The travel service provider will pay 1.4 billion euros mainly cash for the Edinburgh-based firm, they said in separate statements late Wednesday. NASDAQ-listed Ctrip, partly owned by Chinese search giant Baidu, provides online booking for airline and railway tickets as well as hotels, and describes itself as China's largest travel company. The acquisition by Ctrip took Skyscanner "one step closer to our goal of making travel search as simple as possible for travellers around the world", he added. Skyscanner provides similar services to Ctrip and has 60 million monthly active users, mainly in Europe. Shanghai-based Ctrip merged with another major Chinese online agency Qunar last year to create the country's biggest internet travel service.

Source: The Nation Bangkok November 24, 2016 04:06 UTC