The secret to Trip.com's resilience

Trip.com's ability to make money can no longer be concealed. Wind data shows that among the A-share tourism sector—including hotels, scenic areas, and airline transport—the combined net profit for the first three quarters was 19 billion yuan. Trip.com alone has a non-deducted net profit nearing 17 billion yuan. With about 10% of the industry’s revenue in the first three quarters, Trip.com captured about 90% of the profits. Thus, the industry says: "The entire tourism industry is working for Trip.com." Among all internet companies, Trip.com has also stood out in recent years, ranking first in 2024 and the first half of 2025 with a net profit margin of over 30%. Amid the tilted supply-demand pattern in the hotel and tourism sector, platform bargaining power has further increased, and as an industry leader, Trip.com has secured the core position in the value chain. Based on 2024 GMV, Trip.com's market share in the OTA field has reached 56%, more than triple other platforms like Tongcheng and Meituan. Late-comers have never stopped trying to seize the hotel and tourism market dividends: Meituan teamed up with Marriott, JD launched "zero commission," and Alibaba integrated Fliggy. While all sides sharpen their knives, Trip.com faces more scrutiny over controversies such as "big data price discrimination" and "automatic price adjustment." There are many challengers, but where is Trip.com's true moat? OTA's "good days"? OTA platforms mainly earn revenue by providing agent distribution services to resource providers and charging commissions. Under this model, platform revenue depends on transaction scale and commission rate. The commission rate is affected by dynamic supply-demand matching and the bargaining power of resource providers. Profit margins for domestic airline tickets have been greatly compressed after direct sales initiatives and commission model adjustments. By contrast, the hotel industry has long been fragmented and non-standardized; the platform's value in matching information cannot be offset by direct sales channels. In mature Western markets, hotels still need OTA channels for supplementary orders. In the US, 40% of bookings are made via OTAs, and high-end hotel chains like Marriott get about 10% of their orders from OTAs. In China, where hotel chain rates are lower, OTA bookings reach up to 70%. Such market disparity means platforms control commission rates, display ranking, and pricing strategies. Leaving the platform means losing a key online traffic gateway. Currently, Trip.com's commission for domestic airline and train tickets is around 2%, while hotel commissions have reached about 15%. For Trip.com, though revenue from ticketing and accommodation is similar in scale, selling hotels is far more profitable than selling tickets. Although hotels find it hard to leave OTA platforms, theoretically, the more centralized the industry, the stronger the bargaining power of self-built hotel channels, and the weaker the value of intermediaries and traffic windows. However, reality deviates from this. In the past two years, after the pandemic-induced clearing of supply, both the chain rate and market supply have soared. In 2024, China's total number of hotels exceeds 370,000, with nearly 30,000 net new scale hotels nationwide, and hotel RevPAR (average room revenue) dropped 6% year-on-year on top of a high base last year. With an excess supply, hotels’ demand for traffic is more urgent, and intensified competition further strengthens the platform’s advantage in partnerships. Sun Ping (pseudonym), who runs a high-end four-star hotel, told Xin Feng that since 2023, various OTA platforms have begun to increase commission costs in disguised forms. In addition to the roughly 15% base commission (slightly lower for chain hotels), hotels must also bear additional commissions from marketing activities and disguised charges for traffic promotion. Trip.com, for example, categorizes partner hotels as "Special, Gold, Silver," etc. The higher the level, the better the search ranking and traffic allocation on the platform, but higher levels also mean higher commission rates. The platform also offers "Pyramid" and "Cloud Ladder" traffic support tools. "Pyramid" is a PPC advertising product; "Cloud Ladder" lets hotels earn better display positions by raising commission rates. As hotel profit models come under pressure, conflicts between platforms and merchants become more prominent. Not long ago, Trip.com drew attention for "automatic price adjustment." According to The Paper, the "Price Adjustment Assistant" is a program embedded in Trip.com's merchant backend, which regularly scans prices of similar hotel products on other platforms, helping monitor whether prices are lower than competing platforms. If a hotel’s price is higher than others, the assistant can automatically lower the hotel’s base price or include the product in a promotion. Sun Ping said this mechanism has long existed, noting, "The platform itself doesn’t force price adjustments unless the hotel wants both to maintain its price level and get multi-platform traffic support." Recently, Trip.com rolled out a two-way review system, allowing hotels to leave negative feedback for guests with inappropriate behavior and improving malicious negative review management. However, the platform-dominated narrative won’t change in the short term. Sun Ping estimates that for individual hotels fully dependent on OTAs, actual commission costs are commonly as high as 20–30% of order value and still rising. A Fortress Difficult to Besiege Trip.com has never lacked challengers. While the industry debates "Trip.com takes most of the industry's profits," internet platforms like Douyin and JD are entering the market with low or even "zero commission" strategies. But OTA isn't simply a traffic business; it's backed by a complex chain of fulfillment and service. Douyin is shifting between OTA and group-buying strategies. Fliggy positions itself as an "OTP" (heavy transaction, light fulfillment) platform, both illustrating the business's depth and difficulty. Upstream hotels are geographically and organizationally scattered, requiring dedicated BD teams for liaison: upfront negotiations about commissions, reserved rooms, and details, plus ongoing maintenance and adjustments. This may explain why Meituan, famous for its strong offline promotion capabilities, can secure a place in this field. SeaChoice Capital founder Luo Haizi told Xin Feng that measured by room nights, Meituan’s hotel and travel volume may already exceed Trip.com. "That’s because local life service users and scenarios are naturally broader than long-distance travel." Since Meituan’s orders mainly stem from overflow traffic from its local life business, user consumption behaviors are more spontaneous and price-sensitive, with a focus on lower-star hotels—which contribute less commission per room. The lucrative mid-to-high-star hotel market is still dominated by Trip.com. Guoxin Securities analyst Zeng Guang estimates that mid-to-high-star hotels (3-5 stars) contribute about half of Trip.com’s hotel room nights, and about 80% of its domestic accommodation booking revenue—its core profit source. This market position first stems from Trip.com’s early-mover advantage. Through equity investment and strategic cooperation, Trip.com has deeply tied up with hotel groups like Huazhu, Atour, BTG, and upstream and downstream industry partners, building a solid supply chain base. According to iResearch data as of June 2025, Trip.com has 600,000 high-star hotels—far more than Meituan’s 350,000. Unlike food delivery, e-commerce, or local group buying, the hotel and travel sector is distinct for its "limited inventory." At specific times and places, the number of rooms is fixed: you can't increase production like with goods, or reschedule like food delivery. This limited supply means high-quality hotel resources are naturally exclusive, tending to cooperate long-term with stable, quality channels—reinforcing Trip.com’s structural moat born of its first-mover advantage. Industry characteristics also make pure price competition unsustainable in the OTA space. Tourism consumption is low-frequency, high-ticket, and high risk; users rarely want to switch platforms for important trips. For hotels, sudden surges in traffic from short-term marketing rarely transform into long-term value—especially for leading hotel groups, who generally resist OTA long-term subsidies and low-price competition disrupting their official pricing. Therefore, newcomers—even with traffic and capital advantages—struggle to shake up the existing order. A Meituan hotel and travel insider shared with Xin Feng that Meituan faces difficulties in post-sales support, with hotels responding less proactively to complaints than with Trip.com. Sun Ping further explained that hotels are sensitive to negative reviews on OTAs, but "value Trip.com more," saying, "The reason is simple: Trip.com has more and higher-quality customers." He added that many large groups and SOEs have strategic agreements with Trip.com where only Trip.com bookings qualify for reimbursement. Trip.com invests greatly in cultivating customer habits—refunding any dissatisfied customer or triple refunding. Consumers confirm this too: many complain on social media that hotels respond faster and are more attentive to Trip.com guests; some hotels even offer breakfast for positive reviews. In complex scenarios like overseas travel, Trip.com’s after-sales support is noticeably superior to other platforms. Its supply chain base and clientele reinforce Trip.com's platform barriers. As Founder Securities analyst Liu Zhangming observes: Trip.com's B-end (merchant) and C-end (user) advantages reinforce each other, creating a clear two-sided network effect and virtuous cycle. Currently, though some platforms use content marketing and major sales events to capture certain travel demand, the hotel and travel industry overall is facing weak demand growth and lacks new scenarios or new traffic gateways. "The most important thing is, amid excess supply, the OTA industry lacks real motivation to break the current profit model; hence, a fundamental change in market structure is hard," Luo Haizi said. Exploration Overseas Money earned from the domestic market is now being used by Trip.com for overseas expansion. As the core carrier of its international business, Trip.com's overseas brand Trip.com is highly anticipated by the group. Over the next 3–5 years, it is expected to maintain a compound growth rate of about 50%, increasing its revenue contribution to 15–20%, with the long-term goal of becoming a one-stop travel platform for global Asia-Pacific customers. As a "latecomer" challenging established OTA brands overseas, Trip.com actually faces less competition than domestic internet platforms. From a market landscape perspective, Asia's OTA market is less concentrated than the West, with lower online penetration, giving Trip.com ample room for growth. Especially in emerging markets in Southeast Asia, users skipped the PC era and entered mobile internet directly, favoring phones over PCs for internet access and consumption. In contrast, Booking still gets nearly half of orders from PC, helping Trip.com transplant its mature app-based domestic model abroad. Trip.com is trying to replicate successful domestic strategies and supply chain structures to overseas markets. By leveraging its supply chain originally built for outbound Chinese travelers, Trip.com can spread its operational costs and compete with lower commission rates than mature platforms like Booking and Expedia. Meanwhile, Trip.com continues building global service capabilities. To enter APAC, it has established local teams in Thailand, Korea, etc., adopted local payment systems, and set up multilingual customer service. Currently, Trip.com runs 18 international customer service centers with about 13,000 staff, and non-Chinese language service volume is now up to 72%. Especially as mainstream OTAs push AI for cost reduction, service differentiation becomes even more prominent. In 2024, Trip.com's international OTA platform kept annual revenue growth around 70%. In Q3, bookings rose about 60% YOY, with APAC up more than 50%. Luo Haizi believes the gap between Trip.com and platforms like Booking is "multiplicative" rather than just "quantitative." If Trip.com maintains 60% rapid growth, overtaking in APAC is within reach. As its scale grows, market expectations rise for substantial margin gains after breaking even. But the process could take time. GT Huatai Securities says that despite Trip.com's overseas business being profitable in Hong Kong and Singapore, overall scale effect is not formed and the company hasn't disclosed detailed gross margin data so far. Trip.com management stated early this year that, to consolidate Trip.com's APAC competitive position, sales spending will remain high, exerting continued pressure on profit. In the third quarter, excluding gains from the sale of India's MakeMyTrip stake, Trip.com's operating profit and adjusted EBITDA grew by 11% and 12% YOY, both below the revenue growth of 18% for the same period. Management said that in Q3, they launched "Mega Sale" campaigns in key markets—Korea, Thailand, Malaysia—driving record sales. As the global holiday season arrives, Trip.com plans to step up marketing investment, with marketing costs as a share of income likely to edge up sequentially; annual changes will depend on regional and channel mix. For now, Trip.com is far from becoming a money-making machine that can "lie flat." Risk Warning and Disclaimer The market carries risks; investment should be cautious. This article does not constitute personal investment advice, nor does it consider users’ individual investment goals, financial status, or needs. Users should consider whether any opinions, views, or conclusions in this article are suitable for their specific circumstances. Investment decisions made accordingly are at your own risk.