Prospectus Summary
This summary highlights key aspects of the information contained elsewhere in this prospectus. Because it is a summary, it does not contain all of the information that you should consider before making an investment decision. You should read the entire prospectus carefully, including the “Risk Factors” section and the financial statements and the accompanying notes to those statements. The statistics relating to the Chinese travel industry and economy included in this prospectus are derived from various government and institute research publications. We have not independently verified such information and you should not unduly rely upon it.
Ctrip.com International, Ltd.
Our Company
We are a leading consolidator of hotel accommodations and airline tickets in China. We aggregate information on hotels and flights and enable our customers to make informed and cost-effective hotel and flight bookings. Since commencing operations in 1999, we have become one of the best-known travel brands in China. We pioneered the development of a reservation and fulfillment infrastructure that enables our customers to:
We target our services primarily at business and leisure travelers in China who do not travel in groups. This type of travelers, who are referred to in the travel industry as FITs and whom we refer to as independent travelers in this prospectus, form a traditionally under-served yet fast-growing segment of the China travel market. We act as agent in substantially all of our transactions and generally do not take any inventory risks with respect to the hotel rooms and airline tickets booked through us. We derive our hotel reservation, air-ticketing and packaged-tour revenues through commissions from our travel suppliers, primarily based on the transaction value of the rooms, airline tickets and packaged-tour products, respectively, booked through our services.
For the nine months ended September 30, 2003, we derived 85.8% of our revenues from the hotel reservation business and 10.5% of our revenues from our air-ticketing business. Our packaged-tour business contributed 1.6% of our revenues for the nine months ended September 30, 2003.
We believe that we are the largest consolidator of hotel accommodations in China in terms of the number of room nights booked. In October 2003, we booked over 300,000 hotel room nights. As of October 31, 2003, we had secured room supply relationships with over 1,700 hotels in China and over 450 hotels abroad, which cover a broad range in terms of price and geographical location. The quality and depth of our hotel supplier network enable us to offer our customers a wide selection of hotel accommodations, often at significant discounts to published rates. We believe our ability to offer reservations at highly rated hotels is particularly appealing to our customers. Revenues from our bookings for three-, four- and five-star hotels comprised approximately 95.0% of our revenues from our hotel reservation business for the nine months ended September 30, 2003.
We believe that we are also one of the leading consolidators of airline tickets in Beijing and Shanghai in terms of the number of airline tickets booked and sold. We sold more than 70,000 tickets nationwide in October 2003. Our airline ticket suppliers include all major Chinese airlines and many international airlines that operate flights originating from China. We also believe we are the only airline ticket consolidator in China with a centralized reservation system and ticket fulfilment infrastructure covering all of the economically prosperous regions of China. Our customers can make flight reservations on their chosen routes and arrange ticket payment and delivery through our ticketing offices and third-party agencies located in over 20 major cities in China.
We offer our services to customers through an advanced transaction and service platform consisting of our centralized toll-free, 24-hour customer service center and bilingual websites. For the nine months ended September 30, 2003, transactions effected through our customer service center accounted for approximately 70% of our transaction volume, while our websites accounted for the balance.
We have experienced significant growth since our inception in June 1999. Beginning in the first half of 2002, we have achieved and maintained positive net income. Our revenues have increased from RMB6.9 million in 2000 to RMB105.3 million (US$12.7 million) in 2002. For the nine months ended September 30, 2003, we generated revenues of RMB111.3 million (US$13.4 million) and net income of RMB29.2 million (US$3.5 million) despite the outbreak of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, during the second quarter of 2003.
Our Opportunity
The Chinese travel industry is large and growing rapidly. The following chart contains certain data from CEIC Data Company Limited concerning the Chinese economy and the travel industry during the period from 1998 through 2002.
China’s gross domestic product grew at a compound annual growth rate of 7.5% from 1998 to 2002. The aggregate expenditure on tourism in China increased at a compound annual growth rate of 12.8% during this period. According to China’s tenth five-year plan, the Chinese government expects an approximately 7% compound annual growth rate of China’s gross domestic product from 2000 to 2005. We anticipate that demand for travel services in China will continue to increase substantially in the foreseeable future as the Chinese economy continues to grow.
Even as the rapid growth of the Chinese economy in the past decade has led to a significant increase in the demand for travel services, the travel intermediary businesses are highly fragmented in China, and travel agencies often focus on tour groups. Thus, independent travelers have limited access to discounted rates or comprehensive information on hotels and flights.
Travel consolidators like us are able to offer information aggregated from various hotels and airlines to independent travelers, enabling them to make informed and cost-effective hotel and flight bookings through customer service centers or websites. Call centers or customer service centers allow travelers to gather and evaluate travel information, receive recommendations from customer service representatives and book transactions more efficiently by contacting customer service centers any time, day or night. Competitive labor costs in China have allowed customer service centers to become a cost-effective transaction tool in China. Furthermore, we believe that the travel industry, which inherently involves broadly dispersed travelers as well as a wide selection of travel suppliers in terms of location and price, is also well-suited to benefit from the increasing Internet and online commerce adoption in China, as the Internet’s broadly distributed and easily accessible environment creates the ideal foundation for new marketplaces.
Our Strengths and Challenges
We bridge the gap between independent travelers and travel suppliers. Through our transaction and service platform consisting of our centralized toll-free, 24-hour customer service center and bilingual websites, we serve primarily the traditionally under-served yet growing independent travelers segment in China by helping these travelers plan and book their trips while helping travel suppliers such as hotels and airlines improve the efficiency of their marketing and distribution channel. We have achieved a leading position, in part, by establishing the following competitive strengths:
We expect to face challenges in our business operations, including:
Our Strategy
Our goal is to create long-term shareholder value by enhancing our position as a leading hotel and airline ticket consolidator in China. We believe that China’s currently highly fragmented travel industry and under-served independent travelers have provided us with tremendous growth opportunities. We intend to pursue the following strategies to achieve our goal:
Corporate Information
We were incorporated in the Cayman Islands. Since commencing operations in 1999, we have conducted substantially all of our operations in China. We maintain our operational headquarters in Shanghai, and have regional offices in Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hong Kong. We also maintain a network of sales offices in about 30 cities in China. The existing institutional shareholders owning more than 5% of our company include Carlyle Asia Venture Partners I, L.P., IDG Technology Venture Investments, Inc., Tiger Technology Private Investment Partners, L.P. and S.I. Technology Venture Capital Limited.
Our principal executive offices are located at 3F, Building 63-64, No. 421 Hong Cao Road, Shanghai 200233, People’s Republic of China, and our telephone number is (8621) 3406-4880. Our principal website address is www.ctrip.com. The information on our websites is not part of this prospectus.
Corporate Structure
The following diagram illustrates our company’s organizational structure, and the place of formation, ownership interest and affiliation of each of our subsidiaries and affiliated entities.
We conduct substantially all of our business through our wholly owned subsidiaries in China, namely, Ctrip Computer Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., or Ctrip Computer Technology, and Ctrip Travel Information Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., or Ctrip Travel Information. Due to the current restrictions on foreign ownership of the air-ticketing, travel agency, advertising and Internet content provision businesses in China, we conduct a small part of our operations in these businesses through a series of contractual arrangements with our affiliated Chinese entities. These entities include:
Qi Ji, who is a co-founder and director of our company, Min Fan, who is a co-founder and executive vice president of our company, and Alex Nanyan Zheng, who is a vice president of our company, are principal owners of our affiliated Chinese entities. We have made loans to Qi Ji, Min Fan and Alex Nanyan Zheng solely in connection with the capitalization or acquisition of our affiliated entities. For a detailed description of the terms of these loans, see “Related Party Transactions — Arrangements with Affiliated Chinese Entities.”
We formed Home Inns & Hotels Management (Hong Kong) Limited, or Home Inns, in 2001 to expand our business line to include the hotel management service. Through a series of subsequent transactions, we reduced our interest in Home Inns to 31.16%. We spun off our remaining interest in Home Inns in August 2003 to prepare for the offering to enable us to focus on our core business of travel consolidation.
The Offering
Summary Consolidated Financial Data
You should read the following information with our consolidated financial statements and related notes, “Selected Consolidated Financial Data” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” included elsewhere in this prospectus.
The summary consolidated statement of operations data for 2001 and 2002 and the nine months ended September 30, 2003, and the consolidated balance sheet data as of December 31, 2001 and 2002 and September 30, 2003, are derived from our audited consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this prospectus and should be read in conjunction with, and are qualified in their entirety by reference to, these consolidated financial statements and related notes. These consolidated financial statements have been audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers and were prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP. The summary consolidated statement of operations data for 2000 and the nine months ended September 30, 2002, and the consolidated balance sheet data as of December 31, 2000 and September 30, 2002, set forth below are derived from our unaudited consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this prospectus and should be read in conjunction with, and are qualified in their entirety by reference to, these unaudited consolidated financial statements and related notes. We have prepared the unaudited information on the same basis as the audited consolidated financial statements, and have included, in our opinion, all adjustments, consisting only of normal and recurring adjustments that we consider necessary for a fair presentation of the financial information set forth in those statements.