On September 1st, an unexpected email landed in the inboxes of Trip.com Group's technical staff. While many internet giants are tightening attendance policies and emphasizing "return to office," this email's content seemed distinctly contrarian: effective immediately, remote work requires no approval.

On the surface, Trip.com Group has sufficient confidence to display such composure. The company just delivered impressive quarterly revenue of 14.8 billion yuan, with gross margins steadily above 80%, and performance at historic highs. Its market capitalization once reached over 400 billion Hong Kong dollars. However, stellar financial results cannot completely mask the complexity of the real world and the brutal nature of industry competition.

Currently, founder James Liang faces a battlefield that has become unprecedentedly crowded due to new entrants.

JD.com burst in with the aggressive declaration of "three years zero commission," attempting to reshape industry cost structures using e-commerce logic and capital. Meanwhile, Douyin's offensive is even more fierce, investing "hundreds of millions in subsidies" during summer, achieving exponential GMV growth through the new paradigm of "content seeding - livestream conversion." This growth momentum is enough to make any incumbent feel uneasy.

When users have become accustomed to price comparison across multiple platforms, and when price-sensitive consumers are increasingly defecting to Meituan and Douyin, can technology-driven "better experience" truly overcome the temptation of "lower prices"?

This "untethering" of employees might stabilize morale, but amid the fierce fighting on the main battlefield, is this a forward-looking deployment betting on the long term and building new moats through talent density, or a risky test of strategic determination in the face of close-quarters "price wars"? The market has yet to provide an answer.

**Further Relaxation of Hybrid Work**

Trip.com Group is no stranger to hybrid work. In 2022, the company began implementing a "3+2" hybrid work model internally, allowing employees to work from home on Wednesdays and Fridays.

At the time, Trip.com Group co-founder and Executive Chairman James Liang stated: "The promotion of hybrid work systems helps reduce traffic congestion, protect the environment, and alleviate urban housing price pressures and regional disparities."

This "approval-free" policy pilot covers all domestic permanent technical (T-series) and product technology (PT-series) employees. Trip.com Group indicates that the core purpose of this process optimization is to better promote work-life balance, reduce unnecessary approval procedures, and improve organizational efficiency.

Past practices prove that hybrid work policies not only maintained efficiency but actually improved employee satisfaction. Official data shows that 70% of the company's employees have participated in this policy, with cumulative work-from-home instances reaching approximately 640,000. In initial trials, Trip.com Group found that employee turnover among hybrid work participants decreased by approximately one-third year-over-year.

While offering more flexible work arrangements, Trip.com Group also delivered impressive results. In Q2 2025, the group's net revenue reached 14.8 billion yuan, up 16% year-over-year and 7% quarter-over-quarter. This performance slightly exceeded market expectations. Previously, Citi had forecasted Trip.com Group's Q2 revenue between 14.6 billion and 14.7 billion yuan.

Looking at specific business segments, all divisions achieved steady growth. Accommodation booking revenue reached 6.2 billion yuan, up 21% year-over-year; transportation ticketing revenue was 5.4 billion yuan, up 11% year-over-year; packaged tour revenue reached 1.1 billion yuan, up 5% year-over-year; corporate travel management revenue was 692 million yuan, up 9% year-over-year.

Beyond revenue growth, profitability also demonstrated strong competitiveness. Adjusted operating profit reached 4.67 billion yuan, up 10.4% year-over-year, exceeding market expectations by approximately 390 million yuan.

Most noteworthy is the profit margin. According to financial reports, Trip.com Group's Q2 gross margin reached 81.0%, higher than Q1's 80.4%, demonstrating the inherent competitiveness of its business.

Among various businesses, Trip.com Group's international operations performed particularly well, becoming the core growth engine. In Q2, total bookings on Trip.com Group's international OTA platforms grew over 60% year-over-year.

Outbound travel market recovery was robust. Trip.com Group's outbound flight and hotel bookings recovered to over 120% of 2019 levels, far exceeding the industry average recovery rate of 84%. The inbound travel market also performed excellently, with bookings growing over 100% year-over-year.

Additionally, Trip.com Group's performance benefited from the overall explosion in mass tourism. According to domestic resident travel sampling surveys, in just the first half of 2025, domestic residents made 3.285 billion trips, up 20.6% year-over-year. In terms of travel spending, domestic residents spent 3.15 trillion yuan in the first half, up 15.2% year-over-year.

This explosion continues. This summer's tourism market showed unprecedented vitality, a growth momentum that may be reflected in subsequent financial reports.

UBS recently predicted in research reports that Trip.com Group's Q3 room nights will grow strongly, supporting approximately 10% steady domestic China revenue growth. Considering the gradual recovery of cross-border flight capacity and high comparison bases, Trip.com Group's outbound travel revenue growth is expected to further normalize in Q3, reaching low double digits, while overseas business revenue growth maintains strong momentum above 50%.

**Intensifying Competition in Hospitality and Travel**

The explosion in mass tourism makes the trillion-yuan hospitality and travel market particularly enticing, and makes Trip.com Group's 80% gross margin a target. According to Dongwu Securities forecasts, China's online travel market transaction scale is expected to exceed 1.7 trillion yuan in 2025, sufficient to accommodate multiple players.

The entry of new and established forces is fundamentally changing the tactics and landscape of this war. The past "7+2+1" industry structure dominated by the Trip.com ecosystem (Trip.com, Qunar, Tongcheng) with 70% market share faces unprecedented challenges. Competition has shifted from past control of upstream resources like hotels and flights to battles for new traffic and user mindshare.

JD.com's strategy is aggressive price revolution. In a small-scale speech in June, JD.com Group Chairman Richard Liu stated his intention to reduce hospitality and travel industry costs by one-third, then officially entered the market with "up to 3 years zero commission" policies, directly targeting industry high commission pain points. To rapidly build teams, JD.com even poached talent from Fliggy, Tongcheng, and Trip.com Group at high salaries, clearly revealing its market disruption determination.

Douyin's approach is a dimensional reduction attack through content ecosystem. It invested hundreds of millions in subsidies supporting hotel brand livestreaming, greatly shortening user decision paths "from seeding to booking" through livestream sales and influencer hotel visits.

BOCOM International predicts Douyin's hospitality and travel transaction volume will reach 90 billion yuan in 2024, up 50% year-over-year. This content ecosystem-driven growth model is difficult for traditional platforms to replicate.

The effectiveness of new players' offensives stems from fundamental changes in hospitality and travel consumption trends.

On one hand, consumer behavior is becoming high-frequency, fragmented, and social. More people are passionate about short trips and accustomed to obtaining information and sharing interactions on social platforms like Douyin and Xiaohongshu. On the other hand, new consumer forces are rising. Generation Z and silver-haired demographics become new market drivers, while social media catalyzes the potential of niche destinations and lower-tier markets.

These trends challenge Trip.com Group's traditional advantages. As new generation consumers' attention is divided by short videos and social platforms, Trip.com Group's "search-booking" model faces challenges from changing user habits, and its "defensive fortifications" are not impregnable.

Facing challenges, existing players must reconsider their positions.

Trip.com Group's weakness lies in insufficient penetration in mid-to-low star hotel markets, precisely the segment being eroded by competitors like Meituan and Douyin. As a response, Trip.com Group chooses to focus on technology and service, such as launching upgraded "Trip Planner" AI functions, attempting to consolidate moats through enhanced experience.

Second-tier players are actively seeking change. Meituan leverages local lifestyle high-frequency advantages to defend mid-to-low-end and short-trip fundamentals. Tongcheng relies on WeChat's stable traffic entrance and extends upstream through acquisitions like Wanda Hotel Management, strengthening its "value creation" capabilities.

Now, online travel warfare has entered deep waters. Dongwu Securities analysts note that industry leaders' advantages lie in resource accumulation and delivery capabilities, while other players leverage high-frequency payments or social media traffic, each with focused strategies and unfixed landscape patterns.

This is no longer single-dimensional competition, but Trip.com Group's "service + supply chain" model colliding with Douyin's "content + traffic" model and JD.com's "e-commerce + price" model.

More flexible work arrangements might inspire Trip.com Group employee innovation, but facing fierce opponents with different logics, Trip.com Group needs to prove to the market that its technology barriers and service value are sufficient to handle this unprecedented multi-front war.