On August 27th, Ctrip Group (NASDAQ: TCOM; Hong Kong Stock Exchange: 9961) announced its unaudited financial results for the second quarter of 2024. In the second quarter of 2024, Ctrip achieved steady growth based on its historical high base, with a net revenue of 12.8 billion yuan. During the earnings conference that day, Ctrip will apply AI Agent for the first time in the industry, demonstrating the company's firm commitment to innovation and adopting new technologies to drive the transformation of the tourism industry, and introducing the specific achievements of AI landing - two content products.
Under the strong growth of tourism demand, especially cross-border tourism demand, we achieved sustained growth in the second quarter of 2024, "said Liang Jianzhang, co-founder and chairman of Ctrip Group." This strong performance demonstrates our adaptability in a dynamic market. Looking ahead, we will spare no effort to use artificial intelligence for innovation in the tourism industry and create excellent value experiences for customers
In the second quarter, Ctrip's various businesses continued to grow, among which hotel booking business revenue was 5.1 billion yuan; The revenue from transportation ticketing business was 4.9 billion yuan; The revenue from tourism and vacation business is 1 billion yuan; The business travel revenue was 630 million yuan. At the same time, product research and development expenses amounted to 3 billion yuan, accounting for approximately 23% of net income.
In the second quarter, cross-border tourism was a major growth point in the tourism market, driving rapid growth in Ctrip's outbound, inbound, and overseas platform businesses. In terms of outbound tourism, Ctrip's outbound hotel and flight bookings have fully recovered to the same period in 2019 in the second quarter. In terms of inbound tourism, Ctrip innovates products in payment, scenic spot tickets, accommodation, group tours and other fields, and collaborates with destinations to carry out overseas marketing, telling the story of Chinese tourism well and serving foreign tourists who come to China for tourism.
Ctrip also collaborates with partners to provide differentiated services and explore new growth points for high growth potential sub markets in the tourism industry, such as the silver haired and young people. The "Ctrip Friends Club" brand has partnered with over 1600 hotels in more than 40 popular destinations across the country, offering over 4000 hotel and package products to meet the travel needs of the silver haired population with exclusive products and services. At the same time, Ctrip has innovatively developed new tourism products such as "exhibitions+travel", covering scenes such as concerts, music festivals, exhibitions, sports events, and film festivals. With services such as tickets+hotels and tickets+transportation, Ctrip has won the favor of young users.
Ctrip continues to invest in AI and ESG to enhance its sustainable development capabilities, optimize its products and services with AI technology, and unleash creativity in areas such as user inspiration, travel strategies, itinerary planning, and after-sales service. At the same time, Ctrip continues to promote established ESG strategies such as family friendly, environmentally friendly, community friendly, and eco chain friendly, as well as industry-leading ESG compliance practices, resulting in Ctrip's MSCI rating jumping from "BB" to "A" by two levels.
We are pleased to see strong growth in the tourism business, and the demand for tourism consumption in China remains strong, "said Sun Jie, CEO of Ctrip Group." The optimistic market outlook has inspired our enthusiasm for continuous innovation and implementation of new plans. Through close cooperation with our partners, we are confident in achieving even more brilliant results in the future