First, the conclusion: The investigation into Ctrip is a positive for various hotel groups.

The approach of companies like Ctrip is somewhat similar to Pinduoduo—Pinduoduo is like a loving mother to customers and a strict father to merchants.
Ctrip is both a strict father to merchants and a playful mother to users.
Playing both sides, so when Ctrip is investigated, it’s all praise.

Regardless of whether hotels are profitable, Ctrip just takes commissions from various promotions and upselling, as long as they can make money. This is similar to the cake circle—KOLs and trading platforms only care about transaction volume, not whether you can make a profit. Don’t talk about air B, even if it’s dog shit with transaction volume, they will still go online, all living off your commissions.

Ctrip is a cake platform—you are the hotel.
Now that platform monopoly is being investigated, platforms have to give concessions, allowing hotel operators to enjoy a brief period of comfort.

Why can a travel platform achieve net profits higher than its revenue?
The platform wins big, but is this truly market efficiency?

Ctrip has been very high-profile lately.
Look at its Q3 financial report:
Operating revenue: 18.338 billion yuan, +15.53% YoY
Net profit attributable to parent: 19.89 billion yuan, +194.01% YoY

Note: Net profit exceeds revenue.
The reason is simple—selling assets, some hotel-related investment stocks. Although they make money from hotels and various ticketing, they are actually not optimistic about hotels anymore, hence the sale.
But even excluding these investment gains, Ctrip itself has long been growing rapidly.
The most frightening part is gross profit:
2022 gross margin about 77%
2023 about 81.75%
2024 about 81.24%
This level even surpasses many well-known high-margin industries (like luxury brands).
And you should also know that this calculation includes high-speed rail tickets, which are low-margin products. Excluding high-speed rail tickets and other low-margin items, their other businesses have even higher gross margins.
In terms of market share, it appears to be around 56%, but through investments in other OTAs, they are truly in a monopoly position, approaching 75%.
For example, if you order through some apps like Gaode, you’ll find that the front desk also operates through Ctrip.

Tencent, Alibaba, JD.com, Meituan—all see high gross margins and want a piece of the pie, but none can change Ctrip’s monopoly status.

Everyone who has been to Beijing knows: hotel prices in Beijing are noticeably higher than in most cities.

However, the Beijing Statistics Bureau’s data shows:
In the first half of 2025, 1,613 hotels with revenue over 2 million yuan,
average profit per hotel per month is only 6,179 yuan, a YoY plunge of 92.9%.

Beijing hotels are so expensive, yet hotels are not profitable. Where does the money go?

The answer is not complicated:
Ctrip + OTA’s price chasing system, algorithm price compression,
platform steadily takes commissions, guaranteed profit.
Consumers seem to stay in “low-price rooms.”
The real profit squeeze is on hotel operators.

What can hotels do?
Rely on cleverness in toiletries, services, hidden charges,
but ultimately costs circle back and are passed on to consumers.

Platforms win big,
hotels struggle to hold on,
and consumers do not truly benefit.

Therefore, for platforms like Ctrip—
investigate when necessary, act when needed.
It’s obvious without looking—public opinion under the entries shows everyone has long suffered from Ctrip and these OTAs.