A screenshot of the online portal of the privately run travel site LY.com (Photo : Xinhua)
LY.com, one of the country's privately run travel booking sites, recently declared that is has received 6 billion yuan worth of investments from Tencent Industry Win-Win Fund, Wanda Culture Industry Group, and CITIC Capital.
Wanda Culture Industry Group, being the lead investor, poured in a total of 3.58 billion yuan in the said website.
With the recent investment gain, leading tourism sites eLong and Ctrip have found a new competitor in securing a share in the online travel services market.
LY.com, founded in 2004, claims that it has around 30 million users in 2014, which is a 100-percent growth from its 2013 statistic.
The recent investment deal allows the Wanda Culture Industry Group and LY.com to launch a comprehensive collaboration. While the former's tourism business will now have an access to online sites and further gain customer resources, the latter will in return gain tourism destination resources, increasing its trading volume.
Wanda Group chairman Wang Jianlin said that through the investment, its tourism business will establish a triumvirate structure--large tourism destinations, an offline channel and an influential online portal.
For LY.com's part, founder and chief executive officer Wu Zhixiang said that his site will prioritize its partnership with Wanda's culture tourism sites, travel agencies and offline business resources.
Wu also revealed that LY.com eyes to enhance investments in market, brand, mobile, big data, and research and development expansion.
Furthermore, more investors are now realizing the immense opportunity that is China's travel sector, as highlighted by the investments in LY.com, as well as the recent IPO of Quanr.com, and the expansion of 51MICE.com's B2B travel opportunities.
As well, other large travel Web portals are now enjoying millions of dollars worth of revenues.
