Trip.com Group Stock

Trip.com Group Limited is a leading one-stop travel platform globally. The company is integrating a comprehensive suite of travel products and services and differentiated travel content. Users come to the company’s platform for any type of trip, from in-destination activities, weekend getaways, and short-haul trips, to cross-border vacations and business trips. The company’s product and service portfolio cover offerings that appeal to both its domestic users and its growing global user base.

Platform

The company’s one-stop travel platform connects its users and its ecosystem partners. Leveraging the company’s AI capabilities and travel insights accumulated over the past over 22 years, it has evolved from an emerging online travel transaction platform to a one-stop travel platform integrating a comprehensive suite of travel products and services and differentiated travel content. The company’s platform aggregates its product and service offerings, reviews and other content shared by its users based on their real travel experiences, and original content from its ecosystem partners to enable leisure and business travelers to have easy access to enjoyable travel experiences and make informed and cost-effective bookings.

As a result of its leading position in travel markets and the company’s vast user base, its platform has attracted ecosystem partners across multiple sectors, including accommodation reservation, transportation ticketing, packaged tours, and in-destination activities. The company provides its ecosystem partners with a variety of technology-enabled solutions and help them establish an online presence, access its massive and global user base, and engage with users in real time. In addition, since 2018, the company has been rolling out content sharing features on its platform, which allow users to discover, explore, and share travel-related content featuring destination reviews and travel experiences and tips, thereby further enriching the ecosystem surrounding its platform.

Omni-Channel Touchpoints for Users

The company is the go-to travel platform for travelers in China and has been increasing its influence in target markets around the world. The company is committed to providing each user with a personalized, convenient, enjoyable, and inspirational travel experience.

Online Channels: The company’s online channels consist of its mobile applications, other mobile access channels, and websites. The company’s online reservation and fulfillment infrastructure enables its users to explore, search, reserve, and purchase travel products and other value-added services through its online channels in China, and has continued to expand globally. For the year ended December 31, 2022, over 90% of its total transaction orders were executed through the company’s mobile channels. The company maintains its main sites of Ctrip and Qunar through its subsidiaries, Ctrip Commerce (VIE), and Qunar Beijing (VIE) in China, and over time, it has established localized sites for users outside China. As of December 31, 2022, the company’s products and services through Trip.com were available in 25 languages and 30 local currencies and local sites, and its products and services through Skyscanner were available in 35 languages and over 50 countries and regions globally.

The company offers personalized home pages based on user profiles or past transactions and display travel products and services based on geolocation and other travel insights. While placing an order, users are prompted with options to customize their trips with packaged deals or additional value-added services for their convenience, such as travel insurance, car rental, or hotel deals. All products and services are shown with full price transparency. The company’s itinerary management tools enable users to review and manage their orders and itineraries. The company encourages users to submit ratings, reviews, and recommendations to its platforms during their trips and after they return from their trips. Leveraging the company’s content sharing feature, users are inspired by new travel ideas, make informed travel decisions, and share their travel experiences in an engaging community.

Offline Channels: In addition to its seven customer service centers located in China and abroad, the company has offline stores with its business partners to serve its users who prefer an in-person experience. In offline stores, the company provides users with one-stop services, such as travel consultation services and other local support and assistance. In 2022, the company streamlined and optimized its offline stores to strengthen its competitive advantage of online channels. As of December 31, 2022, the comopany had approximately 4,000 offline stores across approximately 300 cities in China.

User-Centric Approach: The company’s users are at the center of its business’s philosophy and operations. Since its inception, the company has constantly focused on building trust with its users and creating a more personalized, convenient, enjoyable, and inspirational travel experience. The company provides a broad spectrum of travel products and services that accompany its users throughout their entire journey, from idea inspiration, trip research and planning, to informed decision-making, travel booking, in-destination activities, on-the-journey support, and post-travel sharing of travel experiences. The company consistently refines its product interfaces to enable an increasingly frictionless booking experience for its users with full transparency in pricing, terms, and value-added services. The company extends good care for its users by providing 24/7 user support all along their trips.

Open Platform for Ecosystem Partners

The company adopted an open platform business model to attract and facilitate customized travel offerings by ecosystem partners covering various sectors in the travel vertical. The company’s open platform strategy allows ecosystem partners to join its open platform and directly post their own product and service offerings on its platform alongside products and services that are negotiated with business partners and offered by it.

The company’s ecosystem partner base includes hotels and other accommodation providers, airlines and other air ticket partners, train ticket partners, car rental companies, bus operators, ferry carriers, other travel agencies from whom it sources travel products and services, and value-added service partners. The company also opened up its platform to international partners, search engines, e-commerce platforms, and other channels to expand their business opportunities and increase the offerings available to its users. As of December 31, 2022, the company’s open platform provided over 1.1 million global accommodation listings, offered flights from over 510 airlines, and had a network of over 70,000 other ecosystem partners.

The company carries out ecosystem partner selection process to ensure the quality of product and service offerings to its users. When determining whether to accept a prospective ecosystem partner to its open platform, the company takes into account various factors, including reputation, industry expertise and know-how, price competitiveness, and track record of delivering high-quality products and services. The company also has streamlined the contracting process for ecosystem partners by using an e-contract system on its open platform. The company sets high service standards and manages product and service quality of its ecosystem partners through screening and ratings. The company monitors its ecosystem partners’ performance based on user feedback. Ecosystem partners with good performance will be rewarded, while those with negative reviews will be flagged for improvement.

Products and Services

The company offers accommodation reservation, transportation ticketing, packaged tours, and corporate travel management services, as well as other travel-related services to meet the various booking and traveling needs of both leisure and business travelers through its travel platform. The company offers accommodation reservation and transportation ticketing services. The company is driving the transformation of travel experience and the adoption of online- and mobile- based travel booking solutions for leisure and business travelers in China and globally. The company captures evolving user preferences and provide travel content, as well as travel products and services to make travel effortlessly enjoyable. In addition, the company offers various other products and services, including packaged-tour and in-destination activity products and services, corporate travel management services, and other travel-related services, such as car services, travel-related financing and insurance, and visa services to meet the various booking and traveling needs of both leisure and business travelers. The company’s users also have access to both user-generated and professionally-generated content through personalized content feeds and its search tools.

Some of the company’s business in China, mainly consisting of certain portion of internet content provision, advertising business, travel agency, and air-ticketing services, are conducted through Ctrip Commerce (VIE), Chengdu Ctrip (VIE), Shanghai Huacheng (VIE), Qunar Beijing (VIE), and their subsidiaries.

Accommodation Reservation

Users can search, compare, and book accommodations on the company’s platforms based on their destination and detailed stay preferences, and may further filter and sort search results by price range, star category, location, brand, and amenities. The company also augments its accommodation reservation offerings with traveler ratings, reviews, recommendations, and tour guides.

The company acts as an agent in substantially all of its hotel-related transactions. The company generates substantially all of its accommodation reservation revenue through commissions from its hotel reservation partners through its platform. The company recognizes revenues when the reservation becomes non-cancelable, which is the point considered when it completes its performance obligation in accommodation reservation services. Contracts with certain hotel reservation partners contain incentive commissions that are typically subject to specific performance targets. The company generally receives incentive commissions from hotels through monthly arrangements based on performance targets of accommodation reservations where its users have completed their stay.

The company contracts with hotel partners for rooms under two agency models, the guaranteed allotment model and the on-request model. Under the guaranteed allotment model, a hotel guarantees it a specified number of available rooms every day, allowing the company to provide instant confirmations on such rooms to its users before notifying the hotel.

Transportation Ticketing

Users can search and book transportation tickets via the company’s online platform and customer service centers. The company’s search functions allow users to narrow search results by specifying preferences, such as time and mode of transportation, and it leverages its data analytics capability to help them book tickets that best suit their travel needs. As of December 31, 2022, the company’s transportation ticketing network covered over 220 countries and regions.

Air Tickets

The company sells air tickets as an agent for substantially all domestic PRC airlines and major international airlines operating flights. As of December 31, 2022, the company offered flights from over 510 global airlines, covering over 3,400 airports in over 220 countries and regions. The company’s air ticket booking engines source real-time availability and pricing information from direct connects to airlines’ booking systems and the global distribution system (GDS), a computerized network system that has real-time link to its ecosystem partners’ inventory.

In addition to selling air tickets, the company offers various options and services to help users travel with ease. Powered by the company’s route planning algorithms and travel supply, users can customize their trips by combining two or more of its core travel products, such as air tickets and hotels, which are typically offered as a package at discounted rates. The company also provides travel insurance products, such as flight delay insurance, air accident insurance, and baggage loss coverage, and various ancillary value-added services built around users’ air travel needs, such as air-ticket delivery, online check-in and seat selection, express security screening, real-time flight status tracker, and airport VIP lounge services.

Other Tickets

Other tickets covered by the company’s transportation ticketing service include train, long-distance bus, and ferry tickets. In connection with such ticketing services, the company also offers various other ancillary travel products and services that are designed to streamline the ticketing process.

Packaged Tours and In-Destination Activities

The company offers independent leisure travelers bundled packaged-tour products, as well as in-destination activity products and services, catering to its users’ evolving demands.

Packaged Tours

The company offers is users a wide range of bundled packaged-tour products on its platform provided by its ecosystem partners, including group tours, semi-group tours, customized tours, and packaged tours with different transportation arrangements, such as by air, cruise, bus, and car rental, covering domestic and international destinations. For example, the company focuses on securing diverse boutique travel products domestically, such as combinations of themed hotels and dining. The company provides integrated transportation and accommodation services and offers a variety of value-added services, including transportation at destinations, attraction tickets, local activities, insurance, visa services, and tour guides. The company also provides high-quality user support, supplier management, and customer relationship management services to packaged-tour providers.

In-destination Activities

Destinations are often defined by the activities available upon arrival. Over the years, users are seeking more novel experiences and are eager to do more memorable activities in the destinations. Driven by the rise of experiential travel, the company offers a variety of in-destination products and services, such as in-destination dining and shopping, day tours of popular tourist destinations, attraction and show tickets, customized tour guide services, and virtual tour assistant. Users not only have plenty of options for what and when to book in-destination activities, but also can book at the last minute in a quick and straightforward manner on the company’s platform. As of December 31, 2022, the company offered approximately 300,000 in-destination activities around the world. As more and more countries and regions are reopening the borders and lifting quarantine measures, the company is enriching its offerings of in-destination products and services to meet the needs of the market and expand its business.

Corporate Travel Management

In addition to serving individual users, the company serves corporate clients with similar products and services to help them plan business travel in a cost-efficient way. The company serves approximately 730,000 small and medium-sized enterprises as well as over 14,000 large enterprises, including over 300 Fortune 500 companies and approximately 200 of the Top 500 Chinese Enterprises.

The company provides its corporate clients with business visits, incentive trips, meetings and conferences, travel data collection and analysis, industry benchmarking, cost savings analysis, and travel management solutions. The company has independently developed its Corporate Travel Management System, which is an online platform integrating information management, online booking, online authorization, online inquiry, and travel reporting systems.

Other Travel-Related Services

The company’s other travel-related services primarily include online advertising and financial services. The company provides marketing planning and travel media services to its ecosystem partners, as well as a wide range of advertising services to pan-industry brand partners. Based on its travel product and service offerings, user base, and industry value chain, the company also has obtained necessary licenses to facilitate users and ecosystem partners on its platform with its financial services, which mainly cover consumer financing, supply-chain financing, and a range of digital solutions for its users and ecosystem partners.

Content Offerings

The company consolidates and aggregates travel-related content for its users to help them get inspired by new travel ideas, make informed travel decisions, and share their travel experiences. The company’s users have free access, through personalized content feeds and its search tools, to both user-generated content shared by travelers based on their real travel experiences and professionally-generated content, including its official selections and content produced by professional travel bloggers, KOLs, and its ecosystem partners.

Reviews: The company provides its users with detailed, authentic, and transparent information on its product and service offerings based on its users’ in-depth reviews and detailed ratings. The company has been refining its user review framework to improve authenticity, objectivity, and relevance of its review and rating system, creating a feedback loop for it to refine its products and services, enhance users’ search experience, and enable them to rely on it for making well-informed travel decisions.

Community: The company’s community integrates the online travel content sharing features on its platform with its product and service offerings, so that its users can discover, explore, and share travel-related content, such as destination travel experiences and tips. In addition, leveraging its AI technology and travel insights, it is able to push tailored recommendations to its users while they are browsing through its community.

Selections and Recommendations: The company provides its users with various lists of selected and recommended product and service offerings, such as popular destinations, themed activities, restaurant guides, and special deals. The company’s selections and recommendations help inspire its users’ next great getaway, from long weekend escapes to must-see destinations and to bucket-list adventures from around the globe.

Live Streaming: In March 2020, the comopany launched its first mobile BOSS live streaming event featuring a live tour by its management team and Trip.com live streaming series. Since then, the comopany has upgraded its live streaming channel into a platform with integrated resources and content. In addition to its official channel, its live streaming platform also hosts professionally-generated content contributed by professional travel bloggers, KOLs, and its ecosystem partners. The company has collaborated with leading international hotel brands to offer its users discounts on luxury hotels through live streaming. The company’s live streaming has also showcased destinations around the world with featured international travel products, attracting millions of views by its users.

User Support

The company provides user support online and offline through multiple channels, such as calls, instant messaging, email, and social networks, in multiple media formats, such as voice, text, image, and video, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. As of December 31, 2022, the company had seven customer service centers located in China and abroad, such as Shanghai, Nantong, Guangzhou, Manila, Tokyo, Seoul, and Edinburgh. These customer service centers are staffed with in-house travel specialists who have participated in a formal training program before commencing work. The company also provides comprehensive aftersales services, including aftersales support, pre-travel warnings, major incident compensation, a special situation refund policy, and emergency support, among others.

In 2016, the company launched the first travel safety center in China. The service center established seven mechanisms to provide travelers with more protection, including the application of the global supplier travel safety standards, travel warning centers, a global travel destination emergency assistance mechanism, major disaster protection funds, a special reason cancelation policy, global travel insurance and rescue services, and a tour guide responsibility mechanism. The company provides its users with travel insurance service including insurance consultation and claim settlements, from delayed and cancelled trips to accidental injury treatment, through one of the VIEs with insurance license.

In 2017, the company launched the first global travel SOS service in China. Users who book a trip from the company’s platforms have access to 24/7 emergency support. The SOS service covers three major categories support in emergencies, such as natural disasters and terrorist attacks; support in case of injury or illness during the journey, including assistance in medical treatment, delivery of medicines, and translation services; and assistance provided when valuables are lost during the journey, including assistance in the recovery of lost property and eventually bringing the property back to the home country.

Technology

AI Technologies

The company’s technology platform is empowered by AI and other proprietary technologies. The company’s platform processes a massive amount of travel-related data. The company leverages various AI technologies, such as natural language processing, speech recognition, computer vision, and conversational AI to inform various applications, such as traffic forecasting, civil aviation big data analysis, flight delay prediction, a tourism knowledge graph, and especially, improved customer services to its global user base, among others. The application of the AI technologies benefits not only the company’s users, but also its ecosystem partners.

For its users, the company’s technologies enable personalized recommendations, a streamlined user experience, enhanced user engagement, and the sharing and viewing of user-generated content. The company uses both public and private cloud technologies to optimize operational efficiency. Some of the core technologies underlying the company’s user support include CtripIM, a self-developed instant messenger system which offers a streamlined problem-solving process; Softswitch, which enables it to securely encrypt users’ displayed phone numbers to prevent leakage of sensitive user information; and SoftPBX, a telephone system software that distributes calls through the intranet to different operators after the user’s phone call is connected. These technologies enable the company to handle user requests more efficiently, support its users in times of traffic spikes, enhance system stability, and ensure consistent availability to its users.

For the ecosystem partners, the company’s technologies enable marketing and optimize operating efficiency based on traveler preference and accurate demand predictions. The company offers a variety of solutions to its ecosystem partners, such as E-booking System for accommodation partners, which provides standardized information input to accommodation partners to digitalize their offerings; and pricing error monitoring system for airfare, which detects flight tickets with abnormally low fares (bug fares) using anomaly detection models based on massive historical and real-time airfare data.

Proprietary Search and Transaction Engines

The company applies proprietary technologies in flight ticket search and accommodation search and transactions, which help it attract and retain users and improve their experiences on its platform. These technologies are able to process data that covers the global product offerings available on the company’s platform, use optimized algorithms to reduce computational cost, shorten search latency and processing time, and generate relevant results swiftly to ensure good user experience.

The company’s technologies for flight ticket searches include a search engine and personalized recommendation system. These technologies can support hundreds of millions of queries per day. The technology has covered departure or arrival cities worldwide and accommodates various languages. The company has also built intelligent tools and machine learning technologies for ecosystem partners to better price their products appropriately and strengthen their competitive positions. The company provides deep integration of travel information technology systems with online transaction platforms, which further decreases airlines’ operating cost and maximizes revenue.

The company’s technologies for accommodation searches include a hotel matching system and model algorithms. These technologies can support billions of queries per day, with an industry leading average response time. The technology connects hotel sales sites in countries and regions around the world and supports multiple currencies and all major international credit card payments. As a result of the technology applied in accommodation search, the company is able to attract and retain users and improve their overall experiences.

Marketing and Brand Awareness

Through a combination of online and offline marketing, brand promotion, cross-marketing, and rewards program, the company has created strong brands that are commonly associated in China with travel products and services and user support. In addition, the company leverages word-of-mouth referrals among users to promote its brands. The company will continue to use its focused marketing strategy to further enhance awareness of its brands and acquire new target users.

Brand Advertising

The company operates through four leading travel brands, including Ctrip, a leading provider of online travel and related services in China; Qunar, a leading online travel agency in China; Trip.com, an online travel agency for global travelers; and Skyscanner, a leading global travel search company.

The company conducts its brand campaigns through advertising on video streaming platforms, targeted LCD displays in public spaces, and billboards at airports, railway stations, and bus stations. The company also works with celebrities in its marketing campaigns and embed its brand and travel products into live TV shows, movies, and other entertainment marketing channels.

Performance Advertising

The company has contracted with the majority of the leading online marketing channels, such as search engines, browsers, and navigation websites, to prominently feature its websites and have cooperated with online companies to promote its services, as well as conducting public relations activities. The company has purchased related keywords or directory links to direct potential users to its websites.

The company has also worked with major internet portals and leading mobile applications in their respective sectors to advertise locally and also have worked with top smart phone manufacturers to increase the number of its app downloads and promotes more activations and transactions. In addition, the company will be actively testing all kinds of innovative and rapidly growing mobile channels that may appeal to consumers.

Cross-Marketing

The company has entered into cross-marketing arrangements with major PRC domestic airlines, hotel chains, financial institutions, telecommunications service providers, e-commerce and internet companies, and other corporations. For example, the company’s airline partners and financial institution partners recommend its products and services to members of their mileage programs or bank card holders. Users can accumulate miles by booking air tickets through the company or earn points by paying through co-branded credit cards.

Seasonality

The company’s users generally come to its platform for travel products and services to satisfy their leisure and business trip needs. Therefore, the company’s business is subject to seasonal fluctuations. Since most of the company’s users are from China, to date, the third quarter of each year (year ended December 31, 2022) generally contributes the highest portion of its annual net revenues primarily due to the strong demand for both leisure and business travel activities during the summer.

Intellectual Property

The company’s intellectual property rights primarily include trademarks and domain names associated with the name Ctrip, Qunar, Trip.com, and Skyscanner and copyright and other rights associated with its websites, technology platform, booking software, and other aspects of its business.

As of December 31, 2022, the company had over 1,500 patents registered with the PRC Intellectual Property Administration, including over 500 invention patents, and over 900 pending patent applications in China.

As of the December 31, 2022, the company owned over 1,400 registered trademarks and approximately 100 pending trademark applications, in various categories with the Trademark Office of the PRC Intellectual Property Administration. In addition, the company had over 110 registered trademarks in various overseas countries and international jurisdictions. The company has registered its major trademarks Ctrip and simplified Chinese characters for Ctrip, Ctrip (a combination of the Chinese and English characters for Ctrip), Trip.com, and Trip.com Group in various countries and regions.

As of December 31, 2022, the company held over 1,000 computer software copyrights and over 200 other copyrights registered with the PRC Copyright Administration.

As of December 31, 2022, the company had over 300 registered domain names in China, including ctrip.com, and approximately 30 registered domain names outside China, including trip.com, all of which have been registered with www.markmonitor.com, and it has full legal rights over these domain names.

Customers

The company has a broad base of customers, which primarily consist of its ecosystem partners, including airlines and other air ticket partners, hotel and alternative accommodation partners, and various value-added travel products and services partners, such as insurance companies. The company has cultivated and maintained good relationships with its ecosystem partners. The company’s customers also include but are not limited to users who purchase travel products that it sources from ecosystem partners, users who purchase ancillary value-added travel products and services, and advertisers who post advertisements of their products and services on its online platforms.

Strategic Investments and Acquisitions

In November 2019, the company and TripAdvisor, Inc. or TripAdvisor, agreed on a strategic partnership to expand global cooperation through various contracts. The company and TripAdvisor agreed through its respective subsidiaries to form and jointly control a joint venture.

History

The company was founded in 1999. The company was incorporated in 2000. It was formerly known as Ctrip.com International, Ltd. and changed its name Trip.com Group Limited in 2019.