Ctrip says: China’s business travel market recovers about 20-30 percent

Due to the COVID-19, almost every city in China was under strict quarantine in the first quarter. This stopped nearly the entire population movement, and with it, the tourism and transportation came to standstill.

On May 20, Ctrip Group Senior Vice President and Ctrip Business Travel CEO Fang Jichen said in a media interview that the current business travel market had gained a 20-30% recovery.

“At the early stage of the outbreak, 96% of companies said they had canceled or suspended all or most international business travel, and 82% had canceled or suspended all domestic business travel. Since March, the business travel market has gradually recovered, but now around 20%-30%.”

But he also said that the situation was getting better. By April, Ctrip’s business travel order had doubled its revenue from March. There has been a significant rebound in personal traffic needs, but some companies are still avoiding business travel to reduce the possibility of infecting the virus.

Ctrip was one of the first online travel agents to be established in China, accounting for 36.6 percent of China’s market share in 2019, according to analysys.

In 2019, China had 2.8 trillion yuan of the business travel market, but less than 10% of enterprises choose professional travel companies as their agents, while 40% of enterprises above the international are given professional travel companies, so there is a fourfold gap here.