Fan Min, co-founder and chief executive officer of Ctrip.com
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【11】 【12】 Fan Min has built Ctrip into a leading online travel agency in China, with an estimated market share in excess of 50 percent. The NASDAQ-listed company offers hotel reservations, airline tickets and packaged tours to business and leisure travelers in China.
Fan established the online company with three other partners in 1999. Today the company has 20 million registered members and operates Asia's largest call center in the travel agency business.
A veteran of the travel and hospitality industries, Fan helped the company develop a customer-centric approach, which helps differentiate it from its rivals. Ctrip has 10 branches and operates in 49 cities. Revenue in 2007 increased by 54 percent.
The company has won a variety of awards including those for its workplace and as a growth company. Fan founded the Sunshine Children's Fund earlier this year to help orphans following the Sichuan earthquake in May.
Q: How do you understand entrepreneurship?
A: To me, it means the impulse or passion, and the commitment to the innovation of our operational mode and direction.
Q: What was the most remarkable experience in your business development?
A: An enterprise needs the support of a team in this post-industrial era that can create a successful business mode. Thanks to the concerted efforts of our team, our company has achieved its unique and successful business mode.
Q: What do you think has sustained the rapid growth of Ctrip?
A: The driving force behind such growth has been our relentless aspiration to a grand goal. Since the very beginning, we have been determined that Ctrip would become a world-class, century-old enterprise. This goal is the embodiment of our entrepreneurship, needing motivation to forge a Chinese brand with global influence and serves as the inner drive for our efforts.
Q: What is your vision for the future of the already successful Ctrip?
A: The relatively realistic goal is to expand our existing operations into international markets. More ambitiously, we hope that one day Ctrip can rank among the world's top 500 enterprises. We are confident that this dream will come true.
Q: You are already a hero in the eyes of the young people ready to start or already undertaking a business. What advice do you have for them?
A: Borrowing the idea of a famous scientist: To have something done successfully, you need three things together.
First, method, a proper and practical method to govern your operations. Second, diligence. Any success consists of 99 percent of hard work and 1 percent inspiration or chance.Third, just do it, and do it with all heart and soul.
Though it's no secret, if you have all of the three necessities, you will surely get it.
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