I landed in Baiyun International Airport, Guangzhou past midnight this morning and felt like I arrived in the middle of an industry cocktail party.

At immigration, I met a group of travel agents from Singapore on a Singapore Airlines fam tour. Airline objective: To promote their new late flight to the third largest city in the world's largest travel market (soon). Agents' objective: To play golf.

Nice to knows some things don't change.

I then met a hotelier from a major hotel brand who's probably about to develop his 100th hotel in China.

So welcome to the new centre of the universe where everyone is still trying to crack the source code to the riches that lie within. And it appears it may be getting harder because some things do change especially in the fast growing and dynamic online travel sector where new forces are at work and throwing up fresh challenges.

From my one day at the China Travel Distribution Summit, it is clear that competition has intensified (lots), the landscape has changed with the advent of new players like Baidu (which bought Qunar) and start-ups, and leading OTAs, Ctrip, eLong and Mango City, are facing pressure like never before.

Social networks and the explosion of mobile are causing the ground to shift and while China still offers the promise of growth, it now also offers uncertainty in who will be the new winners or the next game changer.

Raising most concern was the Baidu-Qunar entity which James Tang of Ctrip said had monopolized access to the customer.

Guang Fu (right), CEO of eLong, said with 84% of general search coming from Baidu, the acquisition had created the biggest vertical search engine for online travel and a "monopoly of customers' entry point".

Full story:

www.webintravel.com/blog/monopoly-disruption-and-game-changers-at-the-centre-of-the-universe_2037