Taobao.com Enters Chinese Online Travel Market

China’s largest retail website Taobao.com announced that its online travel channel Tao Lvyou has gone officially online, marking Taobao.com’s entry into the Internet tourism and business travel market.

Through the integration of Taobao’s quality tourism product sellers, the new channel has four service functions, which are air tickets, hotel bookings, travel services, and destination information, respectively. Using social media as a guide, the site will allow consumers to comment and rank online travel businesses.

According to a representative of the channel, its partners have covered both large tourism enterprises like China Eastern and CYTS, and hundreds of ticket agents, hotels and travel agencies. Currently there are more than 10,000 hotels included in the travel channel, which can be found in most large and medium-sized cities and tourist destinations. It also has one-stop tourist routes, including about 4,000 routes, tickets of more than 3,000 scenic spots all over the country and travel related services like tour guide, car rental, and visa application.

To cope with service disputes, Taobao.com, which is a subsidiary of Alibaba, has planned two measures. First, all the registered stores should have the appropriate legal operational qualifications. Second, if there is a dispute between a consumer and an online travel business, Taobao.com will compensate the consumers directly. Stores that can not guarantee good quality service and have a high number of negative comments will be closed.