Meituan-Dianping Cements Its Market Leading Position in the Travel and Leisure Industry with the Official Launch of Meituan Travel

BEIJING, May 22, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Meituan-Dianping, China's largest service-focused e-commerce platform, has announced the official launch of Meituan Travel, a new travel and leisure brand and integrated platform consolidating the Company's offerings across four business units: Accommodation, Domestic Travel, Outbound Travel, and Transportation.

Meituan-Dianping's travel and leisure business has been growing at an exponential pace since its entrance into the market in 2013. Leveraging Meituan-Dianping's high frequency platform and 240 million active buying consumers, Meituan Travel is poised to quickly become the clear industry leader of the four key areas in which it operates. The newly unified platform is already posting record breaking sales and overall performance metrics in its four business units outlined below:

• Accommodation: Meituan Travel is the leading online accommodation booking service provider in China and outranks the industry in terms of room nights sold.

-The Company is partnering with more than 340,000 hotels in China and 200,000 overseas hotels.

-More than 17 million hotel room nights were sold in April and on April 29^th more than 1.2 million room nights were booked as part of the recent Labor Day holiday, the most room nights ever sold on a single day in China.

-The recent launch of Hazelnut B&B was a key step forward with 150,000 accommodations expected in 2017.

• Domestic Travel: Meituan Travel has the largest online domestic attraction and excursion package ticketing platform, leading the industry in terms of ticket sales.

-67 million domestic sightseeing attraction tickets were sold in 2016 and more than 1.15 million tickets were purchased on April 30^th, continuously breaking the industry record in China.

-The platform covers nearly 400 cities and more than 20,000 attractions across China.    

• Outbound Travel: Meituan-Dianping serves as China's number one online overseas travel guide when traveling abroad.

-Meituan-Dianping's application is among the top three most used apps by Chinese tourists when traveling abroad, along with WeChat and Google Maps.

-Millions of users access the app for guidance on overseas attractions, dining, and shopping every month and its single-day use peaked recently, reaching nearly 300,000 users.

-The offering covers 215 countries and regions.

• Transportation: Meituan Travel is committed to providing users with the best deals for flights, rail, boat tickets, and travel insurance.

-In 2016, transportation related purchases grew 464% year over year.   

-On May 1^st, during the Chinese public holiday, transportation related purchases grew 274% year over year.

These recent achievements have clearly validated Meituan Travel's new brand and consolidated business strategy for its travel and leisure offerings.

"Meituan-Dianping's distinctive business model enables us to quickly develop and integrate innovative services that meet our consumers' aspirations," said Mr. Liang Chen, Senior Vice President of Meituan-Dianping and President of its Travel and Leisure Business Group. "With Meituan Travel, we are going to be able to gradually direct our hundreds of millions of consumers to this new segment by providing them with a convenient, efficient, high-quality service encompassing every aspect of a successful travel experience. Recent results speak for themselves and we are delighted with the success of our offering which indicates we are answering a strong market demand."

Meituan Travel will capitalize on the Company's leadership position to provide a one-stop travel platform offering in-depth industry knowledge, high-quality accommodation services, flight and train ticketing, tours, and tourist attractions. China's domestic travel market continues to expand and is expected to reach RMB 7 trillion and 6.7 billion individual trips by 2020. The Company is uniquely positioned to meet the aspirations of Chinese travelers through its unrivalled consumer insight, dominant presence in over 2,800 cities, districts and counties, technological capabilities, and the cross-selling advantages its mega platform offers merchants.

A number of the highlights of the Company's consolidated approach and new offerings in travel and leisure include the following:

• Advanced technology will enhance user experience. Supported by its data analytics and advanced technology, Meituan Travel is at the forefront leading the accommodation industry evolution by providing digitalized, unmanned, automated services and intelligent solutions to enhance customers' experience and help merchants reduce cost and increase operation efficiency and revenue. 
• A broad offering drives multi-layer sales. Meituan Travel's platform strategy enables the Company to cross sell multi-category products and services with a strong potential to broaden its offerings and bundling options. Among all customers booking hotel rooms on its platform, 32% also place dining or catering orders and 17% purchase tickets for recreational activities. Bundled sales of hotel room nights and sightseeing attraction tickets are growing at an annual rate of 20%.
• Platform approach enables Company to introduce various new travel related applications for distinct travel needs. As one recent example, Meituan-Dianping's recently launched B&B application, Hazelnut B&B, helped the Company enter China's B&B sharing market, further consolidating the Company's leadership presence and placing it at the forefront of the travel and leisure transformation in China.

Mr. Liang Chen concluded, "China's travel industry is rapidly growing and constantly evolving as Chinese travelers seek new, dynamic, and high-quality experiences. Our platform enables us to engage consistently with our consumers, meet their evolving demands through product innovation, and ultimately drive the development of the entire leisure and tourism industry in China."

About Meituan-Dianping

Meituan-Dianping is China's largest service-focused e-commerce platform, connecting more than 240 million young active buying consumers with more than five million local merchants across the whole China, covering from tier one cities to minority counties.

Under its "Eat Better, Live Better" mission, the Company offers a one-stop daily life services platform aiming to improve overall way of life for consumers through its dominant leadership in more than 200 service and product categories, including dining, on-demand delivery, beauty, family & kids, and travel & leisure.

Meituan-Dianping leverages its platform strategy to address consumers' aspirations across the whole local life services chain, driving constant product upgrades through technology innovation and empowering local businesses by boosting industry efficiency through digital, internet and mobile solutions.

As of April, 2017, Meituan-Dianping is posting three digit year-on-year increases in revenue and is operating profitably. The Company currently has more than USD 3 billion free cash.

For enquiries, please contact:

Meituan-Dianping
Jane Zuo
Investor Relations
Email: [email protected]

FTI Consulting
Daniel Wong
Phone: +852 3768 4549
Email: [email protected]

Marie Peterson
Phone: +86 21 2315 1131
Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Meituan-Dianping