Qunar, China's leading online airline ticket booking service, has gotten into a spat with the country's major airlines for unsatisfactory consumer services, pointing to chaos in the airline ticket booking industry. Analysts say the online platforms need to work harder to self-regulate and change their business models. Otherwise, some may get shifted out of the market.
China's largest online airline ticket booking service Qunar Cayman Islands Ltd is having trouble maintaining trust with its users because it is in a spat with many leading domestic airlines.
One user, a Beijing-based white-collar worker surnamed Huang, has used Qunar regularly over the last three years to buy tickets back to her hometown in Southwest China's Guizhou Province. But now, she is thinking about abandoning it.
"I lost a lot of faith in Qunar after so many major domestic airlines decided to end their relationships with the platform," she told the Global Times on Tuesday.
China Eastern Airlines Corp Ltd and Air China Ltd on Monday became the latest domestic major airlines to close their official sales channels on Qunar, joining Hainan Airlines Co Ltd, China Southern Airlines Co Ltd and Capital Airlines, which did the same on Thursday. On Tuesday, Tianjin Airlines also shut down its online flagship stores on Qunar.
The airlines stopped selling tickets through Qunar because of the numerous customer complaints they received about the service, according to their separate posts. They said many customers complained about being overcharged for buying or returning tickets from agents on the platform.
Huang hasn't had such problems with Qunar, but she is still concerned about the service.
"Now that big airlines have questioned Qunar's consumer services, I need to be careful," she said, noting that she decided to uninstall Qunar mobile app immediately.
In a microblog post responding to airlines' decisions on Thursday, Qunar did not acknowledge that it has problems with consumer services. Instead, it said China Southern and Hainan Airlines abandoned the platform because they couldn't agree on the way to display fares and departure times.
Qunar also said that users still can book flights on the aforementioned airlines on its platform from third-party agents, just not directly from the airlines. When contacted by the Global Times on Tuesday, Qunar declined to comment further on the matter.
Serving a warning
It's difficult to determine the real reason why the airlines abandoned Qunar, analysts said. Still, the dispute will serve as warning to other flight booking services with customer service problems.
Qunar's major rivals, Ctrip.com International Ltd and the rising star Alitrip, have similar issues such as phony promotions, bundling sales and unclear rules on how to return tickets, according to a post by Shanghai Consumer Council on December 17.
For instance, the council bought a 542 yuan ($83) flight on China Eastern Airlines from a third-party agent on Alitrip in early December.
The ticket said it could be returned according to the regulation of the airline, charging 80 percent of the ticket cost as commission, which amounts to a refund of 100 yuan. In reality, however, the council only got 50 yuan back, according to the post.
