Originally Posted by
Chinatrvl
Why would you as resident use ctrip, when there are plenty of cheap and reliable other options that express mail the ticket to you, such as tieyou.com or huoche.com?
Ctrip’s fees are higher than most hotels and is therefore completely uninteresting, even for tourists.
Regarding the train ticket, if you know of any channels that sell at or below face value, I'm all ears. I don't care whether or not tickets are mailed to me because will call is absurdly easy. Being to use my foreign plastic was also a nice bonus.
Insofar as hotels are concerned, I don't use ctrip so much any more, but their generous hold policies do come in handy when plans are up in the air and/or you are going to a city for the first time, and have no clue where you should stay (i.e. nice to have a backup plan in place).
For airplane tickets, I still almost always use ctrip because their capability to pull off miracles when things go awry is unrivaled.