Ctrip is summoned for questioning again: Hotels have long held dominant pricing power, and with 60% of orders relying on it, they find it difficult to break free

Ask AI · Is the Ctrip price adjustment assistant offline, and can hotel pricing power truly return?

Source of the image: Visual China

Text by: Rao Fuying

Edited by: Ye Jinyan

Produced by: Deep Web · Tencent News Xiaoman Studio

On March 23, 2026, the Beijing Municipal Market Supervision Administration, in conjunction with the Municipal Bureau of Commerce and the Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism, took action by officially interviewing twelve platform companies including Ctrip, Qunar, and Fliggy, collectively reporting the first batch of issues regarding “involution” style competition among platforms.

Among them, the online travel leader Ctrip once again became the focus, being explicitly named for its practices of forcing hotels to “automatically price match,” depriving merchants of pricing autonomy, and establishing unreasonable “cut-off” rules. Regulatory authorities have ordered it to immediately take down related “price adjustment assistant” tools and optimize the “cut-off” rules.

In response to public opinion and regulatory pressure, Ctrip announced on March 5 that it would take down the “AI Business Assistant” (price adjustment assistant) function starting from March 10. Ctrip’s official statement indicated that the automatic pricing tool was no longer suitable for the current industry development requirements. Whether the “price adjustment assistant” will be permanently offline has not been clearly responded to by Ctrip.

According to internet analyst Zhang Shule, the exposure of this incident may force improvements to the price adjustment assistant, but the underlying issues of “system control” by the platform may still persist. At the same time, the current hotel and travel market is fiercely competitive for customers, and low-price involution remains an effective method for attracting customers.

Price adjustment assistant has been “deformed”

The so-called “price adjustment assistant” was originally a feature launched by Ctrip in 2023, claiming to help hotel merchants “intelligently adjust prices and increase revenue.” However, multiple hotel operators reported that this tool gradually became a means for Ctrip to control prices through technical means during its operation.

According to reports from regulatory authorities, several hotels indicated that Ctrip used technical means to capture real-time room prices across all channels, requiring hotels to offer the lowest prices on the Ctrip platform. If hotels did not cooperate, the platform would intervene in pricing directly through phone pressure, restricting traffic, and automatic price matching. This feature is considered to infringe on merchants’ autonomous pricing rights, constituting unfair competition.

Some hotel managers mentioned that Ctrip would silently activate the price adjustment assistant without the merchant’s consent, lowering prices even to loss-making levels, which “seriously disrupts the normal operation of hotels over time, with low-price orders flooding in, directly eroding hotel revenue.”

What further displeases hotel operators is that even if merchants apply to disable this feature, the platform would quietly reactivate it, essentially handing over pricing rights to the platform. Moreover, complaints to Ctrip’s business managers often go unanswered, leaving merchants with no recourse.

Additionally, the price adjustment assistant is not unique to Ctrip; major domestic OTA platforms, including Meituan and Fliggy, also offer similar functions. As a result, when hotels are listed on multiple platforms simultaneously, the automatic pricing systems of each platform compete with each other, leading to a vicious cycle of price reductions.

Internet analyst Zhang Shule pointed out that merchant pricing is based on their own operational considerations, and there are established constraints when listed on the platform. Unless the agreements between both parties explicitly state that the platform can control, adjust, or lock prices and comply with regulations, this constitutes typical channel pressure, which may pose a risk of losses for merchants.

Zhang Shule’s judgment is not unfounded. Public information shows that by the end of 2025, complaints regarding Ctrip’s forced price changes through the “price adjustment assistant” began to erupt, with the forced activation of the “price adjustment assistant” and the inability to opt-out becoming focal points of merchant complaints.

The Yunnan Provincial Tourism Homestay Industry Association clearly pointed out in a rights protection statement issued in December that certain OTA platforms, including Ctrip, exploited their market dominance during peak seasons to implement “either/or” clauses and unilaterally raise commissions, among other unfair competition practices.

Why are there repeated interviews over the course of a year?

The issues surrounding the price adjustment assistant are not isolated cases. This has also led to Ctrip being interviewed again by regulatory authorities for unfair competition issues within a few short months.

According to publicly available reports, Ctrip has been interviewed by regulatory authorities frequently in recent years. In the past year alone, there have been at least five formal administrative interviews mentioned in public reports, and Ctrip has also been subject to antitrust investigations by the State Administration for Market Regulation.

Reviewing public information reveals that as early as 2025, Ctrip was interviewed by local regulatory authorities for similar issues— in August of that year, the Guizhou Provincial Market Supervision Administration interviewed Ctrip and other involved travel platforms, pointing out behaviors such as “either/or” and using technical means to interfere with merchant pricing.

In September 2025, the Zhengzhou Municipal Market Supervision Administration also conducted an administrative interview with Ctrip’s operating entity, directly stating that it unreasonably restricted the transactions and prices of operators on the platform through service agreements, transaction rules, and technical means. Furthermore, on January 14, 2026, Ctrip was also subject to an antitrust investigation by the State Administration for Market Regulation.

Why does Ctrip repeatedly “cross the line”? This may be closely related to its dominant market position.

According to estimates by Jiao Yin International, by the end of 2024, Ctrip’s market share in the core hotel and travel market GMV will reach 56%, while the entire Ctrip group (including Tongcheng Travel, Qunar, and others) has a market share of nearly 70% in the domestic OTA market, far exceeding other platforms. This market position gives Ctrip strong bargaining power and rule-making authority.

“Ctrip has a ‘tail too big to wag’ problem in the OTA field. Due to its large market share, it is easy to appear in a situation where it ‘promises fairness but does not deliver’— publicly pledging to cooperate fairly, but frequently crossing regulatory red lines in actual execution,” said internet analyst Zhang Shule.

The contradictions brought about by this market position are particularly evident on the merchant side. On one hand, many hotel operators are suffering from Ctrip’s pricing hegemony; on the other hand, “the vast majority of hotels would fare worse if they left Ctrip, as most homestays and rental apartment-style hotels get 60% of their orders from Ctrip,” admitted an industry insider.

“If we don’t list on Ctrip, the customer acquisition costs for most small-scale, small-brand homestays will rise significantly, while the impact on large-brand chain hotels with their own platforms will be minimal. This may lead to a situation where ‘large chain hotel groups reap more benefits while small shops rapidly clear out’,” another industry insider added.

In Zhang Shule’s view, the market distortion caused by this dominant position stems from the OTA’s business model itself. This model, which profits from price differentials, can easily become deformed as corporate interests expand. “Perhaps a truly effective way to correct this would be for more new platforms to enter the hotel and travel space, creating healthy competition, ultimately allowing the industry to return to a track where reputation wins.”