UPDATE2: Busy day down under. HotelsCombined has also just picked up the hotel business for Dohop, the European engine's first foray into accommodation search.
UPDATE: Although the eLong deal is HotelsCombined's first with an online travel agency in China, a HotelsCombined spokeswoman says the company is "definitely in talks with Ctrip," as well.
The original post follows:
Hotel metaseach website Hotelscombined struck a distribution deal with China's second largest online travel agency, eLong.
The agreement, once it is implemented, will more than double HotelsCombined's hotel coverage in China to around 11,000 hotels, up from the current 5,000, the companies say.
eLong is the first Chinese online travel agency that HotelsCombined searches for hotel pricing. Until, when retrieving results for hotels in China, Hotelscombined searched sites such as Travelocity, HotelClub, Booking.com, HRS.com and EasyClickTravel.com.
HotelsCombined's wider reach into China's hotels will benefit global users of its price-comparison service, affiliates, and also Chinese users of HotelsCombined.cn.
Clearly this is a win for Hotelscombined and Expedia's eLong, too, especially if the metasearch site succeeds in driving substantial traffic to the Chinese OTA.
But, there's a critical technology issue to consider in the highly fragmented China hotel market when assessing the consumer benefit.
The issue is: how well do the OTAs deliver hotel rates, availabilities and confirmations.
eLong is considered to be fairly advanced in developing APIs and connectivity to the China hotel industry, which is dominated perhaps by a couple of thousand leading chains and independents.
But, many hotels have yet to develop corresponding connectivity, leading to emails to consumers that the reservation date is unavailable or the rate has changed.
So, reach is very important, but the quality of connectivity is vital as well.
Ctrip is the dominant OTA in China by a substantial margin and has traditionally emphasized call center functionality over online booking and hotel connectivity, but that is changing.
However, China OTAs can develop their hotel technology to the max, and it will matter little if hotels in the country don't do their own development work, as well.