The mode is developed by Derby Soft, a provider of travel technology service in China, which will set up a direct selling network between travel agencies and hotels without brokerage. The new mode is expected to cut the marketing cost for hotels by a big margin and thus attract many economy hotels.

At present, most hotels rely on Ctrip, eLong or other agencies to deal with hotel reservation demand of consumers, through which Ctrip as well as eLong as middlemen collect a huge amount of commission.

eLong saw 26.8 million dollars coming for hotel reservation in 2006 when its total sale revenues amounted to 33.9 million dollars. And Ctrip achieved hotel reservation revenues of 61 million dollars in 2006, accounting for 57 percent of the total.

Therefore, Ctrip and eLong are likely to lose a big slice of the cake, if the direct hotel reservation network is well accepted by the market. (Edited by Yang Liu, )