According to a LatePost report, Trip.com Group, together with Qunar (which it controls) and Tongcheng Travel (in which it is the largest shareholder), accounts for around 70% of gross merchandise volume (GMV) in China’s online hotel booking market.
The rest is divided among Meituan with about 20%, Fliggy with around 5%-7%, and Douyin with roughly 3%. A significant portion of the hotel rooms sold on Douyin are supplied by Trip.com and Tongcheng.
Such a high level of market concentration is rare among China’s internet platforms. Meituan’s food delivery business once commanded around 70% of the market, but that dominance lasted only until last year’s food delivery price war. In e-commerce, no single platform currently holds more than 40% market share.
But Trip.com’s advantage goes beyond having the largest market share. It also dominates the more valuable segments of the market.
China has around 570,000 hotels and homestays, and Trip.com connects more properties than any other platform. With more than 8,000 offline sales representatives and 14,000 online customer service staff, Trip.com maintains frequent contact with hotels and works to secure the lowest available rates.
According to industry sources, in the first half of 2025, Meituan led only in economy hotel room sales priced below RMB 200 (about USD 29.6) per night. Above that level, Trip.com ranked first in every price band, and its lead widened as room rates increased. For luxury hotels priced above RMB 1,000 (about USD 147.9) per night, Trip.com’s room sales were nearly five times the combined volume of Meituan, Fliggy and Douyin.
Trip.com also achieves strong profitability despite charging lower commissions than international online travel giants. Its overall blended commission rate was 4.4% in 2024, less than one-third of Booking’s 14.3%, Expedia’s 12.3% and Airbnb’s 13.6%. Yet Trip.com’s operating margin reached 26.6% in the same year, broadly in line with platforms such as Booking. By comparison, 2024 was Meituan’s strongest year for profitability, but the operating margin of its core local commerce segment—including food delivery, in-store services and travel—was only 20.9%.
The combination of low commission rates and high profitability is partly explained by differences in business models. Overseas online travel platforms are heavily focused on hotel bookings, with 30%-50% of their spending going toward buying traffic from Google. Trip.com, by contrast, serves as a one-stop travel platform covering flights, rail tickets and hotels, giving it built-in travel traffic. More importantly, China’s rapidly expanding hotel supply has intensified competition among properties, prompting hotels to increase advertising spending, creating another important source of profit for online travel platforms.
