Alexa: Ranking of Chinese online travel companies by website traffic and user coverage at the end of 2012

According to the data from Alexa.cn, a world-renowned ranking website, a summary ranking of the website traffic and user coverage of major domestic online travel companies at the end of 2012 was made. The results showed that the top 10 online travel companies in terms of website traffic ranking and user coverage at the end of 2012 were: Qunar, Ctrip, Tongcheng, eLong, Xinxin, Lvmama, Tuniu, Mafengwo, Kuxun and Yiyou.

As shown in Table 1, in the traffic summary ranking of Chinese online travel websites using Alexa's three-month average ranking and Alexa's one-month average ranking as indicators, Qunar.com has consistently ranked first in all indicators. Among them, in Alexa's three-month average ranking, Qunar.com ranked 239 places higher than Ctrip.com, which ranked second, and in Alexa's one-month average ranking, Qunar.com ranked 230 places higher than Ctrip.com.

As shown in Table 2, in the summary ranking of user coverage of Chinese online travel websites using Alexa's three-month average user coverage and Alexa's one-month average user coverage as indicators, Qunar.com still ranks first in all indicators. Among them, in Alexa's three-month average user coverage, Qunar.com has 521 more users/million people than Ctrip.com, which ranks second; in Alexa's one-month average user coverage, Qunar.com has 635 more users/million people than Ctrip.com.

Traffic is the basis for the survival and competition of Internet companies. The website rankings in the online travel industry also reflect the following trends:

1. The open platform model is more in line with the interests of upstream and downstream partners in the industry, and has a promising growth prospect. Compared with the traditional OTA model, online travel platforms include direct sales and distribution models, and the cooperation with mid- and upstream product suppliers is becoming increasingly close and diversified, shortening the sales chain, saving time and costs, and enabling travel companies to better develop rich travel products and services that better meet the diversified needs of consumers. The virtuous cycle of rapid growth in both sides of platform-type enterprise partners and users shows that the platform model can better meet the needs of all parties and has a promising future. The OTA model has become the marketing channel with the lowest profit margin in the industry. The decline in the profits of major OTAs in 2012 also shows that this model is gradually weakening.

2. Technology is a powerful driving force for the development of online travel. Online travel is a form of life application of Internet technology. First of all, with the quantification and diversification of travelers' needs, companies that provide travel products and services are required to have stronger and stronger information integration capabilities; for online travel companies, the stronger the technical advantages, the more diverse the information selection and comparison, which can attract more users to participate and consume. Secondly, mobile Internet is considered to be the next growth point of the online travel industry. As LBS gradually becomes a trendy application in the mobile Internet, its combination with online travel has further increased the dependence of travel users on online travel platforms. In addition, because online travel platforms can rely on their powerful and superior technical conditions to solve online technical problems for small and medium-sized travel suppliers, lead them to participate in online travel marketing to bring them considerable user coverage and traffic, more and more small and medium-sized travel suppliers have chosen to settle in online travel platforms.