Trip.com Group Limited (, formerly Ctrip.com International) is a Chinese multinational online travel company that provides services including accommodation reservation, transportation ticketing, packaged tours and corporate travel management. Founded in 1999, the company owns and operates

Trip.com Trip.com is an international online travel agency. The website is owned by Trip.com Group (formerly Ctrip.com International, Ltd. in China), one of the world's largest online travel agencies with over 400 million users worldwide, and also the par ...

Skyscanner Skyscanner is a metasearch engine and travel agency based in Edinburgh, Scotland. The site is available in over 30 languages and is used by 100 million people per month. The company lets people research and book travel options for their trips, ...

Qunar Qunar.com is a Chinese online travel agency headquartered in Beijing. Qunar () means "Where to go" in Chinese. History The website was founded in May 2005. In 2011, Baidu acquired a majority interest in the company for $306 million. In Novemb ...

Travix Travix International BV (in short, Travix) is a company that manages several travel websites operating in various countries. The company maintains headquarters in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Operations Travix manages five websites: CheapTickets, Budget ...

, and

Ctrip Trip.com Group Limited (, formerly Ctrip.com International) is a Chinese multinational online travel company that provides services including accommodation reservation, transportation ticketing, packaged tours and corporate travel management. Fo ...

, all of which are online travel agencies. Founded in 1999, it is currently the largest online

travel agency A travel agency is a private retailer or public service that provides travel and tourism-related services to the general public on behalf of accommodation or travel suppliers to offer different kinds of travelling packages for each destinati ...

(OTA) in China and one of the largest travel service providers in the world.

History

The company was founded by

James Liang James Jianzhang Liang (; born December 1969) is a Chinese businessman, and the executive chairman, former CEO, and co-founder of Trip.com Group (formerly Ctrip), a provider of travel services including accommodation reservation, transportatio ...

, Neil Shen, Min Fan, and Qi Ji in June 1999. The company was listed on the

NASDAQ The Nasdaq Stock Market () (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Stock Market) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the US by volume, and ranked second ...

in 2003 through a

variable interest entity Variable interest entity (VIE) is a term used by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) to refer to a legal entity with certain characteristics such that a public company with a financial interest in the entity is subject to certain financ ...

(VIE) based in the

Cayman Islands The Cayman Islands () is a self-governing British Overseas Territory—the largest by population in the western Caribbean Sea. The territory comprises the three islands of Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac and Little Cayman, which are located to the ...

in a

Merrill Lynch Merrill (officially Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated), previously branded Merrill Lynch, is an American investment management and wealth management division of Bank of America. Along with BofA Securities, the investment ba ...

-led offering, raising US$75 million from the sale of 4.2 million

American depositary receipt An American depositary receipt (ADR, and sometimes spelled ''depository'') is a negotiable security that represents securities of a foreign company and allows that company's shares to trade in the U.S. financial markets. Shares of many non-U.S ...

s at $18 each. It appreciated 86% to close at $33.94 per ADR in its first day of trading. The stock traded at a peak of $37.35 on its first day of trading, making it the first company since the November 2000 IPO of

Transmeta Transmeta Corporation was an American fabless semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California. It developed low power x86 compatible microprocessors based on a VLIW core and a software layer called Code Morphing Software. Code Morphing S ...

to double its price in the first day of trading. In 2006, about 70% of the company's sales came from just four cities in China:

Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), Chinese postal romanization, alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the Capital city, capital of the China, People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's Li ...

Guangzhou Guangzhou (, ; ; or ; ), also known as Canton () and Chinese postal romanization, alternatively romanized as Kwongchow or Kwangchow, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Guangdong Provinces of China, province in South China, sou ...

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Chinese, Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four Direct-administered municipalities of China, direct-administered municipalities of the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the ...

, and

Shenzhen Shenzhen (; ; ; ), also historically known as Sham Chun, is a major sub-provincial city and one of the special economic zones of China. The city is located on the east bank of the Pearl River estuary on the central coast of southern provi ...

. On August 6, 2014,

Priceline.com Priceline.com is an online travel agency for finding discount rates for travel-related purchases such as airline tickets and hotel stays. The company facilitates the provision of travel services from its suppliers to its clients. Priceline.com ...

, announced that it will invest $500 million in the company to broaden the companies’ options in China. Priceline and Ctrip, which have had a commercial partnership since 2012, will increase their cross-promotion of each company's hotel inventory and other travel services, the companies said in a statement. In May 2015,

Booking Holdings Booking Holdings Inc. is an American travel technology company incorporated under Delaware General Corporation Law and based in Norwalk, Connecticut, that owns and operates several travel fare aggregators and travel fare metasearch engines inclu ...

(formerly The Priceline Group) announced it would be investing an additional $250 million in the company. In November 2016, the company acquired

for £1.4 billion. That same month,

Jane Jie Sun Jane Jie Sun (born 1969/1970) is a Chinese businesswoman, and the CEO of the Trip.com Group, the largest online travel agency in China, since November 2016. Early life Sun earned a bachelor's degree in business from the University of Florida, an ...

became the CEO of Ctrip. She had joined the company in 2005. On November 1, 2017, Ctrip acquired

, rebranding it as its global brand website. In February 2018, Ctrip launched TrainPal, an online ticketing platform featuring split ticketing, in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...

. Accredited by the

National Rail National Rail (NR) is the trading name licensed for use by the Rail Delivery Group, an unincorporated association whose membership consists of the passenger train operating companies (TOCs) of England, Scotland, and Wales. The TOCs run the ...

of the UK, TrainPal mainly provides services for the UK, and other European countries. In September 2019, Ctrip completed a share exchange with

Naspers Naspers Limited is a South African multinational internet, technology and multimedia holding company headquartered in Cape Town, with interests in online retail, publishing and venture capital investment. Naspers' principal shareholder is its ...

and became the single largest shareholder of MakeMyTrip. On October 25, 2019, at its 2019 annual general meeting of shareholders, it was approved to change the Company name from "Ctrip.com International, Ltd." to "Trip.com Group Limited". In June 2020, Trip.com joined China Eastern to launch new airline in Hainan as plans to make the island a free trade hub promise greater air traffic. On April 19, 2021, Trip.com Group was officially listed on the

Hong Kong Stock Exchange The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong (SEHK, also known as Hong Kong Stock Exchange) is a stock exchange based in Hong Kong. As of the end of 2020, it has 2,538 listed companies with a combined market capitalization of HK$47 trillion. It is rep ...

Remote work

The company is a proponent of

scientific management Scientific management is a theory of management that analyzes and synthesizes workflows. Its main objective is improving economic efficiency, especially labor productivity. It was one of the earliest attempts to apply science to the engine ...

. After a 2012

randomized control trial A randomized controlled trial (or randomized control trial; RCT) is a form of scientific experiment used to control factors not under direct experimental control. Examples of RCTs are clinical trials that compare the effects of drugs, surgical t ...

using 242 employees and sponsored by professors at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

and

Peking University Peking University (PKU; ) is a public research university in Beijing, China. The university is funded by the Ministry of Education. Peking University was established as the Imperial University of Peking in 1898 when it received its royal charte ...

found that employees randomly assigned to

remote work Remote work, also called work from home (WFH), work from anywhere, telework, remote job, mobile work, and distance work is an employment arrangement in which employees do not commute to a central place of work, such as an office building, ware ...

for 9 months increased their output by 13.5% versus the office-based control group, and their turnover rates fell by almost 50%, the company allowed

company-wide.

References

External links

Trip.com USA site

TrainPal
{{Travel ticket search engines Online travel agencies Online companies of China Travel and holiday companies of China Chinese companies established in 1999 Hospitality companies established in 1999 Internet properties established in 1999 2003 initial public offerings Chinese brands Silver Lake (investment firm) companies Companies listed on the Nasdaq Companies based in Shanghai