Ctrip was fined 5.179 billion yuan. Everyone must have caught this big news over the weekend, right? As soon as the news came out, related entries immediately became hot searches on Weibo, and the comment section below also burst into applause, saying that it was a joy to people's hearts and a light of justice.
But in fact, many people don't understand the situation. Their first reaction is that the platform is familiar with big data. Of course, this matter has been criticized a lot, but the penalty Ctrip received this time is really not because of this.
As early as January this year, Ctrip was already under investigation, and now everything is settled.
After carefully reading the official notification, Ctrip has two main problems.
One is to require some hotels to cooperate exclusively with them. To put it simply, if you want to do good business with me, don’t play with other people.
The second is to force some hotels to offer the “lowest price on the entire network.” Even if the hotel joins other platforms at the same time, it must ensure that Ctrip sells it the cheapest.
It is worth noting that the upper limit of fines under the Anti-Monopoly Law is 10%. Back then, Alibaba only fined 4% for "choosing one of the two". This time, Ctrip's fine was 7.5%, which directly refreshed the historical record.
Anyway, not long after the fine was issued, Ctrip issued an announcement expressing its sincere acceptance and resolute obedience, and also introduced 19 corrective measures in one breath.
A simple summary is,The exclusive cooperation is no longer available, the lowest price on the entire network has also been stopped, all price adjustment tools have been offline, business personnel have strengthened management, and the compulsorily deducted order reserve (or deposit) of 122 million has been fully refunded to safeguard the rights and interests of merchants and consumers.
To put it bluntly, the negative reviewer is actually not too surprised by this result.
If you often follow the news related to OTA (Online Travel Agency, "Online Travel Agency"), you will find that domestic OTA platforms represented by Ctrip have been interviewed several times by the municipal supervision bureaus in many places.
Last year, the Yunnan Tourism and Homestay Industry Association issued an announcement that it would launch anti-monopoly rights protection against OTA platforms such as Ctrip."Choose one from two", unilaterally increasing commissions at will, and setting unfair trading conditions. . . Many crimes were listed one by one.
Therefore, Ctrip's fine this time not only made many people applaud, but also brought to the forefront the resentment of OTA merchants, especially those who operate hotels and B&Bs.
In fact, when we started the investigation half a year ago, we successively talked to some hotels and B&B businesses.
At that time, the merchants’ complaints were scattered in group chats and social media posts. It was not until this ticket was issued that many of the claims were confirmed in official notifications for the first time.
However, fines can put a final word on monopolistic behavior, but it is difficult to contain the anguish in the hearts of OTA merchants.
Merchants suffer from OTA, not just a day or two, but also far more than just one Ctrip.
# The aroma of wine is also afraid of deep alleys
If you don’t spend money on promotion or participate in marketing activities, no matter how good the service is, you can basically say goodbye to a prosperous business.
This is a deeper feeling after talking to several hotel and B&B owners.
Because the OTA platform is not all about word of mouth, but a set ofPPClogic.
A hotel manager, Xiao Lin (pseudonym), introduced a key indicator to Bad Review Jun, called PSI (Service Quality Score). The higher the total score, the stronger the ability to obtain traffic.
But it's not easy to get points.
The PSI indicator consists of 9 sub-items. Among them, the weight of room nights (how many rooms are sold for how many nights) and sales volume is as high as 40%. However, small items such as room nights, sales and reviews are difficult to improve in the short term.
So in order to get more traffic and exposure, you have to use some means to operate.
For example, you can participate in the basic promotions of the platform, as well as marketing activities such as points alliances and discount clubs, or open promotion tools such as ladders and pyramids.
Take the special cards and gold medals that will be taken offline this time as an example. Whether or not they were listed before and what kind of cards they were listed will affect the display order of the hotel.
Yellow thumbs are gold medals, orange thumbs are special cards
If you guys pay attention, you will find that when booking hotels on Ctrip, you will give priority to merchants with thumbs up or special or gold medal logos. (Starting from early January this year, these logos will not be displayed on the front end, but the merchants’ backend rights will remain unchanged)
"Special brand" means that you can only play on this platform and need to sign an exclusive agreement. As for the "gold medal", although you are allowed to go to other OTA platforms, you only have to ensure that Ctrip has a 5% price advantage, and automatic price pursuit is turned on by default.
If it is detected that the price of your hotel is lower at other hotels, the platform will automatically pursue the price. If the price difference is caught too much by the system, the gold medal will be lost.
But not all businesses are suitable for this method.
If you want to play around with this set of rules, you not only have to cut the meat and make profits, but you also have to find someone to keep an eye on the backend data every day. For those small budget hotels, especially B&Bs with only a few rooms, it is simply too much.
Xiaoyang (pseudonym), who runs a B&B in Chongqing, told Bianpingjun that her B&B was launched on Tujia (Tujia’s B&B listings are connected to Ctrip and Qunar B&B sections), and she couldn’t remember the last time she received a door-to-door order through the platform’s natural push.
Mingming B&B is located in a prime location. It is a duplex of more than 50 square meters. It cost 200,000 yuan just to decorate it. The check-in guide has more than 20 pages of PPT. It has maintained perfect praise for more than three years of careful management.
As a result, because I didn’t spend much money on promotion, the traffic was pitiful.
Last year, there were only 46 orders on the platform, 33% of which were repeat customers. As for the remaining new customers, 90% are attracted by Xiaoyang’s content on Xiaohongshu, and then use the platform for transactions.
It is equivalent to "feeding orders" to the platform, because Xiaoyang feels that this might get some normal exposure.
But the negative reviewer tried to search at that time, and it took a lot of filtering conditions and scrolling down for a long time to find her house.
The business manager who works with Xiaoyang often invites her to listen to various live broadcasts that "teach you how to operate well". But in Xiaoyang's view, these classes were just cutting leeks, so he didn't go to them even once.
What makes her even more helpless is that the B&B is only 300 meters away from the nearest subway station A, but the platform page links her home listing to another subway station B, which is 2 kilometers away.
The explanation given by the business manager is that subway station B is a relatively popular subway station and has greater search traffic. However, Xiaoyang feels that this kind of labeling not only does not bring much traffic, but also easily misleads guests into thinking that the B&B has inconvenient transportation. She gave feedback several times, but the page information never changed.
In addition, from the perspective of the lamb,The platform’s review mechanism further amplifies the impact of ratings on merchants.
Picture source is a screenshot of a homepage, provided by Xiaoyang
"The unsubscription clause is ineffective for consumers. If the time limit has expired or you have already enjoyed a discount, you cannot unsubscribe. You can cancel by contacting customer service. If you do not refund, you will be left with negative reviews."
In order to keep her score intact, she did not claim compensation when a guest moved something and smashed a corner of the wall. During the Chinese New Year, the person opposite asked if she could book a room at the normal price, and she agreed. However, she received a negative review in the end, saying it was expensive and the location was far away.
According to Xiaoyang, for a period of time, the platform blocked comments that were more than three years old and did not include them in the calculation. At the same time, it increased the weight of recent comments. A peer's overall score was lowered from 4.9 to 4.3 because of a 4.7-point review.
It seems that the rating has only dropped by a few tenths, but the ranking and exposure of the listing will be affected.
If you are willing to participate in events and buy promotions for the sake of traffic, the number of orders may increase, but at the same time, the commissions will also increase..
Picture source network
For hotels and B&Bs, the platform charges 10%-15%, which sounds like a lot, but is still acceptable. But if you take a closer look, you will find that if you participate in the event, the commission will be much more than that, at least 5% will be added.
For example, if you join a points alliance, you will be charged an additional 5% of the base price. Yunti will also deduct the corresponding commission based on the base price based on the strategy. Add it all up, and it's not impossible for the commission to reach 20%-30%, or even higher.
It's equivalent to spending 500 yuan to book a room, and there may be more than 100 yuan in it, all of which goes into the platform's pocket.
In order for businesses to maintain profits, consumers will most likely foot the bill in the end.
#Who has the pricing power?
If the previous methods of forcing krypton gold overtly or covertly can be said to be a business game that one is willing to fight and one is willing to suffer.
Then there is something even more outrageous.
In March this year, Ctrip took the lead in removing an “AI business assistant” function, which was the controversial price adjustment assistant.
This price adjustment assistant is not unique to Ctrip. According to feedback from some hoteliers, other OTA platforms have similar mechanisms for automatic price adjustment and price pursuit.
You may not imagine that before this, when doing business on OTA platforms, you didn’t necessarily have the final say on how much your items would sell for. . .
It sounds absurd, but reality is so magical. Many hotel and B&B owners have suffered from "price adjustment assistants".
Listing Pass is a tool linked to special brands and gold medals, and can be used for price control.
Tools such as "Price Adjustment Assistant" are said to automatically track the lowest prices on the entire network and improve competitiveness.But it is more like a price war between platforms, with the result that merchants’ profits become cannon fodder.
Many times, the merchants themselves don’t know when they have enabled this thing, and they will automatically open it by simply touching it in the background.
The bad reviewer asked an OTA hotel operator. She said that the general business manager would not agree to close this price adjustment assistant, because if it is closed for a long time, it will affect the performance of the business manager if it is at a price disadvantage for a long time. .
Anna (pseudonym), who runs two hotels in Xinjiang, complained to the bad reviewer. The end of 2025 is already the off-season, and house prices are already very low. As a result, the "price adjustment assistant" lowered the price even lower.She lost more than three thousand yuan in half a month.
What's even more embarrassing is that this tool is automatically opened from time to time. Exiting requires review for three working days, and may even fail the review.
Moreover, the operation of the business manager is also quite disgusting.
Theoretically, business managers are here to serve merchants, but some people use very cunning methods to achieve performance.
Anna revealed to us that in order to force merchants to spend money, business managers usually threaten them with some means.This includes but is not limited to traffic bottoming, removing stores from shelves, maliciously signing up for discounts, limiting traffic, forcibly adjusting prices, etc.
After a set of combo punches, few businesses can withstand it.
The bad reviewer noticed that there are many businesses on social media platforms who post about similar things.
If the merchant rejects those low-price orders, he will be fined and have limited sales, and you don’t know who to talk to for explanation.
, rewards and punishments are also clearly defined
After reviewing these things one by one, it is not difficult to understand why OTA platforms have been invited to "drink tea" by the market supervision department every once in a while in recent years.
Ctrip has had a big drink this time and has become honest.
But having said that, Ctrip is not unjustly beaten this time, but from the perspective of consumers,Ctrip's service is also really good.
For example, when something goes wrong when canceling or changing an air ticket, when you arrive at a hotel but you are told there is no room, or when you have to argue with an overseas hotel, some netizens reported that Ctrip customer service would intervene to coordinate.
So this time Ctrip was fined, in addition to applauding in the comment area, there were also many people speaking out for their service.
Including the bad reviewer who booked a black-hearted B&B before, and there was a sudden power outage in the middle of the night. The landlord said that he had just received the notice, but when he asked the residents in the same building, they said that they had notified him half a month ago.
We wanted to fight with the landlord, but they only wanted a partial refund. . .
In the end, we had to ask the platform customer service to help us negotiate and get the entire room fee refunded.
Therefore, if you encounter unreliable merchants, the platform can still play a certain role in restraining them.
Of course, we can’t just assume that the platform’s unscrupulous operations on merchants have never happened just because customer service has solved problems for consumers.
Over the years, we have long been accustomed to opening the app to compare prices and place orders, and if there is a problem, we will seek help from the platform. But few people ask, who is paying for this increasingly cheaper and more convenient experience?
It may be the profits given up by the hotel, or it may be the pricing power that the merchants are gradually losing.
5.179 billion may not buy an OTA model that will satisfy everyone, but it will at least allow more platforms to think about how to find a balance between efficiency and service.
After all, the convenience we enjoy should not be based on the "lack of choice" of another group of people.