Transformation from Call Center and Web to Mobile: Ctrip’s Journey and Technical Strategies

China’s internet landscape has narrowed the gap with the United States, and Chinese technologists are increasingly sharing their innovations abroad. At the 2015 QCon conference in San Francisco, Ctrip SVP & CTO Eric Ye presented on the company’s transformation from a call‑center and web‑centric model to a mobile‑first experience.

In 2011, 75% of Ctrip’s orders were offline, with online accounting for only 25% and mobile orders negligible. By 2013, online orders surpassed offline at 45%, while mobile orders rose to 25%. In 2015, mobile orders reached 72%, marking a qualitative leap.

Product strategy was streamlined by consolidating multiple platform apps (iPhone, iPad, Android Phone, Android Pad, Windows Phone) into just two versions for iOS and Android, optimizing resources and improving product quality.

In 2010, Ctrip launched the “Open API Everywhere” strategy, building a dedicated team that released the first official open API in 2012 after a year of research and development, growing the team to nearly a hundred engineers.

Decoupling has been a core focus for the past two years, encompassing organizational, architectural, database, service‑side, native code, and testing environment separation. This enables rapid multi‑team coordination, automated testing, modular app startup, and hot‑fix capabilities.

Key technical initiatives include:

Custom map solutions improving accuracy and response speed.

End‑to‑end service monitoring to detect issues, reduce crash rates, enhance network response, and lower page load times.

Continuous optimization of app service success rate, rising from 95% in version 5.10 to 99.7% currently.

Today, Ctrip has evolved from an OTA (Online Travel Agency) to an MTA (Mobile Travel Agency), and aims to keep leveraging technology to enhance travelers’ experiences.

For more details, click “Read Original” to download the conference PPT.