Workspace Experience Lead

Trip.com (Ctrip) and China's online travel revolution: what it means for global tourism and business. When James Liang co-founded Ctrip in Shanghai in 1999, China had fewer than 9 million internet users and booking a hotel room online was still a novelty. Twenty-seven years later, the company he helped build - now rebranded as Trip.com Group - is the world's second-largest online travel agency by gross merchandise value, serving over 400 million registered users across more than 200 countries and generating $7.7 billion in revenue in 2024. That trajectory tells a story about how a Chinese tech company turned domestic dominance into global reach - and what it means for Western travel industry players, hospitality brands, and business travelers navigating the US-China corridor. From hotel helpline to digital giant: how Ctrip was built. Ctrip's origin story is deceptively simple. Liang, along with co-founders Neil Shen, Min Fan, and Qi Ji, began by offering telephone-based hotel booking services in Shanghai. The founding team recognized that China's hotel inventory was fragmented, pricing was opaque, and travelers - especially business travelers - had no reliable aggregation point. The company listed on NASDAQ in December 2003, raising $75 million at $18 per share. By the mid-2000s, Ctrip had become China's dominant OTA, commanding relationships with thousands of hotels, airlines, and package tour operators. Unlike Western competitors such as Expedia or Booking Holdings, Ctrip built its moat through a hybrid model combining offline call centers with online interfaces - acknowledging that Chinese travelers were still more comfortable with human agents for complex itineraries. That model proved durable even as mobile internet overtook desktop usage. The consolidation strategy: buying the competition. By 2015, China's online travel market had fragmented into a fierce battle between Ctrip, Qunar (a Baidu-backed flight search aggregator), and eLong (partly owned by Expedia). Rather than compete indefinitely, Ctrip executed one of China's most consequential internet-era M&A moves: it absorbed both rivals through stock swaps and strategic investments. Ctrip acquired a controlling stake in Qunar by exchanging shares with Baidu, and absorbed eLong entirely. The result was a near-monopoly on Chinese domestic OTA bookings - by 2016, Ctrip controlled an estimated 60 to 70 percent of China's online travel bookings by value. For Western travel industry players, this consolidation produced a strategic reality that still holds today: if you want meaningful distribution reach into the Chinese outbound traveler market - which totaled 155 million trips in 2019 before the pandemic - you essentially need to work with Trip.com Group. There is no credible alternative at scale. Going global: the Skyscanner acquisition and Trip.com rebrand. Ctrip's international ambitions crystallized in 2016 when it acquired Skyscanner, the Edinburgh-based flight search platform, for approximately $1.74 billion in cash. At the time, Skyscanner had 60 million monthly active users, primarily in Europe and the United States. The acquisition gave Ctrip direct access to Western consumer travel intent data and a recognized brand outside China - something it had been unable to build organically. Skyscanner continued to operate independently under Trip.com Group's ownership, preserving user trust in Western markets while benefiting from Ctrip's capital and inventory relationships. Ctrip simultaneously launched the Trip.com platform in 2019 as its international-facing OTA brand. This dual-brand approach - letting each product serve its core user base while sharing back-end infrastructure - mirrors the kind of market-specific localization strategy that has defined Geely's management of Volvo, Lotus, and Polestar as distinct brand entities after Chinese acquisition. Today, Trip.com Group's portfolio spans Trip.com (international), Ctrip (China domestic), Skyscanner (flight meta-search), and investments in MakeMyTrip (India) and other regional players. The company is headquartered in Shanghai and is registered in the Cayman Islands as a holding structure; its principal operating entity, Trip.com Group Limited, discloses corporate structure and investor relations on its official investor portal. The company has meaningful distribution presence at virtually every major point in the global travel market. The Chinese outbound traveler: why the numbers matter. Prior to COVID-19, Chinese international tourism had been the world's largest outbound travel market by spending for six consecutive years. In 2019, Chinese tourists spent an estimated $254.6 billion abroad, per the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO). Chinese visitors to the United States spent roughly $36 billion annually at peak, per US Department of Commerce National Travel and Tourism Office (NTTO) data. Recovery has been consistent. By 2024, Chinese outbound trips recovered to approximately 130 million annually, and Trip.com Group reported international gross merchandise value growing over 70 percent year-on-year. For US hotels, airlines, attractions, and destination marketing organizations, this recovery demands proactive engagement. Western hospitality brands that want Chinese traveler bookings need distribution agreements, translated content, and pricing visibility on Trip.com and Ctrip - simply listing on Booking.com or Expedia is insufficient. Trip.com's Chinese users book differently, research differently, and respond to different trust signals than Western OTA users. Business Travel and the US-China corridor. Beyond leisure, Trip.com Group is deeply embedded in China's corporate travel infrastructure. Its Trip.Biz division serves more than 700,000 enterprise clients in China, managing air, hotel, and expense reporting integrations. For multinational companies with China operations - including US firms managing bilateral teams - a significant share of China-based employee travel flows through Trip.Biz systems, even for foreign-owned companies. US companies managing cross-border teams frequently encounter inventory gaps and pricing discrepancies when using Western corporate travel tools for China-based itineraries. GDS-connected systems that work reliably for domestic US travel often miss inventory or show premium pricing for the same China itineraries that Trip.Biz surfaces at standard rates. This is a practical version of the broader challenge that separates companies that operate effectively in China from those that impose Western infrastructure on a market that runs on different systems. AI integration and the platform evolution. Trip.com Group's competitive positioning has increasingly shifted from transactional booking to AI-driven travel intelligence. The company's "TripGenie" AI assistant, substantially upgraded through 2025, uses large language models trained on travel-specific data to generate personalized itineraries, handle visa questions, and manage real-time rebooking during disruptions. With hundreds of millions of completed trip records in its training dataset, Trip.com's AI advantage is difficult for Western OTAs to close quickly. CEO Jane Sun - who joined Ctrip in 2005 and became CEO in 2016 - has positioned technology as the company's primary growth lever. Trip.com Group spent approximately 11 percent of its 2024 revenue on R&D, a ratio more consistent with a pure technology firm than a travel services company. Hotels and airlines that want Trip.com to surface their inventory prominently need structured data feeds compatible with the platform's AI ranking systems - not just static listings. US listing, PCAOB compliance, and investor considerations. Trip.com Group is listed on both NASDAQ (TCOM) and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (9961.HK), having added the HK dual listing in 2021. The move was a direct response to the regulatory environment facing Chinese companies on US exchanges - particularly the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) audit access disputes that threatened to delist dozens of Chinese companies from US markets between 2021 and 2023. Unlike some Chinese tech peers, Trip.com Group reached audit compliance agreements with the PCAOB, allowing it to maintain its US listing. Its revenue base remains predominantly China-centric, making financial performance sensitive to both domestic Chinese economic conditions and bilateral travel policy. US-China flight capacity restrictions - which remained well below 2019 levels through much of 2024 - directly constrain Trip.com's most profitable international corridor. As bilateral air access normalizes, Trip.com Group stands among the primary beneficiaries. What Western partners and operators should do. For US travel operators - hotels, cruise lines, destination marketing organizations, car rental companies - Trip.com Group is not optional for Chinese traveler distribution. The company maintains a global partner program for accommodation and transportation providers, with API connectivity standards comparable to Western OTAs. For any organization managing meaningful exposure to China-linked travel and commerce, the broader lesson from Trip.com Group's story applies across Chinese technology sectors: what looks from the outside like a protected domestic market can, with capital discipline and strategic acquisitions, become a platform for genuine global competition. The Skyscanner deal was not opportunistic - it was a deliberate purchase of distribution in markets where organic growth would have taken a decade. That is a playbook visible across Chinese industry, from Wanxiang's quiet industrial acquisitions in the American Midwest to Geely's European brand-building. Understanding it, and knowing how to partner with the companies executing it, is foundational for any professional operating at the intersection of US and Chinese commerce.

Latest (worldwide) travel news. Read the latest worldwide travel news, right here, in peace. (If you can't see the travel news below, try turning off ad blockers). refresh. Booking Holdings inc. to present at the Citi 2026 Global TMT Conference. NORWALK, Conn., Aug. 25, 2026 /PRNewswire/ - Booking Holdings (NASDAQ: BKNG) today announced that Chief Executive Officer Glenn Fogel will participate in a keynote session at the Citi 2026 Global TMT Conference, held in New York City, on September 8, beginning at 3:55pm ET. A live audio cast of the presentation will be available to the public at https://ir.bookingholdings.com/events, and a replay will be available approximately 24 hours later. About Booking Holdings Booking Holdings (NASDAQ: BKNG) is the world leader in online travel and services that support the entire travel journey. Its platforms - including Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda, KAYAK and OpenTable - utilize advanced AI, machine learning and other innovative technologies to simplify and personalize the travel experience for consumers and partners in over 220 countries and territories. Its mission is to make it easier for everyone to experience the world. For more information, visit BookingHoldings.com and follow Omventure on X @BookingHoldings. SOURCE Booking Holdings