# China Fines Trip.com 5.18 Billion Yuan for Abusing Its Dominant Position

> China's market regulator found Trip.com abused its dominance in hotel booking through exclusive deals and lowest-price rules, imposing 5.18 billion yuan in penalties in a landmark platform-economy antitrust case.

- Source: Times of China (Times of China)
- Canonical URL: https://timesofchina.cn.com/en/article/china-fines-trip-com-antitrust
- Chinese edition: https://timesofchina.cn.com/article/china-fines-trip-com-antitrust
- Author: 中国时报编辑部
- Section: Business
- Published: 2026-07-27T11:00:00+08:00
- Updated: 2026-07-27T11:00:00+08:00
- Tags: 携程, 反垄断, 市场监管总局, 平台经济, 在线旅游

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China's State Administration for Market Regulation has announced that the online travel platform Trip.com, known in China as Ctrip, abused its dominant position in hotel booking, and imposed penalties totaling 5.18 billion yuan, about 720 million US dollars. The figure makes the case a landmark in the recent wave of antitrust action across the platform economy.

## Two monopolistic practices

The regulator found two main types of conduct. The first was exclusive dealing: Trip.com required certain special-tier hotels to sign exclusive agreements barring them from working with rival platforms, while offering incentives such as increased traffic exposure. The second was lowest-price enforcement: it required gold-tier and other hotels to offer the lowest prices across the entire internet, using automated tools and manual intervention to monitor and enforce compliance.

To make hotels comply, the platform cut their traffic, removed them from preferred listings and deducted security deposits. The regulator concluded that these practices restricted competition, limited hotels' freedom to operate across multiple platforms, and infringed merchants' autonomy over their own pricing.

## How the penalty breaks down

On the breakdown, the regulator confiscated 1.66 billion yuan in illegal gains and imposed a fine of 3.52 billion yuan, equal to 7.5 percent of Trip.com's 2025 domestic sales. The company's domestic revenue in 2025 was about 46.96 billion yuan. It was also ordered to refund 122 million yuan in security deposits collected from hotels. Together these add up to the 5.18 billion yuan total.

According to the disclosure, the case was opened in January 2026, while the conduct in question dates back to 2020. During the investigation the regulator carried out on-site inspections, evidence collection, competitor analysis and hotel interviews, reviewed data and algorithms, and consulted experts.

## A signal for the platform economy

The regulator said Trip.com's practices restricted market competition, squeezed hotels' room to operate on several platforms at once, infringed merchants' pricing autonomy, harmed consumers, and worked against the healthy development of the sector.

For the platform economy as a whole, the penalty sends a clear signal: even leading platforms must hold a compliance line on how they allocate traffic, set pricing rules and treat merchants. How to keep efficiency and scale while leaving enough room for smaller merchants and consumers to choose will be a lasting question for the platforms to answer.

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Originally published by Times of China. Free to cite with attribution and a link to https://timesofchina.cn.com/en/article/china-fines-trip-com-antitrust.