Darren Huston - China the Next Big Travel Market of 2020

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Darren Huston China the Next Big Travel Market
of 2020
D arren Huston
As you know we had a great second quarter a 34
bookings growth 31 net income growth and we
think our forecast for the third quarters
prudent reflects the fact the euro is down a
little bit against the dollar. We're also making
investments though in offline marketing in our
open table acquisition and a number of other
things but we're feeling really good actually
about the health of the business yeah.
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CNBC
We have two big deals to talk about. Let's talk
about the most recent why are you investing half
a billion dollars in the Chinese online player
Ctrip to buy that that 10 percent stake what does
that do for your business.
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D arren Huston
Well Simon you know it travels inherently
business where you go from somewhere to
somewhere and being a global business obviously
is very important to a travel business like the
Priceline group and C hina is the next big
market for travel by 2020. Most of ours, the
largest percentage of the world's travelers will
come from China and we want to make sure we're
an active player in that market seater. It's
been a great partner of ours since 2012. Now
we're going from having just a purely commercial
relationship to also investing in Ctrip as well
so we're pretty excited about the prospects from
China.
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CNBC
So I guess in essence the Chinese will be able to
see your inventory on a Chinese website but the
point here is why half a billion dollars you
already had a commercial relationship that you
know Ctrip is renowned for being fiercely
independent to the extent that it wants a lot of
control and it is said that a lot of their past
partnerships haven't really worked out very well.
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Darren Huston
Well you know Simon well I think we have a really
great relationship with Ctrip we've been
actually working with them for two years we
didn't just jump into this we built a lot of
trust between our two companies. They're gonna
help us a lot they're gonna bring a lot of
Chinese customers to our business around the
world and they're also going to offer inventory
to all of our foreign customers who go into China
so this is one of those kinds of
relationships. I like to call them almost like
second cousins now that we have a 10 investment
that we're looking at making in Ctrip and we're
excited to keep moving this partnership forward
you know China's not necessarily an easy mark
for Western internet companies but we've had a
lot of success there and expect to have more
going forward with this partnership.
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