TripAdvisor Takes on Chinese Travel Market
Based in Beijing, daodao.com to Serve Chinese Travelers both Domestically and Abroad
NEWTON, MA, April 21, 2009 - TripAdvisor(R), the world's most popular and largest travel community, today announced the official launch of its Chinese domain, www.daodao.com, to provide a localized travel research site for Chinese travelers. Daodao.com, which is derived from a Chinese expression meaning "to arrive," is operated out of Beijing and is led by TripAdvisor General Manager, Hao Wu. The company has already assembled a team of more than a dozen engineers, product managers and sales and marketing staff in the Beijing office.
"China offers a tremendous opportunity, especially for an unbiased user-generated content leader in travel," founder and CEO of TripAdvisor, Steve Kaufer said. "We have a great localized approach and a smart and energetic team to help us meet the needs of the burgeoning Chinese travel market." The World Tourism Organization predicts that by 2015, China will become the world's top travel destination. China is also expected to have the largest domestic tourism market in the world.**
Daodao.com features candid traveler reviews and opinions for more than 68,000 cities, 400,000 hotels, and 90,000 attractions around the world, to help Chinese travelers plan their trips. Features like hotel reviews, photo and video sharing, and maps, enable travelers to easily participate in the community and share their experiences with fellow travelers from around the world. In addition, daodao.com highlights China-related information, including content for 18,000 hotels in China, making it one of China's largest online hotel information platforms and the largest pure travel review site in China.
TripAdvisor also recently launched domains to serve Portuguese-, Swedish- and Dutch-speaking travelers. The sites, http://www.tripadvisor.com.br, http://www.tripadvisor.se, http://nl.tripadvisor.com, are operated out of the company's London office. TripAdvisor now operates sites for 14 countries and content is available in 10 languages.
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