Leading online travel agency increases revenue, profit

Rising consumption power and growing demand for high quality travel products and services have fueled revenue and profits for China's leading online travel agency, Tongcheng-Elong, according its third quarter fiscal report.

The report, released on Monday, said the company's total revenue has increased by 22.3 percent from 1.68 billion yuan ($239.6 million) in the third quarter of 2018 to 2.062 billion in the third quarter of 2019, which ended on Sept 30.

Its profit increased by 33.2 percent from 314.7 million yuan in 2018 to 419.2 million in the third quarter of 2019.

Revenue from accommodation reservation services, the company's main business, has increased by 34.5 percent from 515.7 million yuan to 693.7 million yuan in the same period, year-on-year.

The company's gross merchandise volume for the three months achieved a year-to-year growth of 21.7 percent, and reached 47.6 billion yuan.

For the three months that ended Sept 30, the company's average monthly active users increased by 13.4 percent to 234 million.

Its average monthly paid users continued to grow rapidly by 31.9 percent to 29.8 million. The company's number of annual paying users reached 135 million.

Tongcheng-Elong plans to transform from an online travel agency to an ITA intelligent travel assistant by developing and applying advanced information technology to provide users with customized products and services and to enhance user experience.

During the period under review, the company further enhanced and promoted its Huixing system, which offers intelligent travel options with a product mix of railways and flights to its users.

Tongcheng-Elong has reached lower-tier cities in China based on the effective channels and wide user coverage through Tencent-based platforms. In the third quarter, the percentage of its registered users residing in non-first-tier cities in China maintained at about 85.5 percent. About 63.3 percent of new paying Weixin users were from tier-3 or below cities, which increased from 58.8 percent over the same period in 2018.