Chinese online travel player Trip.com Group has shown resilience and emerged as a global leader despite the ongoing COVID-19 challenges and highly competitive tourism industry. The company reported $3.1bn unaudited net revenue in 2021, representing a 11.9% year-on-year (YoY) increase from 2020. The success can largely be attributed to a series of strategic partnerships and innovative marketing solutions, finds GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

GlobalData’s latest report, ‘Trip.com Group Case Study including Trends, Motivations, Marketing Strategies, Opportunities and Challenges’, reveals that pre-pandemic, Trip.com Group’s net revenue grew at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.8% between 2016 and 2019, to reach $5.1bn in 2019.

The COVID-19 pandemic adversely affected several aspects of Trip.com’s business, as the pandemic induced a significant decline in travel demand, cancelations, and refund requests. In 2020, Trip.com Group saw its net revenue decline by 45.2% YoY to $2.8bn.

Hannah Free, Travel and Tourism Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “Trip.com has largely weathered the COVID-19 storm in part owing to its series of strategic partnerships and investments, which forms a core part of its growth strategy. For instance, the group has increased its foothold in India following a series of investments in ‘MakeMyTrip’ totalling more than $200m. In doing so, it became the largest shareholder of the company, wielding 49% of the company’s voting power.”

Another key strength is the company’s innovative marketing strategies, which are paying dividends. At the beginning of 2020, it launched a livestreaming platform, which has emerged as a pillar of Chinese e-commerce, to promote travel destinations across China. Since then, more than 3,000 partners have hosted over 10,000 live streams on the platform. Livestreaming on the company’s own platform, BOSS Live Broadcast, reportedly contributed $786.8m in trading volumes from March 2020 to the end of 2020.

Free concludes: “As the group’s domestic and global expansion powers on, Trip.com must contend with a significant number of challenges, including China’s evolving internet landscape and regulatory changes, as well as intense competition both among domestic and international players. However, Trip.com Group is in a strong market position, which coupled with innovative marketing solutions, strategic investments and merger and acquisition activity, stands the Group in good to stead to rival its competition.”