Shanda Travel Subsidiary Reveals Plans
Netease Tech, 6/13/10
Song Zheng, COO and head of online business of Shanda Interactive's (Nasdaq: SNDA) new travel company, Yunyou Tiandi, recently said that Yunyou Tiandi is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Shanghai Shanda Networking. Yunyou Tiandi's primary business is the travel sector, and is intended to stand along side Shanda's gaming, literature and online businesses. Yunyou Tiandi operates both offline and online businesses, the former managed by the company president, the latter overseen by the COO.
Yunyou Tiandi's offline division has a specialized investment research team currently tasked with R&D and fieldwork. While actual investment in the offline sector is unlikely within the next 1-2 years, the company will consider building innovative interactive scenic destinations and holiday resorts in the future. Yunyou Tiandi will focus on its online division for the first two years and plans to foster development of the offline business through the online community. Yunyou Tiandi's tourism platform Uvan.com began closed beta testing in May followed by open beta testing in June, allowing registration by invitation. Uvan will officially launch in August, targeting the 18-28 year old urban demographic.
Song's concept for Uvan is to create a location-based interactive online community, for which Yunyou Tiandi's online division is focused on developing mobile client applications. Yunyou Tiandi launched a demo client for Apple products in July, and is currently testing the client for release in the App Store. Yunyou Tiandi will release mobile client software for Apple, Symbian, Android and Windows Mobile handsets by the end of this year.
Yunyou Tiandi has not released further details on applications of its mobile client software. One industry source claims the clients will integrate location-based services (LBS) and tourist information, pushing useful and fun information to potential interested users based on their location.
Shanda's future self-developed travel destinations may directly cooperate with Uvan to provide online previews, reservations and experience. The platform will be open to any tourist destinations nationwide that wish to form a partnership.
Since its inception in mid-2009, Yunyou Tiandi's workforce has rapidly expanded from 4-5 to over 100 employees. Yunyou Tiandi recently moved to Shanda's future headquarters, "Rainbow City" in Shanghai, which is currently in the initial phase of construction.
Yunyou Tiandi's senior management consists of COO Song, who oversees the online business, former Tencent (0700.HK) executive Hu Maohua as head of technology, former Google executive Wang Xinlei as head of products, and Meng Xiaoshe, former director of telecom equipment manufacturer Huawei's AiMi SNS (aimi.cn), as head of operations. The company is also currently recruiting for the position of Chief Travel Officer, and resumes have already been submitted to Uvan.com.
Song added that Uvan is currently exploring potential future business models. Yunyou Tiandi plans to levy basic subscription and value-added fees. Song believes that group buying could be one potential value-added service, but that further investigation of user needs is required.
Keywords: online travel Wang Xinlei Uvan Shanda Song Zheng Internet tourism SNDA Meng Xiaoshe Hu Maohua Yunyou Tiandi HR LBS
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