China-based media group Tencent and Expedia, a US-based travel booking company, have invested $125.6m in eLong, an online holiday services provider.
Expedia has taken majority ownership of eLong by buying 8% of the portfolio company for $41.2m to own 56%.
Tencent, which in turn is backed by South Africa media group Naspers’ corporate venturing unit, invested $84.4m in eLong for a 16% stake.
The investment in eLong represents the first significant investment in the travel market by Tencent, which set up a corporate venturing fund in January. The two plan to form a partnership to develop online travel products and distribute eLong’s 150,000 hotel supply to Tencent’s online community of 674 million active user accounts in China.
Guangfu Cui, chief executive of eLong, said: "Given Tencent’s user base and its reach across multiple platforms, including portal, mobile, instant messaging and social networking, we believe consumers throughout China will benefit from this partnership, while eLong and Expedia supply partners will enjoy incremental access to significant internet traffic and customers in China."