Ctrip's purchase of Skyscanner is by far the biggest travel tech deal to come out of China this year, but it's not the only one.
This January, Chinese hotel IT specialist Shiji bought an 80% stake in Spain-based online reputation management platform ReviewPro for $28 million.
Alibaba, China's biggest internet business, bought a 15% stake in Shiji for $450 million in 2015.
At the time Alibaba talked in terms of "the hotel of the future" and using Shiji alongside its various businesses - from payments platform Alipay to its Aliyun cloud business via travel marketplace Alitrip - to offer hoteliers in China a one-stop shop for their operational and distribution tech needs.
What ReviewPro brings to the party is data - specific data around how hotels can use the insights from reviews on third party sites and their own in-house guest satisfaction surveys to improve the customer experience.
And a better on-property experience leads to better reviews, which leads to higher occupancy, which allows hotels to raise their rates and generate more revenue.
ReviewPro's CEO RJ Friedlander talked to ChinaTravelNews about what the business offers to hotels and how its products and services will be deployed in China.
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Background from Tnooz:
ReviewPro takes $28 million investment from Chinese hotel IT group (Jan17)
Skyscanner sells to Ctrip for $1.75 billion (Jan17)
Alibaba launches Alitrip into hotel IT solutions space (March 2015)
NB: This article is republished, with permission, as part of Tnooz's content partnership with ChinaTravelNews.