Travelfusion expands into China’s low-cost bookings market

Travelfusion is to power low-cost carrier bookings for China’s largest online and offline agencies as it moves into the country.

Travelfusion is to power low-cost carrier bookings for China’s largest online and offline agencies as it moves into the country.

The low-cost GDS is working with online agency Ctrip.com and Chinese travel search site Qunar.com. Other clients include Fly2save.com, Mafengwo and international travel management companies.

Travelfusion will be supporting routes from China and Hong Kong to Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia, Phillipines, Japan, Korea while catering for internal flights within Australia, New Zealand, India, the Middle East, Europe and the US.

It has supplier deals with Jetstar, Scoot, Tiger Airways, Peach and AirPhilExpress.

The company has customised its technology including quoting prices in Chinese currency (CNY) and supporting different payment mechanisms including bank transfer prepay and third party payment such as Alipay, 99Bill and ChinaPNR. Travelfusion is also providing local support in Chinese.

Asia Pacific and China manager Yigang Zhang said: “The total number of international bookings by foreign carriers for the China market is estimated to be 16 million this year, a small fraction of the total China booking volume. This number is expected to grow by at least 40% in the next few years.

“As a result, it’s the optimum time to be moving in to this region. Currently in China many of the airlines are manually maintained with online market share quite small compared to the offline market. Travelfusion’s solution will support online search and booking in real time.”