Market Regulator Imposes Landmark RMB5.179 Billion Monopoly Fine on Ctrip

On July 25, the State Administration for Market Regulation imposed an administrative penalty on Ctrip Group for abusing its dominant market position in monopolistic practices, with total fines and confiscations amounting to RMB5.179 billion. This includes the confiscation of illegal income of RMB1.658 billion, a fine of RMB3.521 billion calculated at 7.5% of Ctrip's domestic sales in China of RMB46.958 billion in 2025, and an order to fully refund the order deposits of RMB122 million forcibly deducted from hotel operators.

The penalty decision found that Ctrip induced 'special brand' hotels into exclusive cooperation through traffic support, and forced 'gold brand' and 'unbranded' hotels to guarantee the lowest prices across all online platforms. Hotels that did not comply faced measures such as traffic restriction, delisting, and deduction of order deposits. These actions were defined as restricting transactions and interfering with pricing, constituting abuse of dominant market position. From 2020 to 2025, Ctrip's share in China's domestic online hotel booking platform market by gross merchandise value was 53.5%, 54.0%, 53.3%, 59.1%, 58.3%, and 58.7% respectively; by revenue, the shares were 53.4%, 51.5%, 51.1%, 58.9%, 58.5%, and 56.8% over the same period.

Ctrip Group stated that it fully accepts and resolutely complies with the penalty decision, and announced 19 rectification measures across five aspects, including immediately ceasing exclusive cooperation practices, ensuring the autonomous management rights of hotel operators, stopping unreasonable 'lowest price across platforms' requirements, guaranteeing hotel operators' pricing autonomy, protecting the legitimate rights and interests of hotel operators, continuously listening to merchants' opinions and demands, strengthening consumer rights protection, and enhancing compliance construction and long-term mechanisms.

This penalty is the first antitrust case in China's online travel industry and the first instance of confiscating illegal income in a major internet platform monopoly case. The fine rate of 7.5% is higher than the previous cases of Alibaba (4%) and Meituan (3%). In the same month, the 'Fifteenth Five-Year Plan for the Construction of a Strong Tourism Country' was issued, positioning tourism as an 'emerging strategic pillar industry' and a 'livelihood and happiness industry with significant characteristics of the times', and requiring leading platforms to play a leading and driving role, and to remove hidden barriers to unified market and fair competition.