近日，中国最大的搜索引擎公司百度近日与英国航班信息搜索公司Skyscanner签署了合作协议。此举表明百度意图在旅行信息领域对谷歌发起挑战。
当用户在百度上搜索国际航班信息时，将能够获得来自Skyscanner数据库中900多家航空公司的超过7.5亿个航班价格信息。
旅游信息已经成为谷歌关注的重点领域之一，谷歌如今能够在搜索结果中直接显示大量的航班信息。谷歌于两年前收购了旅游信息服务提供商ITA Software，该公司的技术能够用来搜索航班信息和价格。这笔交易使得众多在线旅游公司担忧，谷歌是否会利用ITA的数据垄断在线航班搜索市场。
谷歌近期还收购了Frommer's的系列旅游指南，并拥有Zagat餐厅指南。
百度与Skyscanner的交易表明，其他搜索引擎也试图在旅游市场分得一羹。百度去年获得了中国经营时间最长、规模最大的在线旅游网站之一“去哪儿”的多数股权，并在国内航班搜索中采用“去哪儿”的结果。
Skyscanner此前还与俄罗斯搜索引擎巨头Yandex展开讨论，但尚未达成合作计划。
美国、欧洲和亚太地区的旅游市场规模在2009年估计达7230亿美元，其中近三分之一的购买行为发生在网上。这是电子商务领域目前为止最大规模的类别，超过书籍和电子产品的在线销售规模。
私人公司Skyscanner是全球三大领先的航班搜索服务公司之一，其他两家分别是谷歌和美国的Kayak Software。Kayak上月刚刚在纳斯达克股票市场上市，市值约为10亿美元。
Skyscanner总部位于爱丁堡，由Scottish Equity Partners基金支持。该公司是未来几年最有可能上市的英国科技公司之一，因而被投资者紧密关注。
尽管Skyscanner的流量比Kayak小三分之一，Skyscanner仍是欧洲地区访问量最大的航班搜索网站，且正在快速进军亚洲市场。该公司即将在北京设立办事处，并预计将提升新加坡办事处的员工数量。新加坡办公室设立的时间至今不足一年。
Skyscanner首席财务官沙恩•库尔斯特弗恩(Shane Corstorphine)表示，该公司在中国的流量今年实现了700%的同比增长，预计与百度的合作将进一步加速未来增长。
“这笔交易意味着我们获得了一家互联网巨头公司的支持，将帮助我们真正巩固亚洲市场。亚洲市场贡献的营收今年占总营收的比例达到了15%，高于去年的7%。我预计我们的亚洲业务规模将在未来12到18个月之内与欧洲业务相媲美。”
Skyscanner年营收为3000万英镑，每月独立访客数量达2000万。
Baidu, China’s largest search engine company by market share, has signed a deal with Skyscanner, the UK-based flight search company, as it seeks to rival Google in providing travel information to internet users.
People looking for international flights on the Baidu search engine will be presented with results pulled from Skyscanner’s database of more than 750m air fares from in excess of 900 airlines.
Travel information has become a key focus for Google, which presents its own tables of flight information prominently in its search results. Two years ago it bought ITA Software, whose technology is used to find flight information and prices. The deal caused concern among online travel companies that Google would use ITA’s data to dominate the online flight search market.
Google also recently bought Frommer’s brand of travel guides and owns the Zagat restaurant guides.
Baidu’s deal with Skyscanner shows, however, that other search engines are also looking to play a part in the travel market. Baidu last year took a majority stake in Qunar, one of China’s oldest and biggest online travel agents, and uses Qunar’s results for domestic flight searches.
Skyscanner said it had also held discussions with Yandex, Russia’s leading search engine company, but there are no immediate plans for a tie-up.
The travel industry in the US, Europe and Asia-Pacific was estimated to be worth $723bn in 2009 and around a third of purchases were made online. It is by far the largest category in e-commerce, eclipsing sales of books and electronics.
Privately-held Skyscanner is one of the world’s three leading flight search services, alongside Google and US-based Kayak Software, which listed on Nasdaq last month and has a valuation of about $1bn.
Edinburgh-based Skyscanner, which is backed by Scottish Equity Partners, is one of the UK technology companies most likely to launch a stock market listing in the next few years and is closely watched by the investor community.
Though estimated to be about a third smaller than Kayak in terms of its traffic, Skyscanner is the most visited flight search website in Europe and is making rapid advances into Asia. The company is opening an office in Beijing and expects to increase staff at its Singapore office, which was opened less than a year ago.
Shane Corstorphine, chief financial officer at Skyscanner, said the company had already seen traffic to its site grow 700 per cent over the past year in China and that he expected the deal with Baidu to accelerate this further.
“It is a seal of approval by a very big internet company and helps us really start to consolidate in Asia. Asia accounted for 7 per cent of revenues last year, up to 15 per cent this year. I would expect Asia to be competing with the size of our business in Europe within 12 to 18 months”.
Skyscanner turns over £30m a year and has 20m unique visitors to its site a month.
