Ascott Expands Partnership with Alitrip

Ascott has partnered Chinese e-commerce giant the Alibaba Group to make its global network of serviced residences available to over 100 million Chinese travellers currently served by Alitrip, an online travel service platform.

Ascott already has 24 of its China properties with 4,300 apartment units available for booking by Alitrip users through a directly operated online flagship store.

It will list its global network of more than 26,000 apartment units operating in over 60 cities on the one-stop online travel platform by June this year.

“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,” said Mr Lee Chee Koon, Ascott’s Chief Executive Officer. “Ascott’s partnership with Alitrip follows our recent investment in Tujia.com International, China’s largest online apartment sharing platform where our properties outside of China will also be available for booking by first quarter of this year.”

China is now Ascott’s largest market with the most number of properties and it is also the largest international serviced residence owner-operator in China with over 14,000 apartment units across 24 Chinese cities.  

“With 668 million citizens online, China is home to the world’s largest community of internet users and consumers are increasingly using social channels as well as websites to review, book and pay for their holidays at home or abroad. 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,” Mr Lee said.

Mr Kevin Goh, Ascott’s Managing Director for North Asia, added, “Customers who have booked their stays with Ascott through Alitrip can now use the “Post Post Pay” service at our properties in China. Qualified guests will be able to reserve apartments without paying a deposit and can enjoy express check-out by having payments automatically deducted from their Alipay accounts. The “Post Post Pay” service will also be available for our global properties by this year.” 

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