consequently, the mutually shared partner hotels decided Wednesday to provide Ctrip with the same competitive prices that HUS lists to regain their business.
The Global Times managed to reach about one quarter of the hotels involved Wednesday, but none of them were willing to comment on the issue.
"Hotels are afraid of telling the truth because up to 50 percent of their busi-ness comes from Ctrip and they are afraid of losing that business," Zhang Dian, chief executive officer of HUS, told the Global Times Wednesday. The Chinese company founded in 2005, which owns an estimated less than 10 percent of the domestic market, also has international partners including Travelocity.com, an American online hotel bookings website.
"But the truth is that Ctrip is illegally acting as a monopoly by wrongly manip-ulating hotel prices," he added.
Ctrip, established in 1999, did not deny sending the message to nearly 40 hotels in Shanghai Wednesday, raising concern among legal experts that the company, which occupies more than half of the market, may be breaking the Anti-monopoly Law passed by the central government in 2008.
The law is meant to prevent industry giants from squeezing profits out of small-to-medium sized companies solely for their gain, which is exactly what is taking place here, Zhu Yiyu, a lawyer specializing in economic law at a Shanghai firm, told the Global Times Wednesday.
