[THE INVESTOR] Hotel Shilla CEO Lee Boo-jin on Sept. 5 visited Chinese online travel firm Ctrip’s headquarters in Shanghai to discuss cooperation before the holiday season.
The major Chinese holidays -- Mid Autumn Festival and National Day Holiday -- last from Sept. 22 to Oct. 7.
Ctrip CEO Jie Sun(from left), founder Liang Jianzhang and Hotel Shilla CEO Lee Boo-jin |
“Our top executives met with Ctrip officials to discuss various ways to further cooperation,” a Hotel Shilla official said in a statement. The Korean company added that both Ctrip founder Liang Jianzhang and CEO Jie Sun participated in the meeting.
This is the second time that Lee has visited the Chinese company. He first visited in 2015 to boost their business partnership, which was experiencing some hardship due to the Middle East respiratory syndrome outbreak.
Ctrip, the biggest online travel company in China with a presence in 17 cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hong Kong, formed a partnership with Hotel Shilla in 2015. Currently, it provides online information on benefits that users can avail at Shilla Duty Free outlets -- a part of Hotel Shilla and one of Korea’s leading duty-free operators -- located in Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong.
Meanwhile, Hotel Shilla also said it has formed partnerships with major banks like Bank of Communications and China Merchants Bank and also payment service providers like Alipay to attract more Chinese tourists.
By Song Seung-hyun (ssh@heraldcorp.com)