China’s Tongcheng Travel Bids for Dida to Bring Ride-Sharing In-House

Key Points

• Tongcheng's $181.6M acquisition of Dida Chuxing continues its acquisition-led strategy to own the full travel journey, adding last-mile mobility to earlier deals in hotels (Wanda Hotel Management) and attractions (Dalian Shengya).
• Owning a mobility platform outright differentiates Tongcheng from Trip.com and Alibaba's Fliggy, which rely on partnerships and aggregators for transport supply; it is especially valuable given 87% of Tongcheng's paying users are in lower-tier cities with weaker public transit.
• As customer acquisition costs rise across China's OTA market, growth depends on retaining users and capturing more per-trip spend—and acquiring established players like Dida (415M users, 21M drivers, asset-light model) is faster than building from scratch, despite Dida's declining revenue and profit.

Summary

China's Tongcheng Travel has agreed to acquire ride-sharing platform Dida Chuxing for HK$1.42 billion ($181.6 million), marking the latest move in its strategy to own more of the end-to-end travel journey rather than simply reselling flights, trains, and hotels. The Dida deal follows Tongcheng's 2024 acquisitions of Wanda Hotel Management (strengthening "stay") and a controlling stake in Dalian Shengya (expanding into attractions and "experiences"), with Dida now filling the last-mile connectivity gap between bookings. This differentiates Tongcheng from rivals like Trip.com (which owns nearly 20% of Tongcheng) and Alibaba's Fliggy, both of which access mobility supply via partnerships and third-party aggregators rather than owning a platform outright. The strategic logic is amplified by Tongcheng's user base—over 87% of paying users come from China's lower-tier cities, where weaker public transport makes ride-sharing critical—and by an industry-wide shift toward retaining users and capturing more per-trip spend as customer acquisition costs rise. Despite Dida's own struggles (2025 revenue down 36%, net profit down 87%), its 415 million registered users, 21 million certified drivers, and asset-light marketplace model give Tongcheng an established mobility network in-house almost immediately.