China’s love for travel: Ctrip to invest in Boom for supersonic flights
Concorde flights were a popular name till the start of 21st century. This supersonic passenger airline which commenced the operations in 1976 had to terminate its service in 2003 as it never had enough travellers to make a commercial impact. British Airways and Air France were the two airlines which had a try with the supersonic giants.
The love for Concorde may be ignited again as Boom, a Denver-based start-up, is planning to give another try with a 55-seat jet and will be having a long-range cruising speed of Mach 2.2 (1,451mph/2,335km/h). The company hopes to have lower operating costs and noise levels as the body of aircraft will be of new carbon fibre composite and the introduction of quiet, efficient turbofan engines. The exciting factor for Boom is that Ctrip.com International, the Shanghai-based online travel giant will be investing an undisclosed amount in order to bring he supersonic flights to China. This may turn out to be beneficial for Boom and the future of supersonic flights as China is the major source of outbound tourists.
Ctrip had formed an association with private equity firm Ocean Link Partners last month to buy car rental firm eHi Car Services. It even bought travel search app Gogobot last year and incorporated it with Skyscanner Holdings, which they already acquired in 2016. They also invested in Tujia.com, a home-sharing start-up, hotel reservation site Elong Inc and bicycle-sharing firm Beijing Mobike Technology. So the investment in Boom is their latest into tourism and travel-related companies. According to the reports, Chinese travellers made more than 130 million on outbound trips and spent an estimated US$115 billion on these trips. “As a one-stop travel shop, we invest in the travel of tomorrow. We want our users to gain futuristic travel experiences,” Ctrip said about the investment in Boom.
The two companies are planning to have supersonic flights from China to USA, Oceania and South Asia. This will make China a strong marketplace for supersonic flight journeys. “When we fly twice as fast, the world becomes twice as small, turning far off lands into familiar neighbours,” said Blake Scholl, Founder and CEO of Boom.