Photo/Tuchong

June 20 (NBD) -- Ctrip, China's largest online travel agent (OTA), on Wednesday entered into a strategic cooperation agreement with Chongqing Tourism Investment, in a bid to grow its presence in hotel management.

As per the agreement, Ctrip's high-end brand Rezen Hotels, leveraging its traffic resources and marketing experience and combining technology and industry big data, will provide service and operation management for hotels of River & Holiday Hotels Management, a subsidiary of Chongqing Tourism Investment.

"Ctrip intends to tap the top-rated hotel management through brand operation," remarked Yang Yanfeng, associate researcher with China Tourism Academy, in an interview with National Business Daily (NBD).

Unveiled in October last year, Rezen Hotels aims to partner with upmarket hotels in China and help them improve performance and services based on big data analysis backed by Ctrip. The launch of Rezen Hotels marks Ctrip's strategy to branch out to the star-rated hotel sector.

In Yang's view, the relatively low level of concentration in the domestic upper upscale hotel segment cripples big brands' bargaining power against OTAs and gives OTAs such as Ctrip and Tongcheng-Elong opportunities to make inroads into the hotel domain.

It's noticed that apart from OTAs, a flurry of Internet firms are entering the hotel industry with concepts including "smart hotel", "cashier-free hotel" and "future hotels".

For instance, Baidu teamed up with Intercontinental Hotels Group in Beijing to allow guests to use its voice-controlled assistant to adjust room temperature and order room service, and Alibaba opened AI-based FlyZoo Hotel last year. Other firms including Tencent, Xiaomi and China Telecom have also made corresponding moves in the smart hotel segment via partnership with offline hotel brands.

"Smart hotel will be one source of competitiveness in the future hotel industry but now is in its infancy," Zhao Huanyan, chief knowledge officer of consulting firm Huamei, said to NBD.

Email: gaohan@nbd.com.cn