TRIP.COM-S (09961) dropped more than 3% in the afternoon trading session. At the time of writing, the stock was down 3.28% to HK$312.80, with turnover reaching HK$700 million.

On the news front, the State Administration for Market Regulation, together with the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, recently convened an administrative guidance meeting for the online hotel and travel booking platform industry. Acting on the administration's work deployment, the Beijing Municipal Market Supervision Administration has launched investigations into four online hotel and travel booking platforms.

Nomura believes that Trip.com Group is not implicated in this round of probes, and it currently views the significance and potential fallout of these investigations as lower than the regulator's previous inquiry into Trip.com. As a result, the firm expects the impact on the involved companies to be limited.

CLSA issued a research note forecasting that weak domestic travel demand and regulatory compliance headwinds will further weigh on Trip.com Group's financial performance in the third quarter of 2026. Its domestic travel revenue could see a mid-single-digit year-over-year decline. The trend may deteriorate further in the fourth quarter of 2026 and the first quarter of 2027 before staging a rebound. The company continues its share buyback program to support the stock price, and its long-term moat is expected to remain unchanged.