(Yicai Global) Sept. 25 -- Koubei, the local commerce platform run by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. [NYSE:BABA], will partner up with Ctrip Gourmet List, an independent brand owned by travel giant Ctrip.com International Ltd. [NASDAQ:CTRP], in order to meet consumers' increasingly individualized demands for online and offline catering services.

The pair announced the strategic partnership today, Sina Tech reported. After the deal, the Ctrip subsidiary will provide users with restaurant and catering service recommendations by crawling popularity ratings, customer reviews and discount information on Koubei.com.

Koubei app users can find restaurants on Ctrip Gourmet List in dozens of Chinese tourist cities, such as Beijing, Qingdao and Kunming. The list of restaurants can also be found in the Koubei section of Alipay, the mobile payment service run by Alibaba. Koubei will mark all restaurants included in Ctrip Gourmet List with a gourmet icon, listing them as highly recommended vendors.

In exchange, the Ctrip unit will display restaurant photos, ratings and reviews from Koubei. Its users will be able to collect discount coupons offered by Koubei.

Ctrip Gourmet List has released restaurant ranking lists covering more than 100 cities worldwide since its inception in December 2016. About 70 percent of the near 20,000 eateries are in foreign countries. By contrast, Koubei focuses only on China, and lists more than 1.6 million restaurants. Users post an average of more than a million customer reviews on the platform every day.