Trip.com plans to boost sales to RMB$1tn in 2023

Trip.com is planning to increase sales via its online travel platform to RMB$1tn this year. According to an interview with China Central Television, James Liang Jian zhang, chairman of the company, said that reaching the target could also promote the overall travel industry in China.

Liang also said that spending through the Trip.com platform had reached hundreds of billions of yuan before the pandemic. Despite the pandemic had hit the company's business significantly, Liang believes travelling in 2023 will be even better than pre-Covid period.

"It is estimated that the third and fourth quarters of 2023 will see some retaliatory consumption within the tourist industry," he said.

Trip.com Group has seen mainland Chinese demand for travel continue to surge in the run-up to the Lunar New Year holiday season. This comes after the decision last month by mainland China to officially abolish all quarantine restrictions for inbound visitors from 8 January.

According to its press statement, Trip.com Group said its Chinese language travel service platform Ctrip, between 26 December 2022 and 5 January 2023, search interest for outbound flights from mainland China increased by 83% compared to the two-week period prior, with outbound flight bookings increasing by 59% over the same period.

Bookings show the most popular cross-border destinations include: Macau, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Australia, Singapore, the United States, Malaysia, the United Kingdom, and Indonesia.

Analysis of Ctrip data showed overseas travel for the seven-day Lunar New Year holiday surged by 540% compared to last year's Spring Festival; and the average cost of bookings was revealed to have risen by 32% year-on-year.

Ctrip data also showed airline bookings from mainland China to Hong Kong increased by 18 times compared with the previous year, following the announcement to ease restrictions. The number of airline bookings to Hong Kong has also increased by 36% month-on-month. Similarly, the search popularity of Hong Kong on the platform was more than double that and increased by 85% month-on-month.

As of January 12, 2023, in the run-up to the Lunar New Year holiday, overall travel bookings of mainland Chinese tourists to Southeast Asian countries increased by 1026% compared with the same period last year. The number of air ticket bookings from mainland China to Southeast Asia increased by 864% year-on-year, and the top 5 most popular destination countries for mainland Chinese tourists traveling to Southeast Asia during the Lunar New Year holiday are: Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia, and Indonesia.

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