Chinese regulator fines Trip.com 5.2 billion yuan

On July 25, 2026, China's State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) imposed a fine of 5.2 billion yuan (about $765 million) on Trip.com Group for abusing its dominant position in the online hotel‑booking market.

The regulator ordered Trip.com to return 122 million yuan in booking deposits it had withheld from hotels and barred the platform from requiring exclusive contracts or enforcing parity‑price rules. The penalty combines a 1.658 billion‑yuan confiscation of illegal gains with a fine equal to 7.5 % of Trip.com's 2025 domestic sales.

SAMR’s action follows a probe launched in January after hotel complaints that Trip.com forced exclusive deals, used traffic‑allocation algorithms to push hotels into listing only its lowest rates, and penalised them for pricing lower on other channels. The sanction mirrors earlier fines on Western OTAs but represents the first large‑scale antitrust penalty of its kind in China.