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Expedia Corp Travel sees China growth speeding up

Reuters - Friday, April 18

He added that the firm plans to open an office in India but declined to give a timeframe. The company is also targeting Japan and Australia in Asia for its corporate travel business. Expedia Inc competes directly with travel companies such as Priceline.Com Inc and Orbitz Worldwide Inc . It also faces competition from meta-search sites that allow users to hunt for travel bargains but direct consumers to other sites to make purchases. (Reporting by Sophie Taylor and Samuel Shen; Editing by Edmund Klamann) - SHANGHAI, April 17 - Online travel agency Expedia Inc's corporate travel unit expects growth in China's corporate travel services market to speed up substantially from its current pace of 20 to 30 percent a year, said Jean-Pierre Remy, president of Expedia Corporate Travel.

Fewer than one in five companies in China currently uses a travel management company, leaving room for explosive growth, he told Reuters on Thursday.

He said Expedia, which entered China last November, is not a late comer to the market, where major rival American Express has a head start of many years.

China's business travel market is worth $10 billion, the world's fourth-biggest, according to American Express.

"We're still much in the right timing. The market has not exploded yet," Remy said in a telephone interview.

He declined to give revenue growth forecasts.

Expedia Corporate Travel, a five-year-old business, had 1.3 billion bookings globally in 2007, compared with 20 billion bookings for Expedia Inc.

Expedia said in November that its corporate travel agency planned to start up a service in China in cooperation with the country's second-largest online travel firm, eLong Inc , in which Expedia owns a stake.

The tie-up with Beijing-based eLong is the first foray into Asia for Expedia Corporate Travel, which has operations in the United States, Canada, France, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Germany, Italy and Spain.

"China is the fastest-growing, and potentially the biggest market in the world," Remy said.

He added that the firm plans to open an office in India but declined to give a timeframe. The company is also targeting Japan and Australia in Asia for its corporate travel business. Expedia Inc competes directly with travel companies such as Priceline.Com Inc and Orbitz Worldwide Inc . It also faces competition from meta-search sites that allow users to hunt for travel bargains but direct consumers to other sites to make purchases. (Reporting by Sophie Taylor and Samuel Shen; Editing by Edmund Klamann)

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