Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Tongcheng Travel 2024 Q2 and interim results earnings release conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a Q&A session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You'll then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Kylie Yeung , Investor Relations Director. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning and good evening, everyone. Welcome to Tongcheng Travel 2024 Q2 and interim results conference call. I'm Kylie Yeung , Investor Relations Director of the company. Joining us today on the conference call are our Executive Director and CEO, Mr. Heping Ma, our CFO, Mr. Fan Lei , and our Chief Capital Officer, Ms. Joyce Li . For today's call, our management team will provide a review of the company's performance in the Q2. Ma Heping will update us on the company's strategy, Joyce Li will discuss our business and operational high-level highlights, and then Fan Lei will address the details of financial performance accordingly. We'll take your questions during the Q&A session that follows. As always, our presentation contains forward-looking statements.
Such statements are based on management's current expectations and current market operating conditions and relate to events that involve known or unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors, which may cause the company's actual results, performance, or achievements to differ from those in the forward-looking statement. This presentation also contains some unaudited non-IFRS financial measures. They should be considered in addition to, but not as a substitute for, measures of the company's financial performance prepared in accordance with IFRS. For a detailed discussion of non-IFRS measures, please refer to our disclosure documents in the IR section of our website. Now, let me introduce our CEO, Ma Heping. Ma Heping, please go ahead.
Thank you. The year 2024 is poised to be a year full of opportunities for both China's travel industry and our company. In the Q2, we witnessed steady growth in the domestic travel market and the continued release of diversified travel demands. The nationwide travel surge during the Labor Day holidays and the Dragon Boat Festival injected new vitality into the market. Amid this ongoing market momentum, we seized opportunities by actively exploring new directions and advancing our domestic and international business expansion strategies, aiming to achieve a new engine growth. For our domestic business, we focused on expanding market coverage and increasing user value in the mass market to capture more growth opportunities. For our international business, we capitalized on the rapid increase in outbound travel demand, deepening our presence in key regions and establishing a second growth curve for the company.
Moreover, we continuously drive the diversification of our company by expanding the breadth of our products and services, delving into the potential of the travel industry chain, and implementing more profound strategic initiatives. These efforts are propelling our company towards excellence. Over the past quarter, our revenue and business volume once again experienced significant growth, further demonstrating our robust development momentum and very exceptional operational capabilities. As the industry embarks on a phase of high quality development, we're presented with new opportunities and a new landscape. As a leading travel platform in China, we thus need to take proactive actions to pursue innovative improvements. Through organizational optimization, we integrated resources and further enhanced operational efficiency. We actively responded to market dynamics by swiftly adjusting our strategies and optimizing our products and services, demonstrating the resilience of our company.
In a new phase of industry development, user demands are becoming increasingly diversified. In response to this trend, we will strive for excellence by continuously enriching our products and services and enhancing user value, so as to drive rapid growth of our core business. At the same time, we'll unwaveringly execute our expansion strategy, focus on establishing and deepening our presence across the industry value chain, and further amplify our competitive advantage to achieve rapid growth. Next, I will hand over the call to Joyce Li. She will share with you our business and operational highlights of the Q2 of 2024. Joyce Li, please go ahead.
Thank you. Throughout the Q2, we continued to see strengthened demand across various travel scenarios, in particular for leisure travel, as Chinese people increasingly favor premium consumption for entertainment. Amid upward sentiment, we spare no effort to expand our business and manage to deliver a decent growth for the past quarter, in spite of the high base last year. As an experienced player in the OTA industry, we have accumulated significant expertise in the transportation sector and have built unshakable competitive edges. For the past quarter, our transportation business, which serve as a pillar of our revenue and profit, maintains growth momentum and further entrenches market position. The air ticketing business, a key part of the segment, continued to gain market share and again hit record high in its quarterly revenue.
By launching more interactive marketing campaigns, we not only attract new users, but also strengthen our connection with existing users. For the Q2, our total air ticket volume sustained better than industry growth and posted nearly 20% year-over-year growth. Meanwhile, we steadily advanced our international expansion plans with a focus on enriching suppliers, as well as on implementing a competitive pricing strategy to reach out to more users. To our thrill, our international air ticketing volume achieved a new high, and it reaches an incredible growth of more than 150% year-over-year, far exceeding the recovery rate of the industry. As for our train ticketing business, we continue to focus on providing users with customized travel solutions and a joyful travel experience, which led to further enhanced monetization capability.
Over the period, we consistently iterated our Huixing system and added more viable travel solutions through advanced algorithms that better satisfy users' needs. Through value for money positioning and mass market focus, our accommodation business has established a unique market presence in lower tier cities, and has grown significantly in terms of volume and revenue in the past few years. Amid the resilient demand during the quarter, the business achieved a new high in its quarterly revenue, with increased efforts in pursuing healthy growth against the backdrop of high base last year. We got ourselves into exploring various scenarios for hotel stays, such as demand generated by entertainment events, exhibitions, as well as emerging popularity of some niche tourism destinations. At the same time, we continuously push ahead with our cross-sell strategy and place great emphasis on efficiency. As such, our 15-day cross-sell rate further increased to almost 12%.
For the past quarter, our total room nights reaches a solid year-on-year growth of 10%. Our international accommodation business continued to expand rapidly with increased efforts to enrich hotel suppliers, as well as optimizing product structures. As such, our international room night growth posts a remarkable growth of around 140% year-over-year in the Q2. We put emphasis on long-term growth and have been seeking opportunities vertically along the travel industry to drive further development of the company. Our hotel management business, an essential part of this strategy, operates on an asset-light model and maintain rapid expansion in geographical coverage across China, driven by comprehensive support to franchisees.
With regard to technology, operations, finance, and suppliers, at the end of June, the number of hotel stores in operation on the Elong Hotel Technology platform has further increased around 1900 , with more than one thousand stores in the pipeline. Meanwhile, the acquisition of Elong Hotel business in December last year is another attempt by the company to expand its footprint along the travel industry. Over the last quarter, the business, which mainly consists of self-developed package tours and operates through offline travel agency stores, focused on expanding product offerings and offline stores at home, while rebuilding connections with overseas TSPs. By the end of the quarter, the number of our travel agency stores had climbed to more than 800 . Through effective user creation initiatives and efficient engagement programs, we've built the most extensive user base in China's OTA industry.
At the end of June, our 12 month rolling paying users increased by 5% year-over-year to 228 million, while our MPUs for the quarter added up to 42.5 million. Since 2023, we've gradually shifted our focus from purely increasing user volume to enhancing user value. For the past quarter, we're delighted to see our 12 month accumulated travelers served further expanded by 30% to 1.86 billion, with average purchase frequency up to 8.1 x per user. Moreover, our 12 month ARPU also increased to nearly 54 RMB, exceeding the level of 2019 by 31%. During the quarter, we consistently strive to diversify our traffic sources by increasing interaction with the users at multiple fronts.
Over the last quarter, we continued to explore various scenarios within Weixin ecosystem, with increased stress on efficiency and user experience. In the meantime, our standalone app maintained astonishing growth for the past three months, with its DAUs hitting a historical high during May Day holiday, almost tripling last year's peak. By constantly refining products and launching interactive marketing activities, we've attracted a great proportion of younger users to our platform. Moreover, our cooperation with Huawei has been further deepened. Beyond embedding our product and service in its intelligent assistant interface, we've also worked together to develop travel service in HarmonyOS, which may add to further expansion of our user base in the future. The younger generation has been the core of our user profile, and we've been making persistent efforts to build a closer bond with this demographic.
With the rising popularity of music festivals and concerts, we once again joined hands with Tencent Music and sponsored a music festival in Macau in late July to enhance our brand recognition among younger users. We also, for the first time, created our own travel festival, Let's Travel with Tongcheng, to increase interaction with the users. By launching creative and viral content, we've reinforced our fun and entertaining brand personality among the targeted users. Besides, our Black Whale membership program is a crucial part of our drive to enhance user value. With efforts focused on optimizing operations, as well as enhancing interaction with the members through social events, the program continued to exhibit strong growth over the last quarter.
As of the end of June, the cumulative number of Black Whale members zoomed larger to almost 65 million, more than double the size in the same period of last year. The ARPU was also 2.1 x that of general members. Customer comfort has been enshrined in our corporate culture, and we are determined to deliver a supreme travel experience by embracing technologies. Our algorithm-driven Huixing system provides varied travel solutions by combining different transport means, which makes travel more accessible and convenient. Meanwhile, by consistently introducing intelligent features and automation functions, the efficiency of our customer service has been further increased. As usual, we strive to empower industry partners by our profound internet expertise and advanced technologies in a drive to promote sustainable growth in the travel industry. Over the quarter, we persistently pushed for cooperation with airports.
We joined hands with Capital Airports Holding in June and signed a strategic agreement through which the two of us will collaborate on big data application, product development, and enhancement of travel experience. Besides, we've established a strategic cooperation with a tourist destination in Shandong Province to help increase its digitalization as well as product development. Over the years, we've been persistently pursuing better ESG performance to align with high international standards. Our efforts have been rewarded. We were, for the second consecutive year, recognized in S&P Global Sustainability Yearbook 2024 China, affirming our leadership in the sustainability practice. Moreover, we were also awarded the Best ESG Program among small and mid-cap by Institutional Investor. Looking ahead, we will remain devoted to improving our ESG practice and thus creating more value for our stakeholders. I'll stop here and give the call to our CFO, Fan Lei.
He will share with you our detailed financial results for the Q2. Fan Lei, please go ahead.
Thank you, Joyce Li. Good evening, everyone. During the past quarter, China's travel industry has continued its upward trajectory, with travel enthusiasm flourishing. Modern travelers are seeking diversified options and unique experiences, showing increasing interest in exploring off-the-beaten-path destinations and engaging in activities that foster deeper connections to local culture and environment. We successfully captured opportunities across various travel scenarios, once again, delivering satisfying results. Our core business achieved impressive growth, while our tourism sector maintained its momentum, infusing new vitality into our company. In the Q2 of 2024, we obtained outstanding outcomes for both top line and bottom line. We reported a net revenue of RMB 4.2 billion, representing a 48% increase from the same period of 2023. During this quarter, we maintained efficient operations while proactively capturing business opportunities through effective marketing campaigns and advertisement.
We achieved a solid adjusted net profit amounting to RMB 657 million. Our adjusted net profit margin increased quarter-over-quarter to 15.5%. The improvement was primarily attributed to the enhanced efficiency of our international business investments. Despite severe weather disruptions that significantly impacted the travel industry across China during the Q2, our core OTA business revenue still demonstrated a remarkable 23% year-over-year growth, reaching RMB 3.5 billion, and setting another record for the quarterly revenue in our history. Our transportation ticketing revenue for the Q2 was RMB 1.7 billion, representing a 17% increase compared with the same period of last year. In the past quarter, we witnessed a robust travel enthusiasm across the country and experienced a strong demand across diverse travel scenarios, which substantially boosted our ticketing volumes.
Additionally, we remained committed to refining our VAS offerings to improve monetization. This growth highlights our operational excellence and successful market share acquisition strategies. Our accommodation reservation business achieved RMB 1.2 billion for the Q2 of 2024, representing a 13% increase from the same period of last year. Our total room nights sold increased by 10% compared to last year. We continue to implement our cross-selling strategy and leverage substantial traffic from our transportation business to further grow our accommodation segment. In the Q2 of 2024, although the ADRs in the accommodation industry faced widespread pressure, our ADR remained resilient, thanks to our exposure in the mass market. Our blended take rate increased year-over-year, primarily due to more disciplined investment strategies.
Other business once again delivered stellar performance, with revenue reaching RMB 592 million in the Q2, representing a growth of 87% year-over-year. The significant leap in our performance is primarily driven by the rapid expansion of our advertising business, as hotel merchants increasingly seek advertising solutions to capture- to capitalize on market opportunities. Furthermore, the ongoing expansion of our Black Whale membership program has also contributed meaningfully to the overall growth. Looking ahead, we are confident that these segments will continue to deliver robust and sustainable growth. Our tourism business continued its remarkable recovery pace, with revenue achieving RMB 720 million, demonstrating our success to capture market recovery opportunities and our constant efforts to enhance operational efficiency.
In terms of the profitability, our gross profit increased by 27% year-over-year to RMB 2.7 billion, while gross margin maintained stable at 64.6% quarter-over-quarter. In the Q2 of 2024, our operating profit for the core OTA business achieved RMB 858 million, with 24.3% margin, improved from 22.6% quarter-over-quarter, as we have enhanced the efficiency of our sales marketing investments. The operating profit for the tourism business achieved RMB 0.7 million, reaching breakeven in the last season. Our Adjusted EBITDA increased by 13% year-over-year and reached RMB 913 million, representing an improvement in Adjusted EBITDA margin from 21.2% to 21.5% quarter-over-quarter.
Adjusted net profit grew by 11% year-over-year to RMB 657 million. We achieved a 15.5% Adjusted net profit margin, which represents an improvement from 14.4% in the previous quarter. Service development and administrative expenses in the Q2 of 2024 increased by 21% from the same period of 2023. Excluding share-based compensation charges, service development and administrative expenses in total accounted for 15.9% of revenue in the Q2, compared with 19.8% of revenue in the same period last year. Selling and marketing expenses in the Q2 of 2024 increased by 36% from the same period of last year.
Excluding share-based compensation charges, selling and marketing expenses accounted for 35.1% of revenue in the Q2, compared with 38.4% of revenue in the same period of 2023. As of June 30th, 2024, the balance of cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash and short-term investments was RMB 10 billion. Despite unprecedented highs last year, China's travel market has continued its growth momentum into the first- half of this year. As we enter July, the travel market continued to heat up, with various travelers setting out on their summer journey. The summer season has sparked a continued interest in exploring new horizons and engaging in diverse experiences. Family, friends, and solo adventurers alike are seeking novel ways to make the most out of their summer break.
Looking ahead to the second- half of the year, we will not only pursue market opportunities, but also aim for more balanced and healthy growth with decent profitability. We have adopted a more disciplined approach to bolster the efficiency of our marketing investments. At the same time, we have steered towards more streamlined business operations, as well as enhanced organizational efficiency. These efforts elevated our agility in responding to market dynamics and have enabled us to achieve greater profitability. For long-term perspective, we maintain our optimism about the growth potential of China's travel market. We will strengthen our core OTA business by enhancing our service offerings and improving user value. Simultaneously, we will focus on expanding our outbound business to capture new market opportunities and strengthen our global presence.
Additionally, we are committed to robustly developing our hotel management and tourism business, leveraging our experience and resources to create multiple growth engines. Additionally, we anticipate a steady improvement in our profit margins over time, driven by increased operating leverage and positive margin impact from our new initiatives, including user acquisitions through our apps and international business expansion. We will adhere to our strategic vision and intensify our ESG efforts to drive the sustainable development of the company. With that, operator, we're ready to take the questions now. Thank you.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. Today's session is limited to two questions at a time per participant. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A queue. Our first question comes from the line of Simon Cheung from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi, Fan Lei and Joyce Li. Thanks for the presentation. I got two questions. One, I think we well understand that the travel demand there were some concern that going into the Q3 or even second- half of the year, there might be some slowdown. We also understand that the base is getting quite tough in the Q3. So based on what you observe so far, perhaps you can you know share with us you know what you're observing in the Q3, and you know is there any indication that whether your full year guidance would be changed? That's the first question.
The second question is, I think, obviously the, there has been some concern about you investing a bit more, and, into the overseas business, that, you broke some of the margin that we have seen in the Q1. Nice to see that your margin for the, EBIT margin for the core OTA actually narrow, at a smaller pace, I think down 2%, which is almost 4% in the Q1. You know, to what extent do you feel that, going into the second- half, there's some sort of flexibility that you might adjust your overseas expansion, or you would still be very keen to continue your expansion, such that, you know, the margin, deterioration or impact would be ongoing into the second half of the year? Thank you.
Okay, thank you, Simon Cheung. I will address the first question and then pass the second one to Joyce Li to explain the overseas business development. First, about the guidance for the Q3 and the full year. So first, I would like to address the top line one. In July and August, we still observed solid growth in the domestic travel market, as various travelers were enthusiastic about enjoying their summer vacation. But however, some of the travel demand have been affected by the adverse weather in various areas, such as extreme heat and the rain storms this year. Nevertheless, our business continued to outperform the industry, particularly in the air ticketing segment, which consistently achieved a very strong growth compared with the average industry.
Regarding the recent decreases in hotel ADR and air ticket prices in the market, we believe they are mainly due to the high base caused by the limited supply last year. However, we mentioned a lot of times our ADR for the company only experienced a slight decline compared with the industry average, thanks to our strong presence in the mass market. Besides, our international air ticketing and accommodation business experienced an impressive year-over-year growth of over, I think, 140% in July and August, becoming one of the major growth drivers for us. Other than the strong growth of our international business, we also have made continuous efforts in executing our multi-channel traffic strategy.
Our standalone app continued to grow during the summer holiday, with its DAU increasing significantly year-over-year, demonstrating a solid additional driver for the future growth of our user base and top-line revenue. That is what I want to say about the top line. I want to comment on the top line. Although the industry have some kind of headwind because of the high base and also that weather, but still our company will grow several multiples compared with the average, the industry average. In terms of the bottom line, actually for our core OTA business, which I would like to address first, we have observed a weaker growth, as I mentioned, weaker growth trends since the end of the Q2 this year.
In response, we immediately started reducing our sales marketing investment and streamlined our optimization and administration. All these optimization efforts were carried out with the priority to maintain market share gains, like what I mentioned, while monitoring the changes in the market situation. During the Q3, we focused more on significantly improving ROI and sales marketing, expenses reduction. As a result, we expect a noticeable reduction in the expenses rate across various expenditure lines, of the company, leading to a year-to-year increase in net margin in Q3 for our OTA business, which has already returned to the high margin level, as in 2019, pre-COVID level. We think our net margin in Q3 will even higher than our pre-COVID level for OTA business.
Given the current macro environment, we will continue to leverage our competitive advantages and emphasize on balancing growth and profitability for our whole OTA business in the mid to long term, to reach a balance between our market share gain and also the profitability improvement. In terms of the overseas development, I think Joyce Li will give you more color on that.
Sure. Thank you, Simon Cheung, for the question. First, I would also like to address our business development in terms of our progress made for our international business. As I mentioned before, we have achieved a fast growth in the outbound business in the first- half of the year, with outstanding performance in destinations such as Thailand, Japan, Malaysia, Korea, Hong Kong and Macau. I think the growth of outbound business has outperformed the industry significantly, as I mentioned. I think we believe that the easier visa access and the gradual resumption of international flight capacity will provide enormous market opportunities for us. Given our substantial growth in the user base over the past few years, we see this user as a cornerstone for our expansion into outbound travel market.
Since the second- half of last year, we have intensified our efforts to pursue the growth of our international business. We continue to expand our product service offerings for outbound travel by forging partnerships with the leading international OTAs, wholesalers, airlines, and various overseas TSPs. We also allocate more resources to the research and development to strengthen our service capability. As we mentioned previously, we also have aggressively invested in our international business by implementing a competitive pricing strategy to attract more users since the second- half of last year. We believe our effective marketing initiatives have been successfully boosted user awareness, driving outstanding volume growth for both international air ticket and accommodation business. Now, as we have gained more experience and a better understanding of our user behavior for outbound travelers, we are now placing great emphasis on efficiency in our international investments.
This approach ensures optimal use of resources and allows us to achieve a better ROI for our outbound business. As such, the margin impact caused by international business investment has been narrowed down, which is reflected in the quarter-on-quarter improvement of operating margin of OTA business in the Q2, and in the coming few quarters, we will continue to capitalize on the rapid increase in the outbound travel demand and the target to deepen our presence in the key regions. Simultaneously, we will also place more emphasis on enhancing the efficiency of our international business investments. We believe that we will be able to minimize the margin impact of this investment in the near term and should ultimately achieve a better margin than the domestic business once it's mature. Thank you.
Thanks, Fan Lei and Joyce Li, for the call-in. Thanks.
Thank you. Once again, as a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. We'll now move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Wei Xiong from UBS. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Sure. Good evening, management. Thank you for taking my questions. I also have two follow-up questions. First, I wanna ask about the domestic travel side. If we look at, you know, slightly longer- term, how should we think about your core OTA growth for the next few years? And, I'm wondering, could management share any thoughts on any change in the travel behaviors that you have observed on your platform? You know, just given the current macro headwinds in terms of their travel frequency and spending. And second, I will also want to follow up on the outbound business side. Just wondering, could management also share your thoughts on the industry outlook, you know, for the second half this year as well as next year?
You know, given we have improvement on the supply side on one hand, but also uncertainties around China macro. Also, I understand Joyce Li has shared the recent business development in this area. I'm curious to also learn about your latest thoughts on the, you know, maybe competitive change in the next few years and any update in the internal target in terms of financials for the new business in the next couple of years as well. Thank you.
Thank you, Wei Xiong. First, actually, I cannot put too much comment on the long-term growth rate. But like what I mentioned, you know, we have observed some recent pressure on the consumer markets recently. However, we remain optimistic about the demand in travel markets as consumers continue to prioritize spending on travel and experiential consumption over physical goods. Despite current challenges, we are still confident in the long-term prospects of travel industry, given its resilience and significant potential. But actually, I cannot put comment on numbers, but I can explain some methodology for the company, how we manage the performance and how we manage the industry change.
Actually, our primary focus is still on gaining the market share, but one of the greatest advantages of our company is our flexible operational capabilities, which enable us to swiftly adapt to changes. In a challenging macroeconomic environment, we will closely monitor the situation and swiftly adjust our strategies to maintain a well balance between growth and profitability, like what I mentioned. By optimizing our sales and marketing investments and also our head count from reorganization, we aim to improve, largely improve our ROI and net margin when the macroeconomic has some bouncing period. Regarding the revenue growth targets for the next several years, we will actually adjust it based on market changes as what I mentioned, and the company's actual situation.
We will focus more on being flexible to market changes to ensure sustainable development. We are confident that we can sustain a strong market presence and continue our growth trajectory by maintaining flexible and efficient operations, driving continuous innovation, enhancing service quality, and also optimizing user experience. In terms of the new initiative... Okay, Joyce Li?
For your follow-up questions concerning the international business, as I mentioned, in answers for the last questions, because I think for the easier visa access and the resumption of international has been gradually solved the bottleneck for the outbound travel business. We hold it firmly that the outbound business will further improve, especially for the summer holiday, which is the peak time for the outbound travel. As Fan Lei had shared, our international air ticketing and accommodation business bearing an impressive year-on-year growth of over 140% in July and August. It is becoming one of the major growth drivers for us, and you can see the demand has been continued to be very strong even compared to the Q2 this year.
And in terms of the revenue contribution, we think that in the early stage of developing our international business, we expect that it will account for less than 5% of our core OTA revenue this year. But we believe that our international business will grow rapidly, and its revenue contribution will continue to grow in the following two to three years. And we were keeping our priority to boost the international business volume and cultivate a larger user base. We think that it will become an important growth driver for the company in the next few years. And as I said before, it will achieve a better margin than the domestic business once it become a mature business. Yeah.
I would like to add one thing in terms of the competition for the international and outbound business. Actually, you know, the outbound business and the international business, the business market size is so huge. For our company, we nowadays, it's very small on our outbound revenue and outbound, international, penetration, very small. In this stage, we do not feel too much competition, because still we have a lot of business opportunities that we can cooperate and we can develop.
And in the first- half of this year, and I think second, since Q3 last year, or the second- half of last year, and the first- half of this year, of course we invest some of our money to capture or to advertise our outbound and international business in several channels. And also we set a very aggressive couponing strategy to capture more volumes for the air ticket and also for the room nights. And as a result you can see the result is very successful. The air ticket volume and also room night volume has doubling or tripling quarter- to- quarter.
But in the coming few quarters, actually, we will continue to capitalize on the rapid increase in outbound travel demand because we still have a small base and target to deepen our presence in some of the key regions. But simultaneously, we will place more emphasis on enhancing the efficiency of our international business investment as well. Like Joyce Li mentioned, we believe that we were able to minimize the margin impact of these investments in the near term, and should ultimately achieve a better margin than the domestic business, once mature, I think, in the very short term future. Thank you.
Thank you, management. That's very clear. Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Brian Gong from Citi. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thanks, management, for taking my question. Congratulations on decent results first. So I have two questions. Firstly, is regarding our self-developed app. Can you share more about the latest progress, and how this will contribute to our OTA business in the second half of this year? And how is the ROI for the user acquisition for our self-developed, self-owned app? And the second question is, the GMV growth. I noticed our GMV growth kind of slowed down in the Q2. Can you share the reasons behind this slowdown, and should we expect this growth to improve in the second half? Thank you.
Thank you, Brian Gong. I'll answer the questions concerning our stand-alone app, and then Fan Lei will address the GMV growth. For our stand-alone app, for the past several quarters, we have observed the distinct difference in the user portfolios and the behaviors between the Weixin platform and our app's platform. For example, we noticed that the users who use apps for booking tend to be more high-end, high-frequency travelers. While we have been gaining users in Weixin for many years, it is quite clear that users on our app represent pure incremental areas for us. In order to penetrate this market, we will expand our cooperation with mobile phone vendors and pre-install our app on mobile phones. We have been cooperated with several leading mobile phone vendors in China and been our app pre-installed in certain models of their new phones.
We have observed a continued increase in activation rate of our pre-installed app, with a significant conversion to orders. Besides, we also put more efforts in getting new users through promotions in app stores and social sharing. We will also continue to investing in brand promotion and marketing activities to enhancing brand awareness and cultivate loyal users on our app. For example, I mentioned we, for the first time, launched our own travel festival, Let's Travel with Tongcheng, to enhance interaction with the users. We also joined hands with the Tencent Music and sponsored the music festival in Macau. This allow us to becoming one of the most popular apps in the travel category. We have achieved a remarkable progress in exploring traffic on what's done on our apps right now. During the summer holiday, the DAU, our stand-alone app, continued to increase significantly year-over-year.
This indicates a strong additional driver for the future expansion of our user base and top line revenue. In that case, we will internally adjust our sales and marketing expenses, and reallocate the resources for user acquisition of our stand-alone app. As Fan Lei has mentioned for our marketing strategy right now, so our overall sales marketing spend for our user acquisition will remain relatively stable. The user acquisition cost of app will be higher comparing to Weixin app program, but the payback period will be longer. So in the longer term, the app and the user growth are expected to yield a decent return. We will persistently invest in this area for the longer term. Meanwhile, we'll also continue to improve the ROI of other topical channels in order to maintain the decent growth in our margin.
In terms of your second question about the GMV, actually, you know, the GMV in our Q2 is, the growth of the GMV is lag behind of the growth of the revenue, for our core business. You know, like what I mentioned, the transportation have a 17% of the growth rate in the Q2, and also the accommodation have a 13% of the, growth rate in the Q2. But our GMV only have, like, 5%, around 5%. So there is a, a 10% gap, on our GMV to the revenue growth. Actually, that is a really good signal to show that the company, our revenue, have a little impact on the, industry headwind or the industry pressure.
Like what we mentioned a lot of times during the last year, there's a supply shortage, both for the hotel side and also for the air side. So last year, the Q2 and Q3, we have extremely high ADR and extremely high APV, and for this year, all of the supply and have back to normal, but also the demand side has some kind of pressure in Q2 and Q3. So if you look at the industry, of course, the ADR dropped more than 10% compared with last year, and the APV also dropped more than 10% of last year.
But that is not related to the key business of our company, because first, in terms of the ADR, like we mentioned, the most hotels that impact on the ADR is the five star and four stars. Actually, the economic and the low-tier, low-end hotels, the ADR have some smaller impact on the industry pressure. So our company have a very balanced business on the high-tier and low-tier, and high-end and low-end. So that is why our ADR dropped only less than 5% compared with the 10% in the industry. And also, when we see the macro have some kind of a pressure, we're also very disciplined on our couponing, and also we are very disciplined on our investment.
So that is why our take rate, blended take rate also have some kind of increase in the Q2 for the accommodation. And for the APV, it's the same story. You know, there's no relation, no relationship between the APV and our revenue. Our revenue is related to the attach rate, the VAS attach rate. And we don't see any drop on our VAS attachments, so that is why our revenue is very strong, and also our take rate from the air tickets and the train tickets is increased year-over-year. So that is why there is a gap between the GMV growth and also the revenue growth. Thank you.
Thank you. Very clear. Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Fei Teng from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you, management. So I have two questions. The first one is about the margin. So do you have any, like, cost-saving measures to protect the margin, especially along these, like, macro headwinds, especially when in the last question you mentioned you still invest in your native apps and internationalization and also, like, hotel management business. So would you revisit the strategy to protect the margin? And my second question is about the capital return. So are you considering to increase the capital return or considering the buyback? Thank you.
Yeah, in terms of the margin, actually, I have also, I've already answered a lot of times for the margin improvement in Q3 and Q4. For our core business, when the macro have some pressure, we have already switched to the balance between the top line growth and also the profitability improvement. So we reduced a lot of headcount spending and also reduced a lot of sales marketing spending and focused on the ROI improvement for our core business. And also for our new initiatives, that is means the outbound and international. I also mentioned that in the second half year, we focused on the monetization and focused on the ROI improvements for our outbound as well.
So the impact on our outbound investment, the margin impact on our outbound investment was very, very limited. As a whole, our margin expectation for Q3, Q4, the second half of the year, will be higher than the same quarter of last year, and also will be higher than the same quarter in 2019. You know, 2019 is our historical high margin period. That is the way, the methodology, the management, how the management control or manage the performance of our company. When the macro have some pressure, when the macro have some headwind, we will focus on the ROI improvement, and we'll focus on the profitability and focus on the efficiency improvement.
And in terms of the capital return, I would like to further address our capital allocation strategy. First of all, we will still prioritize investing capital in our business operations. The investments will support our ongoing efforts to grow organically by developing new technologies, introducing new products or services, expanding into new markets, and improving our operational efficiency. And the second will involve directing resources toward developing business that are complementary to our existing operations. For example, international business, urban business, hotel management business, through investments in other companies or mergers and acquisitions. But last but not least, we appreciate the support our stakeholders, and we'll also allocate capital to improve our shareholders' returns. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time, so I'll hand the call back to Kylie Yeung for closing remarks.
Thank you. We are closing the call now. If you wish to check out our presentation and other financial information, please visit the IR section of our company website. Thank you, and see you next quarter.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Speakers, please stand by.