Ctrip Executive Restructuring

Author | Liu Baodan

Editor | Zhou Zhiyu

A week before releasing its financial results for the fourth quarter and the entire year of 2024, Trip.com experienced a major executive reshuffle.

On February 17, Wall Street News learned that the heads of various businesses at Trip.com, including AI, mergers and acquisitions, transportation, and business travel, have undergone changes. At a critical stage of strategic transformation and technological layout, Trip.com's move aims to enhance the strength and efficiency of strategic execution.

Trip.com Group CEO Sun Jie stated that in the new year, the company will continue to promote business collaboration among departments, strengthen talent cultivation and mobility within the group, thereby further advancing the group's G2 strategy and enhancing the overall competitiveness of the group.

As early as 2019, Trip.com Group Chairman Liang Jianzhang proposed the G2 strategy, where G2 stands for two Gs, representing Great Quality and Globalization. The former focuses on customer-centricity and providing the best service, while the latter represents Trip.com's global layout.

According to Liang Jianzhang's expectations at that time, Trip.com aimed to become Asia's largest international travel company within three years, the world's largest international travel company within five years, and the most valuable and respected online travel company within ten years. However, the pandemic disrupted Trip.com's strategic rhythm.

After the pandemic, with the recovery of the travel market, Trip.com's performance rebounded rapidly. According to the financial report, Trip.com's net revenue for the third quarter of 2024 reached 15.9 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 16%, and net profit reached 6.8 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 47%.

In particular, in terms of international business, Trip.com's outbound hotel and flight bookings have returned to 120% of the level during the same period in 2019 before the pandemic, with international OTA platform hotel and flight bookings increasing by over 60% year-on-year.

However, Trip.com still lags behind the overseas OTA leader Booking. Currently, Booking's market value is $167 billion (approximately 1.21576 trillion yuan), which is 3.7 times that of Trip.com. In terms of revenue scale, in the third quarter of 2024, Booking's revenue was $8 billion, far exceeding Trip.com's performance during the same period.

Currently, Trip.com continues to focus on the G2 strategic direction, aiming to quickly regain the strategic rhythm disrupted by the pandemic and capture more market share.

In terms of high quality, Trip.com has been continuously investing in AI in recent years. Trip.com has built a systematic AI technology solution, including various models such as the travel vertical large model "Trip.com Wenda," along with product development capabilities and popular new technologies like AI Agent.

The appointment of Chen Gang as the Group Chief Product Officer, leading the strategic formulation of AI-related products for the group, is a further upgrade of the AI strategy.

Wall Street News learned that Chen Gang joined the company through Trip.com's acquisition of Tieyou.com in 2011, later leading the establishment of the train ticket business unit and the split of the bus ticket business. In 2018, Chen Gang led Qunar.com to complete a comprehensive restructuring. It can be said that Chen Gang is a key figure in Trip.com's ability to compete.

With a very clear future direction, what Trip.com currently needs most is to integrate resources and enhance organizational efficiency, which is also the key driving force behind this executive adjustment Specifically, Tan Yudong, CEO of the ticketing division, has been appointed as the Group's Chief Scientist, responsible for the technology and merger and acquisition strategies of the Group and its related subsidiaries; Feng Yan, who is skilled in business synergy and resource integration, has been appointed as CEO of the transportation business, overseeing the ticketing business group, train ticket business group, and financial division; Daniel Zhang has been appointed as CEO of the ticketing business group, reporting to Feng Yan; Feng Yan, Tan Yudong, and Song Tao will report to Xiong Xing.

The combination of the AI era and the globalization trend of the tourism market has brought unprecedented opportunities for Trip.com. After more than twenty years of development, Trip.com has accumulated a certain depth of industry chain and service capabilities. However, to seize greater incremental opportunities, Trip.com must be fully prepared to cope with consumer fluctuations and international competition.

The major executive adjustments may just be the beginning. In the rapidly changing market situation, Trip.com needs to make more adaptations