Just look upthread, all the confirmation you need is there.

The Chinese airlines use their own GDS called bluesky. As part of the internal Chinese travel market trip.com has direct access to bluesky.

Other websites are typically integrated with the western booking engines like Amadeus and Saber, and whilst the Chinese inventory is available and quotable there's an extra margin applied hence why the prices are higher.

Of all the OTAs out there, trip.com is being bankrolled by the Chinese government to be a decent online travel agent, they have functional customer service (the occasional agents have their moments, so HUACA) so fill her boots and book whatever you need.

Worry about non-fulfillment and late cancellation leaving me "stuck".

I did scroll up but didn't see anything specifically (recently) about flights. A lot of discussion about hotels though. I'll scroll more thanks for your reply and explanation.

Edit: Sorry I did see the post about FF numbers and booking management not guaranteed with Trip.com bookings above, which again increased by anxiety/made me want to ask/check.

Ctrip/trip.com is one of the world's largest online travel agencies, I don't think you'll be ghosted anymore than say, with booking.com. They are so big, mainland China investigates them for abusing their dominant position in the market.

I would not have any worries about using them, really. The alternative is doing everything in simplified chinese through mini-programmes on Wechat, which is time-consuming and difficult if you're not used to it.

Why don't you have the same concern about a localized version of an airline website that probably doesn't generate more than 1,000 bookings per year?

I hope I haven’t contributed to any anxiety about this OTA leaving you stuck and stranded anywhere. I have been having problems with FF numbers and booking management with flights booked directly with legacy airlines, and the airline forums in this website are full of other travellers sharing their negative experiences also. These are hiccups rather than outright failures.

For me the benefits of using this OTA far outweigh the minor negative quibbles I’ve had and often those quibbles are only reflections or amplifications of peculiarities within the booking systems and website of the airline companies.

because in general in every day life in New Zealand, dealing directly with the supplier is simpler, more efficient, and has fewer problems. And dealing with 3rd party booking agents often many more horror stories.

I’m here to learn.

kiwi.com are by far the most common super cheap OTA I see on Skyscanner and Google flights. But their reputation is questionable. I cannot see enough information to decide - low ranking out of 5 stars. But no data points/mission reports about negative or positive experiences. So I’m very unsure.

trip.com is just as unknown to me as it doesn’t appear widely on booking aggregators for routes that I have searched previously. But very prominent for China flights.

Difference with trip.com is that it’s a brand I’m more aware of even though I have hardly ever used them. But reports here are that they are huge and reliable. Hence the question is just part of due diligence.

The only issue I've run into with trip.com is that tickets, especially on non-Chinese airlines, are not always issued immediately at purchase. Sometimes it can take 4-5 days. There's even a button to "hurry" the ticketing process. I'm not sure what happens behind the scenes (cash flow management? channel issues?) but they've always come through.

I booked a lot of non China tickets on ctrip/trip.com including on very niche airlines like Airone and also Wizzair. Always had them issued within a day.

Thanks this does help. I tried trip.com for domestic flights in NZ but it was much more expensive than booking directly for Air NZ so obviously varies but market but all the reports here give me confidence to use them if they are cheap.

I guess the answers below should all be “yes” but can someone please confirm?

- Trip.com accepts my Air NZ membership details and these transfer to Air China as a Star Alliance partner?
- I accrue miles for eligible flights as a consequence of the above?
- My Star Alliance Gold status is recognised by Air China for flights I book using Trip.com, including lounge access?

I’ve honestly never used any OTA in my life and have only ever booked on airline official sites so I have no idea when it comes to these things.

Nearly all travel agents in China sell discounted fares. This is not a Ctrip specific thing, and has been the case for the past 30+ years.

AirNZ does the same thing on their own websites from my experience.

The UK Domain version of the ANZ website was trying to sell internal flights within NZ at more than twice the price of the NZ domain website (no VPN shenanigans, just accessing the .UK and .NZ domains was enough the drastically change pricing). They have have updated their pricing methodology since.

Perhaps it's therefore not strange that trip.com sees the expensive NZ fares?

Yes, depending on the web journey the box to enter your FFP number can be a bit hidden so if you've not seen it by the payment stage go back and find it. It can sometimes be troublesome to add it later.

Assuming the flight and the fare bucket accrues miles, yes. There are very rare exceptions with consolidated and other special fares but I don't think you would trip up over one of those.

Flights can generally earn and benefits are usable when booked through a 3rd party, whereas hotels generally do not do the same.

Yes, assuming the flight, fare bucket and FFP combination permits access.

And generally you would be 100% doing the right thing to book flights direct, but China is a special case due to their internal market and bluesky GDS, and OTAs are usually worth avoiding because they're all in a race to the bottom, but then because of the belt and road initiatives trip.com has significant investment behind it and mostly decent customer service so is also a notable exception.

Bon voyage!

You don't seem to be taking into account, the fact that many airlines in the region provide abonominal customer service... assuming you can reach them in the first place.

Let alone the rubbish UX Japanese/Chinese/Korean/Taiwanese airlines have when it comes to getting non-nationals attempting to book tickets.

"Fortunately," in China's case, elong.net --> trip.com have made booking that country's tickets all too easy.