Tongcheng Travel, a Hong Kong-listed online travel company, reported that its revenue rose 5.6% year-to-year for the third quarter this year.
Loss for the quarter was nearly RMB 94 million (USD 13 million), compared to a profit of RMB 226 million for the same quarter last year.
The Tencent-invested travel reservation company saw its monthly active users grew by just 1.7% during the period, while its monthly paying users increased by 9.5% in the meantime.
In the third quarter, around 80% of Tongcheng's average monthly active users was contributed from Tencent's mini program.
The OTA continued to explore different scenarios within the Tencent ecosystem to enhance its brand awareness and strengthen interactions with users, organizing several e-Sports events utilizing popular intellectual property rights entitled by Tencent, cooperating with Tencent's Weixin Video Account and hosting live-streaming events to strengthen interactions with users.
Gross merchant value for the quarter was RMB 40.6 billion (USD 5.7 billion), down by 1.2%. Tongcheng said that was due to the decline of air ticket and train ticket volume.
The company said its domestic room nights sold added 10% year-on-year in the lower-tier cities and bus ticketing volume posted a more than 100% rise.