Trip.com Group says it’s “well on track” for full recovery in the domestric China market.
Announcing second quarter results, James Liang, co-founder and executive chairman, says hotel and air bookings in China are showing positive growth again.
He says the company wants to apply its experience of recovery in China to help promote domestic products in other overseas markets.
“In the past two months, demand for hotel bookings by non-China customers have more than doubled compared to the same period last year.”
The group revealed net revenue of $469 million for the quarter, a decline of 64% year-on-year.
Revenue for the accommodation business was down 63% year-on-year to $190 million while transportation ticketing revenue declined 66% for the quarter to $176 million.
Packaged tour revenue for Q2 saw an 88% decline to revenue of $19 million year-on-year and corporate travel revenue was down 47% to $24 million compared to the same period in 2019.
Trip.com Group says sales and marketing expenses for Q2 decreased 69% to $97 million.
Commenting on the results, Jane Sun, chief executive, says Trip.com Group has seen full recovery in the domestic China market across several product lines in the past couple of months, including accommodation, air ticketing and some in-destination services.
She adds that pricing is down year-on-year but the “gap has narrowed month-by-month.”
Sun also touched on initiatives such as livestreaming, which are helping boost business.
“It has allowed to accurately capture demand amongst our mid to high-end customer base. To date, products sold through this channel have been priced at average of RMB1,200, and more than 60% of customers made repeat purchases throughout one or more live stream sessions.”
Looking ahead, the company expects a decrease in net revenue for Q3 of between 47% and 52%.
Commenting on speculation in July of plans to delist from the Nasdaq, Cindy Wang, chief financial officer, says there are no plans for privatization currently.