Qunar, the online travel site which attracted over US$300 million of investment from Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) earlier this year, has proved to be the best Chinese travel app on iOS (pictured above) according to some end-of-year awards from Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL).
But Qunar actually snapped up only the runner-up prize in Apple China’s ‘best travel app’ category, as it got leap-frogged by the Chinese-language version of the French-made Fotopedia app (pictured below), which took the award from Apple. Nonetheless, it means that Baidu’s investment beat off a whole host of local rivals such as Ctrip (NASDAQ:CTRP), and eLong (NASDAQ:LONG).
The Qunar mobile app allows users to search, browse, and book plane tickets, hotels, and more. With more Chinese people now using smartphones, and just over 100 million 3G subscribers in the country, it’s clear that a full-featured mobile app is now vitally important. Qunar has apps for iPhone and iPad, Android, Symbian, and WP7, and claims to be China’s most popular travel mobile service with a significant number of its seven million users also making use of some of the smartphone apps.
Indeed, the company claims that search volume on the Qunar mobile apps has reached ten percent of desktop PC search volume, and airline tickets’ mobile booking grows over 100 percent every month. Qunar was founded in 2005 but only began its mobile business in 2010.
And the winner is... Fotopedia! The Chinese localization of the app won Apple China's 'best travel app' category in 2011.
