The Wall Street Journal
HONG KONG—Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. said Tuesday it has made an investment in travel website Qyer, in the latest in a series of deals by China’s largest e-commerce company.
Alibaba, which operates Taobao and other online shopping sites, declined to disclose the deal’s investment terms.
The company said Qyer’s travel-related information and services will complement Taobao Travel, a travel booking site run by Alibaba. According to Alibaba, Taobao Travel hosts more than 800 travel agencies offering more than 100,000 hotel rooms, while China-based Qyer.com, founded in 2004, has more than 10 million users.
The Qyer deal follows two other investments by Alibaba in the past few months. In April, Alibaba agreed to buy an 18% stake in Sina Corp.’s Twitter-like Weibo microblog business for $586 million, gaining an opportunity to tap into the social media site’s strong mobile user base. In May, Alibaba agreed to buy a 28% stake in Chinese mapping-software firm AutoNavi Holding Ltd. for $294 million in another move to strengthen its mobile-based business.