Overall B2B hotel sales globally for DidaTravel returned to 70% of pre-pandemic levels – supported by non-China source market sales surpassing 2019 levels.
SHENZHEN, CHINA – DidaTravel – a leading global hotel wholesaler – has provided the market with an update on it successful performance in 2021 as a result of its long-term strategy to drive geographic diversification. During 2021 B2B hotel sales began to recover steadily for DidaTravel, with overall sales by economic value reaching 70% of 2019 levels – driven in part by sales for the non-China source markets surpassing 2019 levels.
This strong recovery reflects how DidaTravel has evolved the geography of its source markets over the last few years to reach a point where Europe, the USA and the Middle East now represent 50% of all sales at 25%, 20% and 5% respectively – with the remainder coming from the wider APAC region, including China. The successful geographical diversification of sales was further driven in 2021 by the recruitment of teams and opening of offices beyond China, including office openings in both Bangkok and London – and with plans for a US office shortly. Meanwhile during 2021 the company has increased the number of directly contracted hotels to 37,000, representing an increase of 23%.
Whilst on the client side despite the pandemic resulting in closures the company has managed to maintain around 23,000 clients – including travel agencies, tour operators, airlines, OTAs and TMCs – by signing further new clients in Europe and North America. The company can also now report over 700 API clients, of which around 200 are based in China.
Rikin Wu, Founder & CEO of DidaTravel comments: “Throughout the pandemic we continued investing in our business, strengthening our technology and continuing our long- term strategy of growing our presence in Europe and North America. “So when the market slowly began recovering in Europe and North America we were well placed to capture demand quickly and by the end of the year, with the exception of the Omicron impact, we were close to 2019 figures – surpassing them even in the non-China source markets. “We are cautiously confident about 2022 and look forward to making further announcements as we grow our team and evolve our value-proposition to both clients and hotels.”
This year-end update completes a successful 2021 for DidaTravel that also included a series B financing worth hundreds of millions of yuan, where the lead investor was Alibaba. Additionally, during the year DidaTravel become the preferred accommodation partner for sourcing and distribution to Fliggy (part of the Alibaba Ecosystem, one of the biggest travel platforms in China and APAC), giving DidaTravel’s 23,000 clients access to Fliggy’s portfolio of hundreds of thousands of hotels in both China and the wider APAC
Tatiana is the news co-ordinator for TravelDailyNews Media Network (traveldailynews.gr, traveldailynews.com and traveldailynews.asia). Her role includes to monitor the hundrends of news sources of TravelDailyNews Media Network and skim the most important according to our strategy. She holds a Bachelor degree in Communication & Mass Media from Panteion University of Political & Social Studies of Athens and she has been editor and editor-in-chief in various economic magazines and newspapers.
