Trip.com, the OTA that is also a TMC
Trip.com's business travel arm claims 15,000 multinational clients, and since September 17 four AI agents book their hotel stays at Trip.com's own prices
by Markus Busch
Driving the news. For most hotels outside China, Trip.com is the Chinese OTA. It is where a traveler from Shanghai or Shenzhen books your room.
On September 17, in front of 200 travel, procurement and finance leaders at the Mandarin Oriental in Singapore, its business travel arm, Trip.Biz, launched something else. Agent ONE is four AI agents that run a company's business trips, from the first request to the report on what they cost. They are live in every market Trip.Biz serves.
Trip.Biz calls itself a "digital-first full-service travel management company." It says more than 15,000 multinationals and over a million smaller firms use it. Its CEO, Tao Song, described a company rooted in Asia-Pacific and still growing in Europe.
An OTA that is also a TMC. From the hotel's side, a travel management company is the agency on the corporate account. The company negotiates a rate with you. The agency loads it, the company's travelers book it, and the agency earns its commission.
Trip.Biz plays that role for its clients. It belongs to the same group that sells your rooms to leisure travelers. The release says it handles contracting and payment itself, and that every booking stays tied to "Trip.Biz inventory, pricing, approval, and payment."
The four agents. Each one touches how your hotel gets booked.
The Planning Agent takes a request typed in plain words, say two nights in Frankfurt near the trade fair, and returns recommendations already filtered by the company's travel policy. Your hotel is in that short answer or it isn't.
The Booking Agent completes the reservation in a chat. Trip.Biz's target is two minutes, down from around 45. The booking lands on Trip.Biz's shelf, at Trip.Biz's price.
The Approval Agent clears what it judges low-risk in under three seconds and sends the rest to a person. A stay inside policy goes straight through. A stay above the cap waits.
The Insight Agent writes the travel manager's report on where the money went and where the company could spend less. It takes under seven minutes. An analyst used to need up to a week. If the company's people stay with you, your hotel is a line in it.
The backdrop. Trip.com reported its second quarter on September 15. Corporate travel revenue rose 11% to RMB771 million ($114 million). The same quarter carried the RMB5.2 billion ($763 million) anti-monopoly penalty from China's market regulator, which turned a profit into a net loss, plus a deduction the regulator imposed on its hotel revenue. Here is how that came about.
What it means for hotels. Most of your corporate accounts still book through agencies you know. The ones worth a phone call are multinationals with offices in Asia-Pacific, the companies most likely to run their travel on Trip.Biz already.
Ask who manages their travel. If the answer is Trip.Biz, ask the second question. When their traveler books your hotel through it, which rate does the agent see: the one you negotiated with the company, or the one you gave Trip.com?
The catch. The two-minute booking and three-second approval are Trip.Biz's own targets. Nobody outside the company has measured them. The release says the Planning Agent draws on "multi-source" content without saying where hotel rates come from. The client counts are the company's own, and there are no figures for Europe. Corporate travel is also still small for the group, about 5% of second-quarter revenue.
Trip.com took a $763 million fine last quarter over how it treated hotels. Its corporate travel business grew 11% in the same quarter.
Read also: Trip.com just put a number on what squeezing hotels was worth to it
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