BEIJING -- Ctrip.com, China's largest online travel agent, scrambled to fix a service outage problem after its website and mobile platform went down Thursday morning.
The company first said on its official Weibo account that its servers were attacked by unidentified sources but data was not compromised. Later it said reason for the outage was still being investigated.
Ctrip put a banner on its website Thursday afternoon, directing users to go to eLong.com, another travel agent in which Ctrip bought a 37.6 percent stake last week.
Ctrip held 56.6 percent of China's online travel market in the first quarter of 2015, followed by eLong's 5.6 percent, according to iResearch.
The outage showed what cab go wrong with China's Internet giants. On Wednesday, China's largest online payment platform Alipay also reported anomalies, causing panic among users. Alipay's operator Alibaba said the disruptions were due to an optical cable being damaged by construction works.
Many Internet users have urged Chinese Internet companies to improve their data security since the incidents. Enditem
