TravelDaily - The travel industry has experienced major transformation in 2014, and the year is also turning out to be a milestone year for OTA Tuniu.
According to Tuniu's founder and CEO Donald Yu, the boom in China’s outbound tourism has contributed to high penetration of the online leisure travel market with increasing per capita spend online, underscoring the importance of service quality.
"In order to deliver greater service quality, Tuniu will continue to bolster financing and networking alliances to promote the evolution of the travel industry," he says.
Tuniu's CFO Connor Yang says that in the first three quarters of 2014 Tuniu has provided a total of RMB1.3 billion in funds to support its SME suppliers, 85% more than the RMB700 million provided in the same period last year. "Our financial plan for 2015 is to increase funding to RMB5 billion to support financing for the SMEs in our supply chain,” he says.
This year Tuniu has set up a financial division and launched a “Niu Loan” service for its suppliers. Tuniu will share the supplier’s transactional records with their national network of banks and customize the risk control models for loans to improve lending efficiency.
Tuniu's COO Haifeng Yan reveals that the company will have a purchasing budget of over RMB10 billion in 2015. "Due to the boom in outbound tourism, companies in China’s travel industry will see a major shift towards globalization while the business opportunities for startup OTAs to launch platforms will diminish. However, there will be plenty of new suppliers emerging on our platform when we implement the Tuniu business partnership plan, which will mean more opportunities for our customers to experience high quality and diversified travel products,” he says.
(Translation by David）
