Skift Take
Unlike the Priceline Group and Expedia Inc., TripAdvisor tried to go-it alone in China without a long-term home-grown partner. Expedia failed even though it had a Chinese partner in eLong so there are no guarantees in doing business in this potentially very lucrative but stubbornly difficult market.
The Chinese domestic market sure is a rough and tumble one for foreign businesses and you can now add TripAdvisor to the list of U.S.-based companies, including Expedia, Facebook and Google, that have taken their lumps in what will one day be the world's largest travel market.
TripAdvisor announced that it sold Chinese metasearch site Kuxun.cn, which offers flights, hotels and train travel throughout the country, to Alibaba-backed group-buying site Meituan for an undisclosed sum. TripAdvisor, which acquired Kuxun in 2009 while TripAdvisor was still a unit of Expedia, stated that it prefers to focus on the outbound Chinese traveler market.
Stephen Kaufer, the CEO of TripAdvisor, hinted in the company's first quarter earnings call in May that the company was "not winning" in China and th
