Jinlv Consulting: Statistics and monitoring of online travel agency website coverage in September 2012

According to the latest Alexa statistics from Jinlv Consulting - Jinlv Think Tank, from September 1 to 30, 2012, the top 10 Chinese online travel agency websites in terms of user coverage are : Yiyou Travel, Ctrip, eLong, Tongcheng, Tuniu, Lvmama , Leisure Travel, Mango , Zhunar and Haoyiding.

(Figure 1: Top 28 online travel agency websites by user coverage in September)

As shown in Figure 1, in September, the online travel agency website with the most users was Yiyou.com, followed by Ctrip.com and eLong.com, 11th and 13th, 17th and 18th ranked fourth and 19th, respectively. Lvmama.com, Leisurely.com, Mango.com, Zhuna.com and Haoyiding.com ranked sixth to tenth, Tieyou.com, Aoyou.com, Tengbang.com and Journey.com ranked eleventh to fourteenth, HappyE.com, Mipan.com, Yixing.com, DreamJourney.com and Sunshine.com ranked fifteenth to nineteenth, Famous Travel Stores, Green Mango, Xinhua Travel, Tujia.com and Suning.com ranked twentieth to twenty-fourth, and Jinjiang.com, Baicheng.com, Solv.com and Songguo.com ranked twenty-fifth to twenty-eighth.

(Figure 2: Comparison of online travel agency website user coverage in August and September)

As shown in Figure 2, in September, Yiyou.com had 1,750 users, ranking first; Ctrip.com had 1,142 users, falling to second; eLong.com had 520 users, ranking third; Tongcheng.com had 423 users, Tuniu.com had 397 users, and Lvmama.com had 290 users; Youzai.com, Mango.com, Zhuna.com, Haoyiding.com, Tieyou.com, and Aoyou.com had 203, 198, 140, 139, 130, and 128 users, respectively. Solv.com and Songguo.com had no more than 10 users, which was a huge gap from the top websites.

In September, only seven online travel agency websites saw an increase in user coverage. The largest increase was in Suning.com's air ticket channel, which saw a 73.8% month-on-month increase in user coverage in September; in September, Lvmama.com's user coverage increased by 33% month-on-month, and Tieyou.com's user coverage increased by 28.7% month-on-month.

In contrast, in September, the number of user coverage of 17 online travel agency websites declined, accounting for as high as 60%. The largest month-on-month decline in user coverage was seen at Xinhua Travel Network, which fell 23.8%. In addition, Mipang.com fell 20.5% and Mango.com fell 17.8%.

In September, 17 online travel agencies saw a decline in user coverage, compared to 13 in August. Among the eight websites ranked from 21st to 28th, seven saw a decline in user coverage. Jinlv Consulting believes that the price war in the online travel market has had a significant impact on small and medium-sized online travel agencies that have not participated in the war. As the price war continues for a long time, companies that have not participated in the war need to rely on more product and service innovations to gain a foothold in the fierce competition.