Expedia sells stake in Chinese travel firm eLong to China-based Ctrip for $671 million
James Risley / GeekWire : … Expedia sold its 62.4 percent stake in eLong, a Chinese travel service, to a number of firms for $671 million, the company announced today. Buyers include Ctrip.com, Keystone Lodging Holdings, Plateno Group and Luxuriant Holdings.
Context & Ripple Effects
This deal is the opening move of Expedia's retreat from owning a piece of China's online travel market: it hands over its controlling 62.4% of eLong to a consortium led by Ctrip.com alongside Keystone Lodging Holdings, Plateno Group and Luxuriant Holdings for $671 million. The arc that follows shows why it mattered — Ctrip used the consolidated position to buy Scotland-based search site Skyscanner in a $1.74 billion cash-heavy acquisition a year later, and the Tencent-backed Tongcheng-eLong combination eventually went public in a $180 million Hong Kong IPO.
For Expedia, the sale foreshadowed a broader pattern of shedding balance-sheet exposure rather than operating through local equity: five years on it was in advanced talks to sell a stake to Silver Lake and Apollo in a roughly $1 billion deal (reported by the Wall Street Journal). Meanwhile the buyer rebranded as Trip.com and planned a ~$1.09 billion Hong Kong secondary listing in 2021 — the same market Expedia had exited.
First-order effects
- Ctrip moves from rival shareholder to dominant owner of eLong's hotel-booking inventory, with Keystone Lodging, Plateno and Luxuriant taking minority slices alongside it.
- Expedia converts an illiquid controlling position in a Chinese subsidiary into $671 million of cash, ending its direct operational footprint in the country's online travel sector.
Second-order effects
- With Expedia no longer holding eLong as a beachhead, Ctrip is free to consolidate further — culminating in the Skyscanner purchase that extends its reach into Western metasearch.
- The eLong stake changing hands clears the path for the Tencent-backed Tongcheng-eLong pairing to pursue its own Hong Kong listing, adding a second publicly traded champion to China's OTA landscape.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Western travel platforms shift from owning Chinese operating assets to financial partnerships at home, while domestic champions like Ctrip/Trip.com consolidate both the local market and cross-border assets — a structure visible in Trip.com's later Hong Kong secondary listing.
- China's online travel market structurally consolidates around locally controlled public companies, leaving foreign incumbents as suppliers of international demand rather than shareholders of domestic distribution.
The trend: China's online travel market is consolidating under domestically controlled champions like Ctrip, while Western incumbents such as Expedia exit equity positions and retreat to their home markets.