A recent research by mobile Internet big data monitoring platform Trustdata indicated that domestic hotel room nights sold through online booking channels increased by 26.7% YoY to 806 million in 2019. Third- and lower-tier cities led the growth, contributing 60% to the total online hotel booking volume, with monthly active users (MAU) up 54.7%.
Meituan increased its share in China’s online hotel reservation market to 51.7% in H2 2019. It sold 110 million domestic hotel room nights for two consecutive quarters in H2 and the total hotel room nights for the year increased 38.2% to 392 million in 2019.
The Tencent-backed lifestyle services provider has further cemented its position as the industry leader – it accounted for 49.8% of the total room nights reserved online in H2, exceeding the combined total of Ctrip, Qunar and Tongcheng-eLong for the first time.
The number of young users showed marked increase –10% of the travelers were born in the 2000s, and more than half of the users were younger than 30, and Meituan and Fliggy were embraced by young travelers.
China’s tourism and ticket bookings have been steadily picking up since mid-March, with daily active users (DAU) expected to reach 17 million in April and 25 million in June. Searches for local tours have increased significantly, indicating that local tours and short excursions would be the most popular options. Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai are expected to be the first regions to recover.
The Trustdata research shows that the total number of domestic tourists in China topped 6 billion for the first time in 2019, reflecting solid demand for travel. Total domestic tourism expenditure had surged 20.5 times to RMB 5.73 trillion in 2019 compared with 20 years ago, while domestic tourist arrivals increased by 8.4 times to 6.01 billion, and expenses per visitor grown by 2.4 times to RMB 953. (Translated by Elena)
