China’s State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) has placed online travel giant Trip.com Group under investigations for alleged anti-monopoly conduct.
The announcement comes just weeks shy of China’s Spring Festival holidays, a peak travel season when millions of Chinese nationals will take celebratory domestic and international trips.
In response, Trip.com Group said on January 14 that it will “actively cooperate with the investigation” and that business operations will not be disrupted.
The SAMR’s probe has caused the company’s shares on Hong Kong Stock Exchange to plummet 17.05 per cent on January 15 – its largest single-day decline since November 8, 2018, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
Trip.com Group has headquarters in both Shanghai and Singapore.
SAMR had previously initiated a similar investigation into Alibaba in December 2020, which resulted in a record RMB18.2 billion (US$2.8 billion at that time) fine for monopolistic practices.
