| Last year was a tough one for Ctrip International-China's largest online travel service provider-in terms of market share and its CEO Fan Min as the growing number of online travel agencies pose a huge threat to the online travel website's business, the Shanghai-based First Financial Daily reports.
On Feb. 21, Ctrip announced that its board of directors had appointed James Jianzhang Liang as its chairman and CEO and Fan Min as its vice chairman and president. The appointment will be effective March 1.
Ctrip recently published its financial report for the fourth quarter of 2012, showing operating profits of 120 million yuan (US$19 million), down 48% year-on-year. Ctrip's 2012 operating profits were estimated to be 655 million yuan (US$105 million), a decline of 39% year-on-year.
Several online travel agencies, including Qunar, e-Long and Tong Cheng travel network, exerted enormous competitive pressure on Ctrip in 2012. An industry expert said Ctrip had lost many opportunities to lead in the air ticketing and hotel markets and the emerging mobile device customer sector to its competitive rival Qunar.
In addition, some small online travel service providers, who had just entered the market, became famous after engaging in a war of words with Ctrip.
Ctrip's CEO Sun Jie said while releasing their fourth quarter financial report that Ctrip had launched a series of applications for mobile devices and would continue to see the development of such applications and back-office support systems as its primary task in the future.
"We will continue investing in this area to ensure we obtain more market share," Sun said.
Ctrip was co-founded by Ling, Ji Qi, Shen Nanpeng and Fan Min in 1999. Since then, Ji has served as the company's president, Liang as its CEO, Shen as the CFO and Fan as executive vice president for several years. In 2006, Fan assumed the post of CEO following the departure of Liang and Ji from the company. Fan stayed at the post for several years.
The year of 2012, however, was not easy for Fan due to the company's sluggish business.
Fan said after the announcement of a new round of management reshuffling that China's travel and tourism industry has continued to grow rapidly over the past decade and that the growth was expected to continue in the near future. "We believe James (Liang) will lead Ctrip's team to strengthen its status in the market," Fan added. |
