Trip.com pledges raft of correctives after China market ruling

The Trip.com Group said on Saturday that it would end exclusive hotel arrangements and demands that merchants offer the lowest available prices online after regulators in China imposed penalties of 5.18 billion yuan ($770 million) for monopolistic practices.

The 19 corrective measures issued by Trip represent a sweeping overhaul of the company's relationships with hotels, giving merchants greater freedom to work with rival platforms, set their own room rates and decide whether to participate in promotions.

The State Administration for Market Regulation said Trip, operator of the Ctrip travel platform, had abused its dominant position in China's online hotel-booking market since 2020.

The regulator ordered the company to surrender 1.66 billion yuan in illegal gains and imposed a 3.52 billion yuan fine, equivalent to 7.5 percent of its 2025 China sales. It also ordered Trip to refund around 122.8 million yuan in order reserve funds deducted from hotel operators.

Trip said it fully accepted the regulator's ruling and would implement the required changes. It described the penalties as a "profound warning and lesson" for the company.

The regulator found that Trip required hotels in a top merchant category, known as the "special-label" tier, to deal exclusively with its platform in exchange for greater traffic and other support.

It also required hotels in its "gold-label" and unlabeled categories to offer the lowest room rates available across the internet. If a hotel listed a lower price on a rival platform, Trip used automated pricing tools or manual intervention to reduce the rate displayed on Ctrip, the regulator said.

Trip monitored compliance and used measures including reduced traffic, removal of merchant labels and deductions from order reserve funds to enforce the requirements, according to the regulator.

The practices restricted hotels' ability to operate across multiple platforms and infringed on their right to set prices independently, while damaging competition and consumer interests, it added.