I like Ctrip and book all my travel through them. I've had great service on the phone from them when things go wrong and I actually like the mobile app for booking flights and hotels. I've never had a problem with them, knock on wood. I book both domestic and international flights as well as hotels on the mainland, in HK and Macau through C trip.

They also have a points program that doesn't offer much value but offers something, I got a free night at the Shangri La Shenzhen wiht all my points.

In the last four years I have had a lot of domestic travel in China. Two hiccups with Ctrip, one at a medium sized airport (cannot remember which one) where the name of one traveler did not exactly agree with travel documents. Fortunately there was a Ctrip counter around the ticketing desks and they took of everything within 10 minutes. The other was a hotel which had a higher rate than the confirmation. One call to Ctrip and they sorted it out.

Ctrip's service has been good. Prices have not always been so good. I book more flights on elong now because their prices are nearly always the same as Ctrip or lower. This is especially true for domestic FC. Elong has been able to book connections when they are required but the same routing is not bookable online with Ctrip and calling them only gets you two separate fares which is always higher. A few times after booking on Ctrip they got back to say the fare was gone but could book for a slightly higher fare, we stopped doing that because elong will still usually have that lower fare.

Hotels are a mixed bag. In the larger cities I have found Ctrip, elong, Agoda and hotels.com all very close but at any time one of them could be cheaper than the others. For some more remote areas, Ctrip is really lacking while elong will have a long list for you to review. Agoda is also expanding quickly and their voucher in China has been electronic for all properties I have used recently. It just pays to check around because I have found sometimes that Agoda, elong, or Ctrip will have a very good deal on a particular hotel which the others do not.

Like moondog I have had issues with Agoda, like paying for a suite in Vientiane so I could do an interview but arriving and only to find their absolutely smallest room assigned to me. I cannot say clearly where the fault occurred, with the hotel or Agoda. However outside of Colombo they had the wrong street address and city name for a property which was not fun sorting out. I ended up at the Colombo Hilton instead and had to get Amex to intervene to get my money back. By the way the Hilton was fantastic, though not as local in flavor as you may want. These episodes were 2012-2013 but I did return to Agoda this year and they did not let me down.

So, just from my 100 hotel nights in China this year using all four OTAs, I would say shop around for price and any would give good or good enough service.

Jiejie, interesting comments you brought up about Ctrip's business practices. From my dealings in China, just a possibility that disgruntled passengers may be the source if they had problems which were not resolved to their satisfaction. Which based on their initial expectations may not be possible. The etiquette around problem solving travel issues in airports in China is horrendous, there are plenty of youtube videos which testify to that. And look at what does happen to me from time to time when checking in at a Shangri-La or Westin. While you are being checked in someone will walk up, squeeze in front of you without a word, throw their ID card (s) at the desk clerk and demand to be checked in immediately. Then call for her boss when she politely says they need to wait in line.

So, my experience has been fine. Given the volume, there is the occasional issue, but nothing big.

@uanj, I agree with the first 5 paragraphs of your post above, including the comments on elong's hotel offerings being better than ctrip's in many places (that is because a few years ago they gobbled up the resources and database of sinohotel.com which IMO was the best China-based domestic hotel booking agent of the time, and I used them copiously). Also Agoda, with whom I haven't had issues but find their prices aren't all that great once you add in their service fee...and they require prepayment and have unfavorable refund/cancellation policies. So they have slid down to a minor player for me, and rarely used by me for China.

On the last part of the post, from what I've been hearing, something has definitely changed on the hotel booking side. There are several different types of problems but the two most often mentioned are:
1) Reservations not completed. Specifically, sending confirmations for bookings, customer shows up at hotel and finds no booking was actually made with the hotel.
2) Price switching. Customers reserving hotel at offered price, ctrip emailing back that confirmation cannot complete at that price and offers a new higher price.

These situations can happen occasionally with any travel agent doing a large volume of business but the frequency of has (anecdotally) markedly increased in 2014 with ctrip, especially since April. Put together with some other information including comments made by ctrip reps to customers, and I'm willing to bet that much of the hotel booking operation has been subcontracted out to a third party as in:
A. Traveler/Customer --> B. Ctrip --> C. Hotel booking Agent --> D. Hotel Properties
It's Business Operations 101 to know that every time you add a link in the chain, it makes quality control of the customer experience more difficult to maintain at consistently high standard.

On the transport ticketing side, except for the annoying website functionality and slowness, I'm not seeing that many problems layable at ctrip's feet. I'm guessing they still handle air/rail bookings themselves---but then, the number of providers they have to deal with is a very limited group.

Jiejie, I used to use qunar and gave up on them because of the high rate of problems just as you described above for Ctrip. So, in comparison, elong and Ctrip are far less painful.

I happen to follow Ctrip on Seeking Alpha, so am not an expert but I do get company quarterly announcements. Businesses in China are adjusting to slower than expected growth this year and many companies, including Ctrip, had been sacrificing margin growth to invest in sales growth. Even though Ctrip's growth has been good, they obviously thought it would be even better but with the slower growth net operating margin has actually dropped nominally over last year. Not a good sign. Or maybe some new hotel booking engine they implemented has been over budget and under performed. In their current financial situation of margin pressure they are also less likely to honor bookings which came in right after rate changes (were meant to) occur.

Ctrip may be pushing it, but reading their legal verbiage they are careful to stay within their own defined limits. Which are too broad for me, but that's another story.

So if anyone has any news what's happening in Ctrip, do share. I still believe, in China, people are quick to complain and shuo da hua! (I don't have Chinese fonts on this laptop) which creates unnecessary noise when trying to sift for real issues.

I have noticed that C Trip is using wholesale agencies to book Hotel rooms for their prepaid bookings instead of booking direct with hotels. These agencies do not have direct connectivity with hotels (unlike c trip, who do) and need to make their bookings the old fashioned way, often by fax. This causes a delay in confirming the room, and if they have filled their allotment at the hotel, or the room type is sold out, they may need to book a higher rate. This may explain some of the issues some of you have experienced.

Aha. Just for prepaids though? Is your information that ctrip is still doing their more standard reservations which are paid at hotel (usually w/reservation guaranteed by credit card)?

Yes, guaranteed bookings that you pay at the hotel are still booked directly by C trip to the hotel

Same here. As hotels in China sometimes have BIG differences in pricing when either choosing a foreign TA (Ebookers, booking.com etc.) or a local one (Elong, CTRIP or the more obscure one's) I happen to "jump around" depending on what property. And so far, never got burned with the local one's, albeit their websites at time can be really crap. Hate the CTRIP interface.

However, with booking.com once had the experience that despite a guaranteed booking, the reservation somehow wasn't in their system. And with Ebookers, they charged me despite I cancelled the hotel in time. Both cases eventually got solved, but made me trusting local agencies more than foreign one's, which more often than not have no clue about the Chinese market (and are lacking language skills too)

I have quite a few problems in the last couple of months.

This include price switching, and reservations not being made/ being cancelled without telling me.

There is most definitely a pattern here. I am moving on.

Two of my issues, one very, very annoying one at the Intercontinental Nanjing, were guaranteed, pay at the hotel.

I don't understand why you would us Ctrip for this rather than book directly at the hotel website.

Umm. Because they offer better rates than hotel websites in many cases?

Nearly impossible. I'd still book directly with the hotel and benefit from their lowest price guarantee by getting them to match a third party price plus an additional discount.
I have done this in the past (with that chain specifically) but it has been years since I was able to find a price lower than what they have on their website.
Also when you book on a third party website, most hotels will not give you your points.

Yes but most third party websites in China will give your a cash rebate (instead of the points). This may also be a reason for the hotel to refuse your rate match request.

Beating ihg official rates is pretty easy ime for those that have time on their hands. It might not be ctrip that comes through in the end, but there is always some agency that can undercut ihg's own channel. Feel free to test me on this.

Switching sub topics, I want to tell you guys about a recent ctrip experience that went awry:
-colleague and self booked tickets from sha to nng for 1/4 two days ago, separately but at the same time
-both of us received the "your order is in process, and we'll confirm within 24 hours" confirmation
-no confirmations of any sort showed up (apart from them charging our credit cards)
-so we called the next day and learned that my ticket was fine, but that he was flying a day earlier and needed to cough up 900 in order to change to the desired date
-they blamed the lack of confirmation notifications on the fact that we gave them gmail addresses (faulty logic because they can send email to whoever they please and they also have our cell phone numbers)

In the end, they let my colleague get by with a change fee of only 200, but were unwilling to admit responsibility for the communication snafu.

I bought another ticket from them this morning, and received notification from them via both email and SMS.