Qunar, China's leading online airline ticket booking service, has gotten into a spat with the country's major airlines for unsatisfactory consumer services, pointing to chaos in the airline ticket booking industry. Analysts say the online platforms need to work harder to self-regulate and change their business models. Otherwise, some may get shifted out of the market.

Qunar's search pages for hotels, international and domestic flights. Over the last few days, several major domestic airlines broke off ties with the company, China's leading online travel agent. Photo: CFP

China's largest online airline ticket booking service Qunar Cayman Islands Ltd is having trouble maintaining trust with its users because it is in a spat with many leading domestic airlines.

One user, a Beijing-based white-collar worker surnamed Huang, has used Qunar regularly over the last three years to buy tickets back to her hometown in Southwest China's Guizhou Province. But now, she is thinking about abandoning it.

"I lost a lot of faith in Qunar after so many major domestic airlines decided to end their relationships with the platform," she told the Global Times on Tuesday.

China Eastern Airlines Corp Ltd and Air China Ltd on Monday became  the latest domestic major airlines to close their official sales channels on Qunar, joining Hainan Airlines Co Ltd, China Southern Airlines Co Ltd and Capital Airlines, which did the same on Thursday. On Tuesday, Tianjin Airlines also shut down its online flagship stores on Qunar.

The airlines stopped selling tickets through Qunar because of the numerous customer complaints they received about the service, according to their separate posts. They said many customers complained about being overcharged for buying or returning tickets from agents on the platform.

Huang hasn't had such problems with Qunar, but she is still concerned about the service.

"Now that big airlines have questioned Qunar's consumer services, I need to be careful," she said, noting that she decided to uninstall Qunar mobile app immediately.

In a microblog post responding to airlines' decisions on Thursday, Qunar did not acknowledge that it has problems with consumer services. Instead, it said China Southern and Hainan Airlines abandoned the platform because they couldn't agree on the way to display fares and departure times.

Qunar also said that users still can book flights on the aforementioned airlines on its platform from third-party agents, just not directly from the airlines. When contacted by the Global Times on Tuesday, Qunar declined to comment further on the matter.

Serving a warning

It's difficult to determine the real reason why the airlines abandoned Qunar, analysts said. Still, the dispute will serve as warning to other flight booking services with customer service problems.

Qunar's major rivals, Ctrip.com International Ltd and the rising star Alitrip, have similar issues such as phony promotions, bundling sales and unclear rules on how to return tickets, according to a post by Shanghai Consumer Council on December 17.

For instance, the council bought a 542 yuan ($83) flight on China Eastern Airlines from a third-party agent on Alitrip in early December.

The ticket said it could be returned according to the regulation of the airline, charging 80 percent of the ticket cost as commission, which amounts to a refund of 100 yuan. In reality, however, the council only got 50 yuan back, according to the post.

Complaints about flight bookings were up in 2015, at least in Shanghai. 

The council had received 7,874 consumer complaints about airline ticket bookings from January 1 to December 15, 2015, Tang Jiansheng, the council's deputy secretary-general, said in the post. By comparison, it received 4,806 such complaints in 2014.

Wei Changren, CEO of Beijing-based Jinlü Consulting, pins the blame on some undisciplined third-party agents. "They employ unethical practice to make extra money while offering low-priced airline tickets to price-sensitive consumers," he said.

"By breaking off their relationships with Qunar, the industry leader, the airlines have come up with an effective way to pressure other players to pay more attention to after-sales services and help push unqualified agents out of the market," he said.

China's online airline ticket booking industry was worth 80.9 billion yuan in the third quarter of 2015, up 58.6 percent year-on-year, according to a report released by market consultancy Analysys International on December 10, 2015.

Qunar led the industry with a market share of 38.2 percent, followed by Ctrip.com International Ltd with 37.7 percent and Alitrip, e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding's travel service, which had 16.4 percent.

Looming changes

Wei predicted that airlines will pressure online platforms like Qunar in 2016 to raise standards for third-party agents operating on their platforms.

Air China aims to have half of its flights sold through its own marketplace by the end of 2016, Xiao Feng, Air China's chief accountant, was quoted as saying by 21st Century Business Herald newspaper in September.

Wei doesn't see that happening until at least 2017. Currently, the big airlines only sell 20 percent of total airline tickets across the country, he said.

The market will become increasingly concentrated in the coming years, so the  airlines will only need one or two large, well-regulated online booking platforms, Wei said.

"Qunar will need to work out its problems with the airlines, otherwise, it might just end up forced out of the business," Wei noted.

The airlines' own marketplaces are gaining popularity among customers like Li Xi, who are willing to pay a little more for better customer service.

"I prefer buying tickets via Air China's official website, which not only guarantee after-sales services, but also sometimes offers lower fares than other online travel agents," Li told the Global Times on Monday.

Upcoming transformation

The price gap between airlines and agents has narrowed considerably since the beginning of 2015, when the major airlines began lowering commissions they paid agents. By the middle of the year, they cut the commissions to almost zero.

The change not only squeezed the profit margins of small-scale agents, but also pressured Qunar and other online platforms to change their business models, Wei said.

Ctrip has already started to diversify its business by offering travel packages that include airport pick-up services, car rentals and hotel reservations, the company said in an e-mail sent to the Global Times on Monday.

Online travel agents can no longer rely only on commissions from selling airline tickets, Ctrip said.

Alitrip is also trying to provide similar packages, according to the company. Besides, Alitrip has imposed stricter rules on the travel agents.

"Air ticket agents now can no longer get their products listed on alitrip.com by self-application. We will carry out on-the-spot investigations and invite only qualified agents to our site," Alitrip  told the Global Times.

Wei expects Qunar will make sweeping changes in 2016, following the lead of Ctrip, which just inked share swap agreement and partnership with Qunar in October.
Newspaper headline: Losing faith in Qunar