China's Trip.com Group Mimicks Partner Tripadvisor With New Content Offerings
Skift Take
China's Trip.com Group is entering the content and advertising spheres to address longstanding weaknesses in its transaction business. It joins a plethora of travel businesses that are remaking themselves, whether they are launching financial services or subscription offerings, during the pandemic.
Many travel businesses, whether it is Trip.com Group in China, Traveloka in Indonesia or Despegar in Argentina, are refashioning themselves during the pandemic.
For China's Trip.com, formerly known globally as Ctrip, it is trying to diversify away from its over-reliance on transactions, particularly because the hotel discounting frenzy in China, and its dependence on airline ticket sales, lead to sub-par commission levels.
In its fourth quarter and full-year 2020 earnings call earlier this month, Trip.com officials detailed how they are getting into the content business to get a line into airline, hotel and destinations' advertising budgets.
"We traditionally only made most of our money from commission," co-founder and Executive Chairman Jianzhang "James" Liang told analysts during the earnings presentation. "So it's really coming out of the sales budgets of airlines and destinations and hotels. Of course, as we know, they also have a marketing budget and branding budget, probably just as large and the same order magnitude, and it's just
