Employees walk through the reception area at the Trip.com headquarters in Shanghai in 2021. … [+]
Trip.com, China biggest online travel site, said today it turned a profit in the second quarter compared with a year-earlier loss as global bookings improved despite continuing fallout from Covid-19 at home.
Trip.com earned 43 million yuan, or $6 million, in the three months to June versus a loss of 659 million yuan a year earlier. Revenue fell by 32% from a year earlier to 4.0 billion “primarily due to the continued disruptions resulting from the Covid-19 resurgence in China,” the company said. Both air-ticket and hotel bookings on its global platforms increased over 100% year over year in the second quarter, it noted.
“Despite the challenges in the China domestic market in the first two months of the second quarter, the fundamental demand for travel remained solid,” said CEO Jane Sun.
Executive Chairman James Liang said in a statement: “The global travel industry has made continued progress towards full recovery. The recovery momentum in Europe and the United States remained robust, and the rebound of travel activities in the Asia-Pacific region also sped up due to further relaxation of travel restrictions,”
“We are confident in further strengthening our competitive position and capturing the pent-up demand,” Liang said.
Trip.com’s U.S.-traded shares have lost 15% in the past year; they fell 8% today ahead of the announcement.
Trip.com has three billionaires on its board – Baidu CEO Robin Li, Sequoia China Founding Managing Partner Neil Shen, and H Group hotel chain founder Ji Qi. Shen and, another member, JP Gan, were members of the 2022 Forbes Midas List.
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Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/russellflannery/2022/09/21/tripcom-chinas-biggest-online-travel-site-reverses-to-profit-in-2nd-quarter-as-global-bookings-gain/