Interesting interview from the NY Times

Here a little summary:

Q. How big is the travel market in China?

A.
According to China Travel Bureau statistics, in 2007 it was $150
billion, spent by Chinese on travel domestically and on inbound travel
by foreigners. The World Tourism Organization forecast says China will
become the largest inbound and outbound tourist country by 2020.

Q. Why are you going after the English-speaking market, and what services are you offering it?

A.
Currently 90 percent of our revenue is from domestic travelers, Chinese
people traveling within China, for leisure and business. And 10 percent
is from Chinese people traveling to other countries. There is one new
market we are trying to target, the inbound business, to attract people
in the United States, Europe, Japan, Korea and other countries to come
to China.

The first step we are taking is to launch our English
Web site. If you need a hotel, we have more than 6,400 hotels in China
to offer. If you need to fly to any cities, Ctrip has 100 percent
coverage on all the routes. If you’re on a business trip and want to do
a side tour on the weekend, we can take you out. We’ve just launched
rental cars with a driver.

[...]

Q. What are your company’s main challenges now?

A.
The main thing is to continuously explore new business lines. How can
we test the water and get into the cruise industry, which we don’t have
in China? The rental car business? China’s not ready for it, the
traffic is very bad. All these things will take lots of wisdom, in
terms of how much we want to invest, what is the right time to invest.

In China, we’re very strong in the first-tier cities. How can we fully
penetrate into other areas? And after China, what are we going to do?
We have Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, Southeast Asia, India — these all
represent very good opportunities. As Chinese citizens become more
affluent, we need to best utilize all our customer resources and send
them to the area that they want us to take them to.