USA: Chinese Tourists Shun US Preferring More Welcoming And Friendly Countries

Chinese travel to the US is falling after more than a decade of rapid growth. And that has cities, malls and other tourist spots scrambling to reverse the trend.

Travel from China to the US fell 5.7 per cent in 2018 to 2.9 million visitors, according to the National Travel and Tourism Office. It was the first time since 2003 that Chinese travel to the US slipped from the prior year.

Trade tensions with the US as well as economic uncertainty in China are among the reasons for the slowdown.

China commands some of the highest tourism traffic to the US and any fall-off will be felt by destinations that rely on Chinese spending power. Experts say the tourism industry must do more to keep up with Chinese travellers and their changing needs.

The number of Chinese visitors to the US has fallen for the first time in 15 years, after more than a decade of rapid growth, but friction between the two countries is just one reason for the slowdown, according to travel industry insiders.

Travel from China to the US fell 5.7 per cent in 2018 to 2.9 million visitors, according to the National Travel and Tourism Office, which collects data from US Customs forms. It was the first time since 2003 that Chinese travel to the US slipped from the previous year.

But because China commands some of the highest tourism traffic to the US, any fall-off will be felt by destinations that have come to rely on Chinese spending power. In 2017, the country had the fifth highest number of US-bound tourists, behind Canada, Mexico, Britain and Japan.

China did not crack the top 10 list until 2011 and has been climbing ever since. Spending by Chinese visitors – which does not include students – ballooned more than 600 per cent between 2008 and 2016, to nearly $18.9 billion.

In 2017, that fell by 1 per cent to $18.8 billion, or about 12 per cent of overall tourism spending.

To hold on to those dollars, experts say the tourism industry must do more to keep up with Chinese travellers and their changing needs.

Last summer, China issued a travel warning for the US, telling its citizens to beware of shootings, robberies and high costs for medical care. The US shot back with its own warning about travel to China.

Wang Haixia, who works at an international trade company in Beijing, travelled to the US in May for her sister’s graduation. She and her family planned to spend 10 days in Illinois and New York.

Wang says she might have stayed longer but did not want to contribute to the US economy amid the trade war.

I cannot cancel this trip because I promised my sister I would go to her commencement, she said. My relatives will contribute more than 100,000 yuan (US$14,500) to America just staying for 10 days, and that’s enough, she said.

Another reason for the fall in Chinese visitors to the US is economic uncertainty in China which has led travellers at the lower end of the market to holiday closer to home, according to Wolfgang Georg Arlt, director of the Chinese Outbound Tourism Research Institute.

A study by the institute found that 56 per cent of travellers leaving China in the last three months of 2018 went to Hong Kong, Macau or Taiwan compared with 50 per cent in 2017. Those who do travel further are seeking out more exotic destinations like Croatia, Morocco and Nepal.

Chinese travel to the US had already been moderating from its breakneck pace earlier this decade. In 2000, 249,000 Chinese visited the US.

That tripled to 802,000 by 2010, then tripled again by 2015, in part because of higher incomes, better long-haul flight connections and an easing of visa restrictions, according to US consulting firm McKinsey.

The US welcomed more than 3 million Chinese visitors in 2016 and 2017. But year-over-year growth edged up just 4 per cent in 2017, the slowest pace in more than a decade.

Most industry-watchers agree that any downturn is temporary, since China’s middle class will only continue to expand. The US government forecasts Chinese tourism will grow 2 per cent this year to 3.3 million visitors, and will reach 4.1 million visitors in 2023.

Even if the Chinese economy cools, it’s still going to continue to be a very good source of growth for the travel industry, said David Huether, senior vice-president of research for the US Travel Association.

In general, international travel to the US has been declining. Overall data for 2018 has not yet been released, but international travel fell 2 per cent in 2016 and was flat in 2017.

Larry Yu, a professor of hospitality management at George Washington University, notes that Chinese tourists – particularly younger ones – are increasingly planning trips using social media apps like WeChat and are less likely to book through big tour groups.

They have also rapidly adopted smartphone based payment systems.

Destinations should invest in those technologies now if they want to continue attracting Chinese tourists, says David Becker, former CEO of Attract China, a New York-based travel consultancy.

A lot of companies looked at the Chinese market as easy money, but we have to be relevant to the Chinese, Becker said. Attract China, for instance, has helped luxury stores in Manhattan incorporate Jeenie, a live translation app, and add Alipay and WeChat Pay for mobile payments.

Alipay is owned by Alibaba.

Others have also been stepping up their efforts. The Beverly Centre mall in Los Angeles used to cater to busloads of Chinese tourists. Now, it is focusing on small groups of less than 10 VIP shoppers, says Susan Vance, the mall’s marketing and sponsorship director.

The mall has also pushed stores to offer China UnionPay, a digital payment service. More than 100 stores now have it, Vance says, up from three in 2014.

Tourism officials are also catching on to WeChat. In late 2017, Washington DC became the first US city to launch an interactive guide in the app.

Chinese travellers can use it to get directions to attractions, access audio tours in Mandarin and find dining and shopping outlets. The city’s marketing office has one staff member dedicated to WeChat.

Washington also recently launched a Welcome China program that teaches hotels, restaurants and other venues about Chinese customs and encourages them to offer things like Chinese-language menus or in-room slippers. So far 44 hotels and a handful of restaurants have signed on.

Chinese tourists are shunning the US amid the trade war and opting for more welcoming destinations in Europe, according to Jane Sun, chief executive officer of Asia’s largest online travel platform Ctrip.

When the China-US trade war started last year, there was a slowdown in Chinese tourists travelling to the US during China’s October golden week holiday in the fourth quarter, which eased when the two countries made progress in their trade talks.

The US slid to tenth spot in the list of China’s top overseas destinations in the week-long holiday in 2018 from fifth the previous year, according to Ctrip.

In the recently-concluded Labour Day holiday in early May, the US ranked as the ninth most popular travel destination for Chinese tourists, down from fifth spot last year. Thailand and Japan remained the top choices for holidaymakers in the country.

Sun is clear about the reason why Chinese tourists are taking their money to European countries such as Italy and the UK because they feel welcomed.

People like to travel to countries that welcome them, she said. When Chinese consumers have the buying power, if they are not going to the US then they are going to the UK, Europe, Australia or New Zealand, they’ll find an alternative.

The US really needs to be very careful if it wants to attract affluent travellers.

China is the world’s largest outbound travel market in terms of numbers and expenditures, according to a report from McKinsey and Company in September, with Chinese tourists expected to make 160 million overseas trips by 2020 and spend over US$315 billion next year.

Ctrip has broadened its reach in recent years to cater to this powerful force, which has grown by a double digit percentage number each year from 2002 to 2013, according to the World Tourism Organisation.

One of the biggest recent beneficiaries of the Chinese tourism boom has been Croatia, which saw a more than fourfold surge in visitors during the May holiday this year as fans of the hugely popular fantasy TV show Game of Thrones flocked to the show’s filming location, according to latest statistics from Ctrip.

Malta and Iceland, which are also featured in the show, saw the number of Chinese tourists rise 300 per cent and 140 per cent respectively over the Labour Day holiday.

Based on our observation, countries which have easier visa applications and direct flights, and have demonstrated hospitality to travellers, will win.

Travel itself is very international we designed our network to cover places that Chinese people are going to travel to.

Revenue generated from international business made up 30 to 35 per cent of Ctrip’s total revenue in 2018, according to the Shanghai-based company’s annual report.

The company, which has a market value of US$22 billion and is increasingly applying AI technology to personalise more trips, will continue to expand globally by serving Chinese outbound tourists, as well as bringing non-Chinese travellers onto Ctrip’s platforms and products.

Ctrip has targeted the international travel market with a string of investments and acquisitions in recent years. In 2016, Ctrip bought UK-based travel search engine operator Skyscanner for US$1.7 billion to complement Ctrip’s positioning on a global scale, according to a statement.

It acquired Silicon Valley based start-up Trip.com in 2017 and relaunched it in the same month as the company’s global brand non-Chinese markets.

In April Ctrip increased its stake in MakeMyTrip, an Indian online travel agency, to 49 per cent through a share swap deal with Naspers, a South African company and the biggest investor in Chinese tech giant Tencent, and has also gobbled up three Chinese travel agencies which operate in the US in the past few years.

Such international M&A expands Ctrip’s addressable market and increases the likelihood that Ctrip turns these overseas markets into earnings drivers over the long run, JP Morgan analyst Alex Yao said in a May research note.

We think Ctrip has an established leadership position in traditional outbound China to overseas, and pure outbound overseas to overseas is likely to play an increasingly important role in driving group growth.

Apart from deals, Ctrip is also developing its own products for non-Chinese markets. TrainPal, a project under Ctrip’s Baby Tiger program that incubates new products, is an online train ticketing service for UK and other parts of Europe.

The rail ticketing app helps customers find the best-priced train fares for their journey by offering split-ticketing, a service which can look through the various price combinations over the same route.

By February this year, ticket sales on TrainPal had grown almost 100 times year-on-year since soft launch of the app last February, according to Ctrip.

Sun believes organic growth, such as self-developed products like TrainPal, should always be a priority for Ctrip though. We have a lot of initiatives internally to make sure everything our customers need will have a Baby Tiger program to incubate it, Sun said.

Sun accepts that Chinese companies face a learning curve when expanding overseas. Beijing based ByteDance has faced regulatory hurdles for its popular TikTok short video app while Chinese bike-sharing firms Mobike and Ofo are retreating from many foreign markets after breakneck growth previously.

Organisational design and talent recruitment represent big challenges for any company that wants to expand abroad, said Sun, adding that finding the right talent that understands overseas markets is the key for smooth expansion.

When you move abroad and talk to train or airline partners, you need people who understand the local market very well.


Tourism Observer

AUSTRALIA: Qantas Flying San Francisco-Melbourne Nonstop

Qantas introduced a brand-new 787-9 Dreamliner on its Los Angeles-Melbourne route, and now the Australian airline says it will bring the Dreamliner to San Francisco as well.

The airline doesn’t have a firm start-up date yet, but said it expects to begin new San Francisco-Melbourne flights with the 787-9 Dreamliner in late 2018.

There is currently no non-stop service in the SFO-MEL market.

Initially operating six days a week on the LAX-Melbourne route, the 14-hour 787-9 flights will complement Qantas’ existing daily A380 service, a spokesperson said– which means it will fly SFO Melbourne a few days a week, and LAX-Melbourne a few days a week.

Why split the route up like that?

My best guess is that the LAX-Melbourne flights have not been selling as well as hoped, so Qantas will try and beef up revenues by adding SFO legs.

Here’s our preview of the new Qantas aircraft, which will have 42 business class seats configured 1-2-1; 28 in premium economy, with a 2-3-2 layout; and 166 in economy, configured 3-3-3 and offering 32-inch pitch.

The San Francisco schedule is still undetermined.

Capacity between the U.S. and Melbourne will be rebalanced to match demand from the two California cities, meaning that the Dreamliner will fly from Los Angeles some days of the week and San Francisco other days, the spokesperson said.

Qantas CEO Alison Webster said in Melbourne that the company is seeing strong demand for San Francisco-Melbourne service, both from a tourism perspective and because of the business links between Silicon Valley and Melbourne.

As well, a significant number of our Melbourne passengers flying to Los Angeles already connect on to San Francisco.

Qantas’ only current San Francisco service is a 747-400 non-stop to Sydney, a route also flown by United.

The LAX-Melbourne route is being operated with the airline’s first newly delivered 787-9. The second will go into service in March, providing the first non-stop flights between Australia and Europe on a Melbourne-Perth-London routing.

The airline expects to take delivery of eight 787-9s by the end of 2018, with four based in Melbourne and four in Brisbane.


Tourism Observer

USA: Uber CEO Kalanick Resigns

Travis Kalanick, the combative and embattled CEO of ride-hailing giant Uber, has resigned under pressure from investors at a pivotal time for the company.

Uber's board confirmed the move early Wednesday, saying in a statement that Kalanick is taking time to heal from the death of his mother in a boating accident while giving the company room to fully embrace this new chapter in Uber's history. He will remain on the Uber Technologies Inc. board.

The move comes as Uber, the world's largest ride-hailing company, was having trouble morphing from a free-wheeling startup into a mature company that can stanch losses and post consistent profits. After eight years of phenomenal growth by upending the taxi business, Uber had reached a point where the culture that created the company had become a liability that threatened to kill it.

In a statement, the 40-year-old co-founder said his resignation would help Uber go back to building "rather than be distracted with another fight," an apparent reference to efforts on the board to oust him.

It was unclear who would replace Kalanick.

The resignation came after a series of costly missteps under Kalanick that damaged Uber's reputation, including revelations of sexual harassment in its offices, allegations of trade secrets theft and a federal investigation into efforts to mislead local government regulators.

Uber lost an expensive battle for supremacy in China against Didi Chuxing and had to be satisfied with taking a stake in Didi as a consolation prize. Uber posted a $708 million first-quarter loss, unable to turn $3.4 billion in revenue into a profit. The loss narrowed from the $991 million it posted in the previous quarter.

Investors have talked about selling stock in Uber to the public, a move that would imply a transition to an established business. The company was valued at near $70 billion the last time it sought capital.

Kalanick's penchant for conflict undermined the company's prospects, said Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer, director of the Center for Automotive Research at the University of Duisburg-Essen.

Ride-hailing itself remains a topic of intense interest for the tech and auto industries as they compete to see whether Silicon Valley or the automakers will reap the profits from the digitalization of how people get from one place to another.

But "the significance of Uber has declined because the company has not managed to present itself in a stable and socially responsible way," Dudenhoeffer said.

"When you're at war with customers, employees, service suppliers, you can't build up a business model and Kalanick was at war with everyone," said Dudenhoeffer. "There is no business model in being at war. "

On Tuesday, the company embarked on a 180-day program to change its image by allowing riders to give drivers tips through the Uber app, something Kalanick had resisted.

Drivers have said that Kalanick didn't value their labor even though it was the heart of the San Francisco-based company.

Uber's board said in a statement that Kalanick had "always put Uber first."

But under Kalanick, the company developed a reputation for ruthless tactics that have occasionally outraged government regulators, drivers, riders and employees.

The company often flouted city regulations for taxi companies with a culture that encouraged "Principled Confrontation."

The company's hard-charging style has led to legal trouble. The U.S. Justice Department is investigating Uber's past usage of phony software designed to thwart local government regulators who wanted to check on whether Uber was carrying passengers without permission.

A key step toward Kalanick's downfall came in February, when former Uber engineer Susan Fowler posted a personal essay about the year she spent at Uber, writing that she was propositioned by her manager on her first day with an engineering team.

She reported him to human resources, but was told he would get a lecture and no further punishment because he was a high performer,she wrote.

That caught the board's attention and brought outside investigations that led to the firing of 20 people including some managers. Former Attorney General Eric Holder conducted one of the probes, finding that the male-dominated Uber didn't have the most basic policies to protect workers from harassment.

Holder's report suggested procedures that most companies have had for years such as using performance reviews to hold leaders accountable.

Also, Kalanick lost his temper in an argument with an Uber driver who was complaining about pay. The profanity-laced confrontation was caught on a video that surfaced in February.

Afterward, Kalanick said he needed management help and had to grow up. The company began searching for a chief operating officer.

In March, board member Arianna Huffington expressed confidence that Kalanick would evolve into a better leader. But Huffington, a founder of Huffington Post, suggested time might be running out.

He's a "scrappy entrepreneur," she said during the call, but one who needed to bring "changes in himself and in the way he leads."

During the past year, several senior managers left the company, including the president and chief financial officer.

Outside experts said the only way to change Uber's culture was for Kalanick to step aside. But Uber's ownership and voting structure made it difficult to oust him.

Kalanick took an indefinite leave of absence earlier this month, in part to deal with a personal tragedy.

In May, his mother was killed and his father hurt in a boating accident on a California lake.

USA: Widow Blames Job Stress For Death Of Her Husband, A Uber Engineer

Joseph Thomas thought he had it made when he landed a $170,000 job as a software engineer at Uber’s San Francisco headquarters last year. He and his wife, Zecole, had just bought a Spanish-style house in Pittsburg, where they were living the American dream with their two young sons. A handsome and accomplished man, Thomas reminded some people of Tiger Woods for both his good looks and his drive to succeed.

But his time at Uber turned into a personal tragedy, one that will compel the ride-hailing company to answer questions before a judge about its aggressive work culture.

Always adept with computers, Joseph Thomas worked his way up the ladder at tech jobs in his native Atlanta, then at LinkedIn in Mountain View, where he was a senior site reliability engineer. He turned down an offer from Apple to go to Uber, because he felt he could grow more with the younger company and was excited about the chance to profit from stock options when it went public.

But at Uber, Thomas struggled in a way he’d never experienced in over a decade in technology. He worked long hours. He told his father and his wife that he felt immense pressure and stress at work, and was scared he’d lose his job. They urged him to see a psychiatrist. He told the doctor he was having panic attacks, trouble concentrating and near-constant anxiety. All suggested that he leave his job, but he was adamant that he could not.

“He was always the smartest guy in the room,” said his father, Joe Thomas. But while working at Uber, “he went down the tubes. He became someone with very little confidence in himself. The guy just fell apart.”

“It’s hard to explain, but he wasn’t himself at all,” said Zecole Thomas. “He’d say things like, ‘My boss doesn’t like me.’ His personality changed totally; he was horribly concerned about his work, to the point it was almost unbelievable. He was saying he couldn’t do anything right.”

One day in late August, Zecole came home from dropping their boys off at school. Joseph was sitting in his car in the garage. She got into the passenger seat to talk to him.

Then she saw the blood.

Joseph had shot himself. He died in the hospital two days later, a week before he would have turned 34.

His father and widow are convinced that the work environment and stress at Uber triggered his suicide. Zecole Thomas has filed a workers’ compensation claim seeking to hold Uber accountable for her husband’s mental decline.

“If you put a hard-driving person on unrealistic tasks, it puts them in failure mode,” said the elder Joe Thomas, who said his son described a sort of brainwashing at Uber. “It makes them burn themselves out; like driving a Lamborghini in first gear.”

Joseph Thomas, who was African American, may have experienced racism as well, according to his loved ones and their lawyer. Like many Silicon Valley companies, Uber employs only a handful of black people in technical jobs. Blacks account for 1 percent of its tech workers and none of its tech leaders, according to Uber’s first diversity report, released in March.

Uber declined to comment on the legal dispute and said Thomas never complained to the company of extreme stress or racial discrimination.

“No family should go through the unspeakable heartbreak the Thomas family has experienced,” said Uber spokeswoman Eva Behrend. “Our prayers and thoughts are with them.”

Uber’s work culture has come under scrutiny after explosive revelations about the world’s most valuable startup. In February, software engineer Susan Fowler wrote a blog post about sexual harassment and sexism at Uber and said its human resources department ignored complaints.

At least three former employees have filed lawsuits alleging sexual harassment or verbal abuse from Uber managers, which said other current and former employees were also considering legal action.

Even early investors Freada Kapor Klein and Mitch Kapor posted an open letter to Uber blasting it for “a culture plagued by disrespect, exclusionary cliques, lack of diversity, and tolerance for bullying and harassment of every form.”

Uber said it took the allegations seriously and hired former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate its workplace for issues of sexism, diversity and inclusion. That report is pending.

In the case of Joseph Thomas, medical records from two East Bay psychiatrists he visited in the weeks before his suicide show that he reported job-related “high anxiety,” panic attacks, difficulty concentrating and insomnia.

About a month before his suicide, Joseph Thomas disclosed his work stress in a Facebook chat to a close friend of more than a decade, Neil Mirchandani.

“Man words can’t really describe. I’m not dead but I wouldn’t describe myself as ok,” Thomas wrote, according to screenshots of the chat provided by Mirchandani.

“The sad thing is this place (Uber) has broken me to the point where I don’t have the strength to look for another job,” Thomas wrote.

“Joseph was such a strong personality,” said Mirchandani. “But he was a softie on the inside; when he was around a small dog or my daughter, he’d melt like a little kid. He was the last person I would ever think would” commit suicide.

Uber denied the benefits claim through its insurance carrier. In California, workers’ compensation usually does not cover psychiatric injuries until after six months of employment. Joseph Thomas had worked slightly less than five months at Uber when he killed himself.

But there is an exception to the six-month rule. It doesn’t apply “if the psychiatric injury is caused by a sudden and extraordinary employment condition,” according to California law.

San Francisco attorney Richard Richardson, who represents Zecole Thomas and her sons, said Thomas’ situation may be one of those exceptions.

“We think it was stress and harassment induced by his job, between him being one of the few African Americans there, working around the clock and the culture of Uber,” Richardson said. “And he couldn’t talk about it to anyone because of nondisclosure agreements.”

The case is still in early stages. Uber refused Richardson’s request to depose Thomas’ immediate boss, but in mid-April an administrative law judge who oversees workers’ compensation cases said the supervisor must submit to a deposition. Unlike cases in a court of law, cases before California’s Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board are not public record.

The benefits could amount to about $722,000, part as a lump sum and part in weekly checks of $1,100 until both boys, currently ages 7 and 9, are 18, Richardson said.

For Zecole Thomas, mourning the loss of the husband she met in 11th grade, it was “baffling and confusing” to be denied workers’ compensation. “He had a great work ethic; he devoted his life to work,” she said. “I was sure they would reciprocate.”

Exacerbating that, Thomas’ life insurance policy will not pay out because he died by suicide.

She sold their dream house — the first they’d owned — because California was too expensive, and moved to North Carolina. She’s working as a project coordinator with a small company and pursuing a master’s degree in analytics and cybersecurity. “I’m trying to rebuild my life and generate enough income to provide for my two children,” she said.

“I just don’t understand it. He was young, successful, smart; he had everything going for himself. I never in my life thought I would be without him. It’s devastating.”

USA: Uber Executive Resigns After Harassment Complaints

A new engineering executive at Uber left Monday after the ride-sharing titan learned he ended his career at Google after a sexual harassment complaint, according to US media reports.

Amit Singhal has denied acting in any such improper manner while head of search at Google but did not disclose that there had been an internal investigation that ended with the complaining employee found "credible," , which shared what it had learned about the situation with Uber.

Singhal, a well known figure in Silicon Valley, worked at Google for 15 years before retiring early last year. He was recently hired by Uber as senior vice president of engineering.

Nothing about the complaint at Google was uncovered in a background check done on Singhal before being hired by Uber, Recode and other outlets reported.

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick asked Singhal to resign early Monday for not disclosing the investigation, according to Recode.

Singhal condemned harassment in any setting and said "I do not condone and have not committed such behavior."

Accusations of sexism, cut-throat management, and a toxic work environment have Uber trying to pull its image out of a skid as competition revs in the on-demand ride market.

Uber hired former attorney general Eric Holder to review workplace conditions after ex-employee Susan Fowler alleged sexual harassment and sexism at the firm in a detailed online post.

A New York Times report on Friday depicted an environment at Uber in which workers were pitted against one another and misbehavior by top performers was overlooked.

Controversies threaten to revive a #DeleteUber campaign triggered by Kalanick´s short-lived plan to be part of a business advisory group for US President Donald Trump.

Kalanick quit the group under pressure from a growing movement to stop using the ride-sharing service because of his connection to the new administration, and by extension an anti-immigrant agenda.

As the campaign picked up speed, rival Lyft´s popularity accelerated.

Meanwhile, the race to develop self-driving vehicles took a turn last week when Google´s parent company Alphabet filed a lawsuit against Uber, accusing it of using stolen technology.

Alphabet contends that a manager at its autonomous car subsidiary Waymo took technical data with him when he left to launch a competing venture that went on to become Otto, Uber´s self-driving vehicle unit, in a reported $680 million deal.

San Francisco-based Uber acquired commercial transport-focused tech startup Otto last year as it pressed ahead with a pursuit of self-driving technology.

In the eyes of consumers, Uber´s controversies pack together into "a snowball of trouble rolling down the hill getting bigger and bigger," said brand management specialists Bruce Turkel.

Uber Raising Billions

It feels like almost every other week there is a new headline about Uber raising more money. "Uber Closes $1.6 Billion in Financing.'' "Uber Turns to Saudi Arabia for $3.5 Billion Cash Infusion.'' Last week, we got this one: "Uber to Raise Up to $2 Billion in Leveraged-Loan Market.''

If you add up all the money Uber has raised since it started in 2009 the idea was born when its founders became annoyed that they could not get a cab in Paris the ride-hailing app company is on its way to amassing a colossal $15 billion. That's real cash, not some funny-money, paper-based valuation. (That figure is $68 billion.)

It has done all this while still managing to remain a private company, and its chief executive, Travis Kalanick, has insisted that a public offering is not coming soon. "I'm going to make sure it happens as late as possible," he has repeatedly said.

So what exactly is Uber doing with all that money? And what does it say about Uber and the financial markets that the company has turned most recently to selling the equivalent of junk bonds?

Yes, Uber has to finance an all-out war to gain market share in China and India. But there is more to it than that: Uber's money-grab is seemingly part of an unspoken strategy to mark its territory.

Every time Uber raises another $1 billion, venture capital investors and others may find it less attractive to back one of Uber's many rivals: Didi Chuxing, Lyft, Gett, Halo, Juno. In other words, Uber's fund-raising efforts have seemingly become part of the contest: It's not just a rivalry over customers and drivers; it's a war of attrition, a mad scramble to starve the competition of cash.

At the moment, Uber's success has had the opposite effect: It has spawned a long list of rivals, big and little guys who say, "We can do it too." But over time, as the smaller competitors run out of cash — after heavily subsidizing riders in an effort to steal business from Uber — venture capitalists should be less inclined to put up even more cash to go up against Fortress Uber.

Uber's fund-raising arms race comes against the backdrop of falling valuations for many Silicon Valley unicorns — private companies worth $1 billion or more. So there's clearly a rush to take the money while it's still available.

"It's not the second inning or even the sixth, it's the 14th inning in a five-hour baseball game," Bill Gurley, the famed venture capitalist who has as a stake in Uber and sits on its board, warned on his blog about the state of Silicon Valley. He alerted investors about unicorns that come to them seeking funds: "You are not being invited to a special dance, you are being approached because you are the lender of last resort."

The ride-sharing industry has long been seen as a zero-sum game because of the "network effect": The more customers sign up for Uber, the more drivers sign up, making it tougher for rivals to mount competition. There will most likely be only one or two significant players in any given market. More on that in a moment, because there might be some cracks emerging in that point of view.

The question is whether the financing game is zero-sum too. And the even larger question is whether Uber's eye-popping capital investments could ultimately act as a deterrent to investors who might consider supporting Uber's competitors: Will they look at Uber's balance sheet — it has some $6 billion in cash just sitting there — and throw up a white flag?

So far, Uber is clearly winning the valuation game: It is worth more than virtually all of its rivals combined.

But Uber still has formidable competition in the fund-raising arena: Didi, the market leader in China that is engaged in a money-losing battle with Uber, just raised $7 billion, some of which came from Apple. Mr. Kalanick, too, was hoping to raise money from Apple and had planned to meet with executives at the iPhone maker the same week Apple announced its investment in Didi.

Perhaps strangely, several of the same investors that have backed Uber are also backing Didi in China, including BlackRock and Tiger Global, so it is hard to say that one service is deterring investment in the other at least not yet. It is worth noting that among the investor class, some may be hoping that Uber might one day merge its Chinese operation with Didi.

Uber's most recent fund-raising effort focused on the leveraged loan market — aims to avoid diluting the current base of shareholders. It has hired Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to sell about $2 billion in loans. By avoiding a traditional round of financing, the company also avoids the company having to risk trying to sell itself at an even higher valuation.

Given the remarkably low interest rates, investors looking for yield may buy into Uber.

Uber says it is profitable in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Australia — if you factor out taxes and interest payments. The challenge for Uber is breaking into China and India, perhaps the two largest markets in the world. Uber is currently on track to lose about $2 billion annually in those markets as it heavily subsidizes customers and drivers to gain market share.

That means that Uber will have to pay up for the financing. But if Uber's valuation continued to grow, it would be a bargain compared with the value of the equity. Uber is hoping to sell debt with a yield of about 4 or 4.5 percent.

Uber's I.P.O. will probably come to pass in the next three to four years. That's because some of the convertible debt it previously issued provides investors with a special discount if the company has not gone public by then.

But by 2018 or 2019, at the rate Uber is going, who knows how much money Uber will have raised. It may need none.

CANADA: Air Canada Extends Montreal to San Francisco Service

Air Canada announced Friday that the company is extending its Montreal to San Francisco service to a year-round offering.

Members of the Montreal tech community will be among those happy to see the change, particularly startups and venture capital firms travelling to Silicon Valley.

“Air Canada is solidifying its position as the only airline offering non-stop service between Montreal and California, with up to five flights per day," said Air Canada’s Marcel Forget. "Both our San Francisco and Los Angeles flights have been scheduled to enable easy connections to Air Canada's extensive domestic and international network via Montreal."

Beginning in November 2013 the previously seasonal route will change to accommodate growing demand. At least one flight will leave Montreal every day at 5:35 in the evening and return from San Francisco every morning at 8:10. The company said both business and leisure passengers made a strong case for the extension.

Montreal-Trudeau Airport served more than 6.2 million of the airline’s customers in 2012 and operates more than 100,000 of Air Canada’s flights every year to 67 destinations.

One tech entrepreneur who was pleased with the announcement is 5by CEO and angel investor Greg Isenberg. The Montrealer frequently travels between the two North American cities.

Isenberg said it’s an easy decision to choose Air Canada over a lower-priced competitor like US Airway’s full-day Air Wisconson flight. Unlike the latter, Air Canada’s service to San Francisco takes about five hours and comes with its signature in-flight entertainment for a “relaxing experience.”

The only problem for startups is the price, said Isenberg. “My issue with Air Canada is it’s so expensive if you book within two weeks of the flight,” he told Techvibes. “Especially for early tech entrepreneurs it's almost inaccessible. It’s great for VCs, it’s great for angel investors or successful founders, but I don’t think it solves the problem for the people who need it the most.”

All flights will be operated with the Airbus A319 aircraft. Furthermore, the Montreal-San Francisco flights are timed to offer connections with the carrier's international flights from Montreal-Trudeau airport to a host of international and domestic Canadian locations.

Isenberg added that when he does fly Air Canada, the usual suspects are typically on the same plane. “It’s always the people you’d expect: those from Real Ventures, from iNovia Capital, etc.”

GERMANY:Lufthansa To Introduce New Non-stop Flights Between Frankfurt And San Jose

Lufthansa is to introduce a new non-stop service between Frankfurt and San Jose, California (USA). The new service, which will commence on 29 April 2016, will be the first non-stop flights to the state’s Silicon Valley from a European airport. The five-times-weekly service will be operated using Airbus A340-300 equipment.

The new westbound LH 488 service will operate on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, departing from Lufthansa’s Frankfurt hub in the morning and arriving in San Jose in the early afternoon after a 12-hour flight. The corresponding eastbound LH 489 service will operate as a night flight, leaving San Jose in the afternoon and arriving in Frankfurt the following morning. The schedules have been designed to provide the best possible connections with other Lufthansa services from and to Germany, Europe, Asia and Africa at the Frankfurt hub.

The San Jose metropolitan region has a population of around 3.3 million and lies in the heart of Silicon Valley, the major site of high-tech start-ups and corporations. Alongside many of the most famous names in the internet world, the area is also home to several leading companies in the biotech, pharmaceuticals and medical sectors. And a number of major car manufacturers have their research labs there, too.

San Jose is also an attractive tourist destination, serving as an ideal starting point to explore Northern California. Big Sur, Yosemite National Park, Lake Tahoe and other key attractions are all close by, making San Jose a genuine travel alternative to San Francisco, which is just 70 kilometers away.

Lufthansa is the first airline in Europe to offer non-stop service to San Jose, whose airport is increasingly developing into an international hub. Since its new international terminal was completed, the airport has welcomed new non-stop services to various destinations, including Tokyo and Beijing.

Lufthansa travellers to and from San Jose will have three seating classes to choose from: Business Class, Premium Economy and Economy. For further information and/or bookings visit LH.com or call the Lufthansa Service Center on 210 6175200. Flights can also be booked via Lufthansa’s travel agency partners.