Darren Huston

China the Next Big Travel Market of 2020

Read Darren Huston interview with CNBC on 2020 China Travel Market.

Darren Huston:

As you know we had a great second quarter a 34% bookings growth 31% net income growth and we think our forecast for the third quarters prudent reflects the fact the euro is down a little bit against the dollar.

We're also making investments though in offline marketing in our open table acquisition and a number of other things but we're feeling really good actually about the health of the business yeah.

CNBC:

We have two big deals to talk about. Let's talk about the most recent why are you investing half a billion dollars in the Chinese online player Ctrip to buy that that 10 percent stake what does that do for your business.

Darren Huston:

Well Simon you know it travels inherently business where you go from somewhere to somewhere and being a global business obviously is very important to a travel business like the Priceline group and China is the next big market for travel by 2020.

Most of ours, the largest percentage of the world's travelers will come from China and we want to make sure we're an active player in that market seater. It's been a great partner of ours since 2012.

CNBC:

So I guess in essence the Chinese will be able to see your inventory on a Chinese website but the point here is why half a billion dollars you already had a commercial connection that you know Ctrip is renowned for being fiercely independent to the extent that it wants a lot of control and it is said that a lot of their past partnerships haven't really worked out very well.

Darren Huston:

Well you know Simon well I think we have a really great connection with Ctrip we've been actually working with them for two years we didn't just jump into this we built a lot of trust between our two companies.

They're gonna help us a lot they're gonna bring a lot of Chinese customers to our business around the world and they're also going to offer inventory to all of our foreign customers.

I like to call them almost like second cousins now that we have a 10% investment that we're looking at making in Ctrip and we're excited to keep moving this partnership forward you know China's not necessarily an easy mark for Western internet companies but we've had a lot of success there and expect to have more going forward with this partnership.