Beijing, 2012-07-27 — /travelprnews.com/ — Qunar.com, the world’s most popular Chinese travel website, announced today that it is collaborating with Lonely Planet to launch a “Vote China’s Best Hotels” Campaign.
Qunar, partnering with Lonely Planet travel experts, will develop hotel rankings aimed to promote a consumer-driven hotel review standard in China. Each ranking will be based on a specific scenario under which travelers may book a hotel, and it will include top 10 most popular hotels based on consumers’ votes. The hotel rankings will be the first in the industry that are driven by consumers’ needs and will be conducted in a fair and open way.
The first round of voting themed as “the best hotels for watching the Olympic Games” will be launched on July 27. (For voting, please go to: http://expc.hotel.qunar.com/shishuiyuan-choice-2012olympic/). Consumers will be voting the ten best hotels for watching the Olympic Games out of a pool of 45 hotels deliberately picked by hotel experts at Qunar and Lonely Planet guidebook authors based on a number of key criteria. Consumers who take part in the voting will also have a chance to win a free stay at a hotel that’s worth more than 1000 yuan per night.
With the continuous development of China’s economy, Chinese consumes’ needs for leisure travel are increasing year by year and that creates more lodging needs. The existing hotel rankings in China usually target high-end business travelers or are voted by industry insiders and media with very limited participation of consumers without strong differentiation.
Taking into account the above factors, during the campaign Qunar and Lonely Planet aim to create rankings that can stand out from other existing hotel rankings and enable consumers to make more informed travel decisions.
“Vote China’s Best Hotels” Campaign has been designed with special emphasis on the following:
1. Wide participation: Qunar and Lonely Planet encourage ordinary consumers to participate in the voting. Free hotel stays will be provided by Qunar as prizes for consumers.
2. Creative themes: In a departure from the traditional way of classifying hotels into categories such as luxury, business or design, Qunar and Lonely Planet have created a ranking system for new targeted groups of consumers. Qunar will run a series of activities, including voting, lucky draws, test-sleeping at the top 10 hotels and other media events, to attract consumers.
3. Objectivity: Qunar and Lonely Planet will set objective standard for each ranking and select 25 to 50 hotels from the hotels available at Qunar.com. Ten hotels will be selected based on the results of open voting by consumers. Qunar’s hotel test sleepers will test sleep in those hotels and submit comprehensive and objective “professional sleeping reports.” Lonely Planet authors will also visit the hotels and submit their own independent reviews. Standardized procedures will assure the objectivity of the rankings.
Jenna Qian, Deputy General Manager of Qunar, said, “Qunar always puts consumers’ interests in the first place. “Vote China’s Best Hotels” Campaign is just another example of it. Chinese consumers are in need of informative and helpful guidance for hotel selection. We hope to answer to those needs by offering a set of differentiated and authentic rankings voted by consumers themselves and verified by Qunar test sleepers and Lonely Planet authors. To vote China’s best hotels are no longer the privilege of media or hotel industry professionals.”
“We are thrilled to be working with Qunar on the launch of this campaign” Anthony Dorment, General Manager Asia of Lonely Planet, said. “Lonely Planet is dedicated to serving the needs of Chinese travelers with relevant travel information and expertise that help them have amazing experiences. Qunar’s decision to launch practical and authentic hotel rankings provides a fantastic opportunity for collaboration with Lonely Planet as our authors have been providing hotel reviews in our travel guides on China across both our Chinese and English-language range for many years. By combining Lonely Planet expert reviews with the reviews from Qunar test sleepers we are confident that travelers will be able to make authentic and informed decisions on selecting some of China’s top hotels. This is an exciting cooperation for both companies. We share a common vision for serving consumer needs in travel.”
Zhang Ze, Vice President of Hotel Business at Qunar, also commented that, “Qunar created ‘Hotel Test Sleeper’ program in as early as 2010. By far, we have collected millions of authentic and objective original hotel reviews, which provide reliable reference for the consumers. “Vote China’s Best Hotels” Campaign is, to some extent, an extension of the concept of hotel test sleepers. Besides broad consumer voting, authors of Lonely Planet will join Qunar’s hotel test sleepers to verify the top 10 hotels in order to make the results more convincing.”
Between July 27 and August 31, consumers can visit http://expc.hotel.qunar.com/shishuiyuan-choice-2012olympic/ to participate in the voting of the best hotels for watching the Olympic Games. The Top 10 hotels voted by consumers will be announced in the first week of September. Qunar and Lonely Planet will also draw 20 winners from all voters for one night’s free stay at those hotels and announce the winners list on September 7. More interesting votings for hotels with various themes will be held every two months throughout this campaign which will extend into early 2013.
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About Qunar (Qunar.com)
Qunar, founded in May 2005 and headquartered in Beijing, is the world’s most popular Chinese travel platform. Its website had more than 74.6 million monthly visits, according to iResearch in December 2011. Qunar’s mission is to create and maintain a fun and hassle-free one-stop travel information source for Chinese travelers. Via its website and mobile applications, the company organizes enormous travel information and provides instant and thorough searches of flights, hotels, travel packages, group-buying deals and other travel-related information to travelers, helping them find travel products of great value, and travel information that best matches their needs, all by its intelligent and avant-garde technology.
As of the end of June 2012, Qunar’s search scope covers over 400 online travel agencies, 140,000 hotels, 57,000 flight routes, 180,000 vacation routes, 8,500 tourist attractions, 100 million travel guides, 1,860 daily group-buying deals, and many more. Qunar’s mobile application was named as the best Chinese original travel app of 2011 by Apple China. The total number of activated users for Qunar’s mobile app hit 11.8 million by the end of June 2012.
About Lonely Planet
Lonely Planet is the world’s leading travel content provider. Established in 1973, we enable curious travelers to experience the world and get to the heart of a place via guidebooks to every destination on the planet, an award-winning website, a suite of mobile and digital travel products, a dedicated traveler community, and a magazine currently published in 11 international editions. To find out more about us, visit lonelyplanet.com (English) or weibo.com/lonelyplanet (Chinese).
For press inquiries, please contact:
Xiaoji Qiang (Qunar) Violet Liu (Qunar)
Tel: 86-10-5760 3121 Tel: 86-10-5760 3241
Email: xiaoji.qiang@qunar.com Email: jia.liu@qunar.com
Varsha Dass (Lonely Planet)
Tel: 61-3-8379 8324
Email: varsha.dass@lonelyplanet.com.au