TripAdvisor has signed a deal to acquire travel meta-search engine Kuxun.cn to strengthen its presence in China.

Published: 02 Nov 2009

TripAdvisor has signed a deal to acquire travel meta-search engine Kuxun.cn to strengthen its presence in China.

Following the completion of the acquisition, it is anticipated that Kuxun.cn will continue to operate out of Beijing as a standalone entity led by the current management team reporting directly to the CEO of TripAdvisor.

TripAdvisor entered the Chinese market in April this year with the launch of Chinese travel-review website DaoDao.com, a localised reviews and community site for Chinese travellers. The company says with both DaoDao.com and Kuxun.cn under one umbrella, the company will enhance its ability to deliver trusted content that travelers seek. As far as the potential of the market is concerned, the company highlighted that currently at $6.9 billion, the online travel sector in China continues to grow despite the global recession.

Expedia says it is fighting the battle on two fronts. “eLong is our Expedia in China and will continue to be our only transactional play,” recently said Expedia, Inc.’s CEO and president Dara Khosrowshahi, as per the transcript on Seeking Alpha. “We've TripAdvisor on the media side (along with DaoDao). And with Kuxun, we’re adding size, scale, eyeballs, its around six million unique users that we add to DaoDao. That is already a top 10 site in China I believe and will have the most reviews and user reviews in China by about the end of the year. So, we’re kind of building a very big media play with TripAdvisor, DaoDao and Kuxun, and investing pretty aggressively there.”

TripAdvisor, owned by Expedia Inc., plans to invest more than $50 million in China through late 2011, chief executive Stephen Kaufer told Dow Jones Newswires. The budget includes buying Kuxun, launching Daodao.com in April, and hiring more staff.