Trip.com stock plummets as China launches antitrust investigation into the company

Shares in Chinese online travel service provider Trip.com plunged nearly 22% in Hong Kong on Thursday after the Chinese government launched an antitrust investigation into the company, making it the worst-performing company on the Hang Seng Index.

The decline marks Hong Kong stocks’ worst day since listing in April 2021. Shares closed 17% lower in New York on Wednesday.

China’s State Administration for Market Regulation announced late Wednesday that it was investigating Trip.com for “alleged abuse of dominant market position and monopolistic practices,” according to CNBC’s Mandarin translation.

Trip.com is Asia’s largest online travel provider by market capitalization and one of the largest in the world. The company has stakes in British airline aggregator Skyscanner, Indian travel company MakeMyTrip and several Chinese travel companies.

Trip.com said in a statement that it is “actively cooperating” with the investigation, adding that its operations are functioning as usual.

In a high-profile case, SAMR investigated Chinese technology giant Alibaba in 2021 and imposed a record fine of 18.2 billion yuan ($2.8 billion) on the company after it was found guilty of monopolistic conduct.

The Trip.com survey comes as Chinese tourist arrivals are expected to surge this year, with travel marketing and technology firm China Trading Desk predicting that about 165 million to 175 million mainland Chinese travelers will cross the border in 2026, up from an estimated 155 million last year.

The Lunar New Year holiday, during which hundreds of millions of people travel to their hometowns, will run from February 5th to February 23rd.

Travel consulting firm Dragon Trail International announced that 501 million Chinese people will travel domestically during the Lunar New Year holiday in 2025, an increase of 5.9% from the previous year. Tourism expenditure during the same period reached 6.77 billion yuan, an increase of 7%.