When traveling by air between Chinese cities, do not use Expedia, Travelocity, or Orbitz to buy your plane tickets. Why? Because these or other foreign travel companies are much more expensive. Best discounts of domestic China Flights are provided by local companies. It would be much wiser to book through them.
This article will introduce you some China travel companies you can resort to for cheap Chinese domestic air tickets.
There are many those online companies actually but Elong, Ctrip, and Travelzen are the most practical, reliable and can be accessed from outside of China.
Elong
ELong, Inc. (NASDAQ: LONG) is a leading online travel company in China. Headquartered in Beijing, ELong has a national presence across China, and uses web-based distribution technologies and a 24-hour call center to provide consumers with accurate travel information and high quality travel booking services.
Elong has become Expedia’s exclusive affiliate in Asia, working with Expedia’s branches across the globe to bring best travel experiences to customers.
It fulfills domestic and international air ticket reservations in over 80 major cities across China.
Ctrip
Ctrip is also China’s leading flight ticketing service, booking over 2 million tickets monthly with all Chinese and major international airlines.
Complimentary ticket delivery service is provided in over 60 cities throughout China, and Ctrip One Hour Express Ticketing—an industry first in China—provides reliable and fast e-ticketing service to members.
Some Chinese online booking sites don’t accept foreign credit cards, but Ctrip does.
Travelzen
Based in Shanghai, Travelzen uses state-of-the-art proprietary technology and SEBTI’s unparalleled resources to deliver the best possible availability and prices through an intuitive, real-time booking engine offering both domestic and outbound air tickets as well as hotel reservations for hundreds of Mainland Chinese cities including Hong Kong and Macau.
Qunar
Qunar(means “Where are you going?” in Chinese) is a Chinese search engine which can search prices from most travel (airline tickets, hotel) service providers’ websites based on your search query, and you can filter and then purchase such services by clicking the links in the search result. The price on its search result is probably the best price one can find on the Internet.
Many Chinese people just use it to buy domestic air tickets instead of the above three.
However, the website is operated in the Chinese language. If you can read simple Chinese, it would be very helpful for you.
Chinese airlines use the same kind of dynamic pricing systems as airlines in the West, which means prices always seem to be changing in response to market conditions, especially on busy routes.
Therefore it is best to book your tickets for your China tours in advance, 2 months or so will typically guarantee you the best deals. If you wait until a week or two out, you may get a greater discount than you would booking in advance, but it will only be minor (eg,40% 2 months in advance, 50% a week in advance) and at the same time you risk paying full price or something very close to
