moondog

I've been using Ctrip for ages, mainly because they've swallowed up so many competitors. The Trip.com rebranding is confusing (good sub-discussion point, though), so let's try to stick with calling it Ctrip when talking about China.

I tend to lean towards Ctrip for hotels because of their negotiating power with individual properties (and not just in China). When it comes to flights, while Google Flights is great, it doesn't always provide the most comprehensive information, and I've found Ctrip to be reliable, especially for domestic flights within China or departing from there.

One of the biggest advantages I've found with Ctrip is their customer service. Dealing with airlines directly can be challenging, especially when it comes to reaching them. With Ctrip, it's far easier to resolve issues or make changes to bookings. Some may argue that adding a middleman is always bad, but my experience has been that it's okay if it results in greater efficiency overall.

I think it's worth having a focused discussion since many of us use it often, despite my general resistance to promoting specific companies in industries I wish were more competitive. I trust that 90% of you guys understand the "GBU" reference.

ETA: The reason I finally created this thread today, as opposed to 15 years ago, is because I've been talking with them a lot (i.e. 5x/day) since May 1, so I have an improved understanding of how things work. But, I'm not including these accounts in the OP because I want to keep it generic.

Edit #2: Here are the current China customer service phone numbers I have for them. 95010 and 400 830 6666..and 021 6066 8691 (English).

YariGuy

I still check multiple sources. Trip/Ctrip is weak where Chinese tourists don't go / can't go, for example ctrip's prices for Honolulu hotels and rental cars are higher than American competitors. Also for flights, especially now when creative routing is needed, searching multiple sites is required. Again, for my upcoming flight to Honolulu, I put together SHA-HND / HND-HNL on two separate tickets. Ctrip didn't offer many out-of-the-box solutions. But to be fair, neither did Expedia or other competitors.

Something else to watch out for is that ctrip now offers tickets from sellers other than ctrip itself. This is like the taobao model where there are other sellers, including the airline's official shops (like tmall). I haven't run into any issues but just flagging it.

One thing that Ctrip doesn't have is the no-hassle 24-hour cancellation of flights, even for non-refundable tickets. I find that to be a useful feature when using American apps like Expedia.

But you are right in that in China, it's still very easy to get a human on the phone with almost no wait. This applies to Chinese companies. Different story when I tried calling Royal Caribbean for my upcoming cruises out of Shanghai, and was hung up on by the system after waiting 20 minutes.

God Bless You? Global Business Unit?

FindingFoodFluency_

Trip.com mostly works like a charm for me. My biggest bugaboo about it is that its search interface sucks (generally, I try to use websites that allow me to edit the slug for faster searching). For trip.com, everything has to be manually clicked to confirm (e.g. if I'm flying from Guangzhou to HK, I have to click both a second time). Same with hotels. Inefficient.

I also like how it offers hotel confirmations in two languages.

Diamond users (the highest level) can get two free airport lounge passes (through Dragon Pass). Whaddya know ... it's a QR code. Had to acquiesce there

Anyway, just tried using ctrip (Chinese language). I put in Singapore for hotels ... showed me points of interest with Singapore in the name, but not the location itself. Then, all hotels resulted in "?�". Sucked.

Have no experience with customer service for the above. But flying in China is still painful. Queuing is still a romp, security is extra sensitive about everything from umbrellas to coins, delays happen without an excuse given, and men's restrooms double as ashtrays. But the flight attendants generally are decent.

moondog

The only clue I'm going to offer (for now) is Carmel by the Sea.


I only mentioned "outside of China" in order to highlight the point that they can be useful for places like NYC. As such, I often include them as a resource (alongside others) when doing hotel searches.

narvik

Yeah, I don't get the "confusing' part either.

We ought to use both terms when describing our experiences, as they are different enough from each other, IMO.

I use trip.com almost exclusively now for flights to-and-from China, flights within China, and hotels in China. Even railway tickets within China.

wwtknoyb

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Within Europe just changing the country/language (both have a separate effect btw.) changes the prices, availability etc. Currently France/French offers quite good discounts compared to .at, .de. and .us

Yes, trip.com in Europe is selling more and more third party flight-tickets and Hotel reservations under their umbrella on their website. With Hotels it is easy to find out, because the reservation no. starts with e.g. EXP for Expedia, the reviews are from Hotels.com which is part of the Expedia group etc.

With flight reservations it sometimes sucks, because the Trip.com own flights are reserved for 20-30 minutes once you start the booking process, the third party are only reserved once you hit the pay button...and by then they are sometimes already unavailable and one has to start all over again.

Sometimes searching via Skyscanner, which is now also part of Trip.com, on a PC offers the same discounts like searching via the APP.

When it comes to searching for cheap flights worldwide (except China) in Europe nowadays idealo and jetcost (again depending on the country you chose) beat Trip.com most of the times. However, like trip.com, they move the marketing budget from country to country on a regular basis, and with Jetcost you might sometimes need a Diners Club or Mastercard Viabuy creditcard to avail of the cheap offers.

moondog

I stumbled upon the following when I was scanning my spam yesterday, and called them to make sure I didn't accidentally pay for a lounge visit (I didn't)



Two groups of people are looking after you, and only one of them has Chinese communication capabilities, so it serves as the crutch of the other.

Well done! I was nearly positive that YariGuy would chime in with the correct response after I posted the Carmel hint, but you beat him to the punch.

narvik

No idea what that means.

moondog

You chat with someone in English, she tells you that she is at an impasse, the callback comes from 携程 (caller ID).

narvik

Well yeah, CS of ctrip is in Chinese, CS of trip.com is English or Chinese. So?

wwtknoyb

Well, after reaching the Diamond status with one account, it does not hurt to open up another one with a different E-Mail address. To receive even more free Lounge Pass.

Same like with Amazon and free prime etc.

When it comes to customer service, if possible, I prefer to contact them during Berlin hours and communicate with the German speaking staff....not because of the language, but the English speaking Global Team is sometimes incompetent.

YariGuy

I did think of Clint Eastwood, but was not familiar enough with his movies to make the connection.

Speaking of status, how does trip / ctrip rewards compare with other OTAs? Expedia / hotels.com used to be straight forward -- stay 10 nights get 1 free, but that was gutted by expedia. Now it's earning expedia bucks... at a terrible rate.

FindingFoodFluency_

I've had diamond status for a while, since my travels generally revolve around this part of the world. Besides those aforementioned airport lounge passes (proferred upon booking a flight with them, although not so easily found), one also earns Trip coins through purchases and hotel reviews. Coins can be redeemed on hotels and flights (and maybe elsewhere).

I'm not going to comment on diamond-level discounts, because I don't know the veracity of them (i.e. maybe every Trip.com member gets the same, but because I'm diamond, how could I compare?)

moondog

I receive emails from multiple 客服 units on the same case numbers. These message chains are almost completely disconnected from each other. As an aside, the Chinese units seem to be far superior wrt communicating with hotels (e.g. they don't simply bow down to "talk with 顺丰 about the 快递 the hotel signed for" logic). That having been said, I can't really complain about the trip coins that the English units have flooded me with.

I'm actually interested in how to best game these. It's pretty easy to spot good values in cities that I know well, but when visiting new (to me) places, more research is beneficial. I took the bait on the Savoy Hotel in Manila for later his week because their (diamond) rate is far superior to Expedia, Priceline, and Agoda, but there's a decent chance that it's a crappy hotel they are simply trying to prop up. I'm happy to take the risk, in this case (we're only talking about $50).

wwtknoyb

When it comes to the Airport Lounge Access for diamond tier users - strictly speaking for European Trip.com accounts here - it makes a difference which country/language you chose in your profile. Some countries/languages might offer the flight for one or two USD less, but then the Airport Lounge Access for free does not show up.

Same with many other promotions like Air China and China Eastern intra China flights for free if you book the international leg via Trip.com etc.

With the "more expensive countries" (if one can call them like this) the Airport Lounge Access perk basically appears almost every single time one tries to book a flight.

The value of the Trip coins change on an almost daily basis.