Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Tongcheng Travel 2024 first quarter results announcement conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will 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. It is now my pleasure to hand you over to the Investor Relations Director of the company, Ms. Kylie Yeung. Please go ahead, Ms. Yeung.
Thank you. Good morning and good evening, everyone. Welcome to Tongcheng Travel's 2024 first quarter 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. Hope Ma, our CFO, Mr. Julian Fan, 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 first quarter. Hope will brief us on the company's performance, Joyce will discuss our business and operational highlights, and then Julian will address the details of financial performance accordingly. We will 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, uncertainty and other factors, which may cause the company's actual results, performance or achievements to differ from those in the forward-looking statements. This presentation also contains some unaudited non-IFRS financial measures. They should be considered in addition to, but not as substitutes 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, Hope. Hope will present in Mandarin, and we'll have the English translation. Hope, please go ahead.
[Foreign language] .
2024 marks the first chapter for China's travel industry in our company. The trajectory of China's domestic travel market has evolved from rapid recovery to sustain growth. In the first quarter, we observed a solid expansion of China's travel industry and the diversification of consumer travel preferences. Amid the rising enthusiasm for travel, we embraced opportunity to advance our business expansion strategy. We reinforced our domestic market position and aggressively expanded our global presence.
Furthermore, we actively explored new business opportunities to drive the diversification of our company. We consistently expanded our range of products and services delving into the depths of the travel industry chain to enhance our strategic deployment and all our credit potential. These strategic initiatives have begun to bear fruits. It has not only provided company with new product momentum, but also facilitated our development from an OTA to a leading comprehensive travel platform in China. Over the last quarter, we further solidified our industry leading position and achieved a significant year-over-year growth in both revenue and business volume.
This demonstrates our immense growth potential and exceptional execution capabilities. Over the past three months, the flourishing market and our outstanding business performance have further bolstered my confidence in the company's future growth. During the recent holidays in the second quarter, we observed vibrant travel activities, with various user demands remaining robust. At the same time, the Chinese government placed a high priority on the travel industry and consistently promotes and supports its sustainable development. We're confident that our business will maintain its growth momentum this year, as we will persistently capitalize on market opportunities and firmly implement our core strategies. For this year, we will seek progress with a steady pace. We will concentrate on enhancing user value while diversifying our traffic sources, so as to accelerate the expansion of our core business.
At the same time, we will step up efforts to develop new business and strengthen our competitive advantages in the travel industry. Thus laying a solid foundation for the company's long-term sustainable development. Next, I will hand over the call to Joyce. She will share with you our business and operational highlights of the first quarter of 2024. Joyce, please go ahead.
In the first quarter of 2024, China's travel industry continued to thrive with surging travel enthusiasm and demand. Amid this prosperity, we grow the tailwind and forge ahead with our expansion strategy along the industry. To our delight, our business continued to show vitality and maintain strong growth for the past quarter, demonstrating the huge potential for our company. As a seasoned player in the transportation business, we have accumulated profound insights into industry and have built a business mode as solid as rocks. Over the past three months, with booming travel demand, our transportation business has experienced a solid growth. We strive to further strengthen our market presence in advantageous regions, while continuously penetrating new markets to unlock additional growth potential.
For our air ticketing business, we're thrilled to see both volume and revenue hit new highs of the quarter, with domestic volume giving around 30% year-over-year growth. Throughout the first quarter of the year, we focused on expanding our user base, while further diversifying our user mix by bringing more college students, as well as business and leisure travelers. At the same time, we firmly execute our international expansion plan and increase investments in the business. We solidified partnerships with our TSPs and endeavor to provide better products and services to our users. Our efforts paid off. Our international air ticketing volume displayed a spectacular growth of more than 260%, way better than overall industry recovery. The strong growth was mainly driven by outbound travel to Southeast Asia countries, as well as Japan and South Korea.
As for our train ticketing business, our people have turned to enhancing monetization capability. Over the past quarter, consistent efforts were made to perfect user travel experience. By optimizing algorithm, our intelligent travel solution system, Huixing, has not only facilitated user journey, but also add to the revenue growth of the business. After years of endeavor to penetrate low-tier cities, our accommodation business has consolidated its presence in the mass market with value for money positioning, especially targeting users in the second tier and below cities across China. With the travel sentiment running high throughout the quarter, we seized the opportunity and explored more hotel stay scenarios to better serve users' diversified needs, in particular, the emerging short-haul travel. Meanwhile, we have continuously refined our cross-sell strategy and placed more emphasis on efficiency. As a result, our 15-day cross-sell rate for the quarter increased to 11%.
For the past quarter, our domestic room nights reaches a solid year-on-year growth of around 10%. Moreover, we've also increased investments in our international accommodation business with sustained efforts, focusing on bringing more high-quality suppliers across the world, as well as enhancing user interaction. Thus, our international room night sold record an astonishing growth of more than 150% year-over-year. Besides, we've constantly offered value-added product services to safeguard users' interests surrounding hotel booking and stays, which maintain a meaningful contribution to the business. We are committed to achieving long-term growth and aim to establish a profound influence in China's travel industry. Both our hotel management business and tourism business are integral parts of our strategy to expand vertically around the travel industry, in addition to our core OTA business.
As for our hotel management business, we have built a comprehensive portfolio of hotel brands ranging from low to high stars, complemented by a hotel membership program that offers members various benefits and privileges. Over the last quarter, our focus remained on expanding our geographical coverage cross country and maintaining expeditious growth. By the end of March, the number of hotel stores in operation on the eLong Hotel Technology has increased to more than 1,600, with over 800 stores in the pipeline. More impressively, two of our hotel management companies-... Meihao, and Bolin has made it into top 20 of the China's hotel groups for 2023, ranking 7th and 18th in terms of scale, respectively. As for our tourism business, it operates through offline travel agency stores and applies a business model distinct from our core OT business.
It consists of self-developed package tour products that require in-depth cooperation with the TSPs. For the past quarter, we primarily focused on consolidating the business in terms of its back-end functions, following the acquisition of Beijing Tongcheng Tourism, a leading travel agency group in China. By the end of March, Beijing Tongcheng Tourism has around 500 travel agency stores across the country. Turning to our user side, consistent efforts were made to diversify our traffic sources, so as to further expand our user base. During the past quarter, Tencent Ecosystem, especially Weixin mini program, remained as our dominant travel traffic channel, with emphasis pivoting to enhancing operational efficiency at multiple fronts within the ecosystem. In the meantime, our standalone app grew magnificently over the quarter as aggressive efforts were made to develop the proprietary channel.
By launching blind box of train tickets and the tailor-made marketing activities, we've attracted a considerable amount of younger users to our Tongcheng Travel app, making us one of the most popular apps in the travel category. Moreover, we have strengthened our cooperation with Alipay and had our air ticketing and hotel booking services accessible to its users through its travel portal, leading to marvelous growth of our Alipay mini program. Besides, our public transit initiatives continuously contribute to the expansion of our user base. By the end of March, we've successfully tapped into the metro system of several cities in China, including Shanghai, Suzhou, Wuxi, Harbin, as well as intracity bus system of hundreds of cities. With our effective initiatives in various channels, both online and offline, we've accumulated the largest user base in China's OTA industry.
As of the end of March, our 12-month rolling paying users further climbed to RMB 229 million, representing a year-over-year growth of 40%. Our MPUs for the first quarter grew by 3% year-over-year to RMB 43 million, while our 12-month accumulated travelers served increased by 57% to RMB 1.8 billion, signaling a healthy uptrend in user purchase frequency. By positioning ourselves as a travel platform for new generations, we roll out a series of innovative marketing campaigns that appeal to young people, aiming to solidify our fun and entertaining brand personality. Upon Spring Festival, we were drawn as minority in April, we joined hands with a local tourism bureau in Guilin and co-launched an open door marketplace to provide users with a new form of consumption experience. For the past years, esports has played a vital role in our engagement with the younger users.
In the last quarter, we continued to sponsor professional esports games to further enhance our brand exposure among target group. In addition, our Black Whale membership program maintained a rapid growth during the quarter as we consistently introduced new benefits and privileges surrounding daily consumption and entertainment. By the end of March, the cumulative number of Black Whale members exceeded 55 million, with ARPU more than 2.5x that of the general members. We put emphasis on the sustainable development of China's travel industry, and are determined to empower industry partners through our technologies and internet expertise. Over the year, we've been strengthening strategic cooperation with airports across China, and have supported a number of airports in digital transformation with an aim to enhance efficiency of the industry. We've also joined hands with tourism destinations to assist them in increasing digital capabilities.
Besides, our comprehensive portfolio of hotel PMS brands help hotel chains, individual hotels, and alternative accommodation, improve daily operations, as well as increasing revenue for them. For the past quarter, we continued to optimize our digital solution for hotel operations and promoted the healthy growth of the industry. As always, we prioritize our users and are devoted to delivering seamless and comfortable travel experience. Our intelligent Huixing system not only enable users to provide users with accessible and customized travel solution, but also helps maximize the utilization of transportation capacity. Meanwhile, by introducing more automated and intelligent features into our customer service system, we managed to advance our user experience in the customer service progress, as well as alleviating the workload burden of customer service staff.
That further enhanced the efficiency of our customer service. Over the years, we've been endeavoring to improve our ESG performance through incorporating sustainability principles into all aspects of our business. We persistently enhance the disclosure transparency to help investors have better understanding of our company. In the coming future, we will remain fully committed to pursuing better ESG practice aligned with high international standards. For now, I will hand over the call to our CFO, Julian. He will walk you through our detailed financials in the first quarter of the year. Julian, please go ahead.
Thank you, Joyce. Good evening, everyone. During the past quarter, China's travel industry continued to exhibit strong growth momentum. The demand for travel has become increasingly diversified, with people pursuing a wide range of travel experiences across various distances. We've plotted market opportunities and catered to the diverse travel needs of our users under different scenarios. Once again, achieving splendid performance. Our core OTA business has delivered solid results, while our newly acquired tourism business has been adding growth momentum to our business. In the first quarter of 2024, we obtained outstanding outcomes for both top line and bottom line. We reported a net revenue of RMB 3.9 billion, representing a 50% year-over-year increase from the same period of 2023. During the quarter, we increased the investment in marketing campaigns and advertisement to seize market opportunities during Chinese New Year holiday.
We achieved solid adjusted net profit growth of 11% year-over-year to RMB 558 million. Our adjusted net profit margin declined to 14.4%, mainly due to the consolidation of the tourism business, which operates under a different business model compared to our OTA business. Our core OTA business revenue exhibited an excellent growth of 24% year-over-year and recorded RMB 3.2 billion, driven by growth across our accommodation reservation, transportation ticketing, and other business segments. Our transportation ticketing revenue for the first quarter was RMB 1.7 billion, representing a 26% increase compared with the same period of 2023. The past quarter has characterized by robust demand across various travel scenarios, which significantly uplifted our ticketing volumes. Furthermore, we continue to dedicate efforts to optimizing our VAS offerings to enhance the monetization.
This growth is testament to our operational refinement and effective market share acquisition strategies. Our accommodation reservation business achieved RMB 965 million for the first quarter of 2024, representing a 16% increase from the same period in 2023. The growth is mainly attributable to our dynamic market expansion strategies to seize market opportunities. We also continue to execute our cross-selling strategy and utilize the ticketing traffic from our transportation business to further expand our accommodation business. In the first quarter of 2024, both our hotel ADR and lodging take rate remained relatively stable. Other business continue its trajectory of exceptional performance, with revenue reaching RMB 502 million in the first quarter, representing a growth of 36% year-over-year.
The surge is mainly driven by excellent performance of our advertisement, Black Whale membership, hotel management business, and PMS business. Our hotel management business, in particular, has made significant strides in geographical expansion. Looking ahead, we anticipate these businesses to participate as additional contributors to company's growth. Our tourism business experienced a significant resurgence, with revenue achieving RMB 663 million. The solid result is primarily fueled by our successful efforts to capitalize on market recovery opportunities and our strategic enhancement in operational efficiency. In terms of profitability, our gross profit increased by 29.6% year-over-year to RMB 2.5 billion, while gross margin decreased to 65% for the first quarter of 2024, mainly caused by the consolidation of our tourism business.
In the first quarter of 2024, our operating profit for the core OTA business achieved RMB 724 million, with a 22.6% margin, down from 26.3% year-over-year, mainly attributable to increased investment in our international business. The operating profit for the tourism business achieved RMB 44 million, with 6.6% margin. Our adjusted EBITDA increased by 12% and reached RMB 820 million, with a 21.2% margin, compared to a 28.3% margin in the same period last year... adjusted net profit grew by 11% to RMB 558 million, with a 14.4% margin compared to a nineteen point five percent margin in the first quarter last year.
The consolidation of our tourism business has some impacts on our adjusted EBITDA margin and also adjusted net profit margin. Service development and administrative expenses in the first quarter of 2024 increased by 25% from the same period of 2023, excluding share-based compensation charges. Service development and administrative expenses in total accounted for 17% of revenue in the first quarter, compared with 20.3% of revenue in the same period of 2023. Selling and marketing expenses in the first quarter of 2024 increased by 42% from the same period of 2023. Excluding share-based compensation charges, selling and marketing expenses accounted for 35% of revenue in the first quarter, compared with 37% of revenue in the same period of 2023.
As of March 31st, 2024, the balance of cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash and short-term investments was RMB 10 billion. China's travel market has sustained its trajectory of a vigorous expansion. In April and May, we continue to witness robust travel enthusiasm across the country. The recent Labor Day holiday was marked by resilient travel demand, as travelers keenly explored new destinations and immersed themselves in diverse travel experiences. Data released by governmental authorities indicated a decent year-over-year increase in the volume of domestic tourism during the holiday. Amid this thriving travel landscape, our business once again achieved a solid growth that underscored the successful execution of our strategies. We maintain a positive outlook for China's travel industry in this year.
Our conviction is deeply rooted in the transformation in consumer preferences towards more diverse and experiential travel, coupled with the continuous support provided by the Chinese government to the travel industry. As we navigate this period of rapid growth in travel industry, we are dedicating our efforts to strengthen our core OTA business. Furthermore, we are expanding our international footprint to assert a more robust global presence. Concurrently, we are advancing our hotel management and the tourist, tourism sectors to carve out a secondary path for growth. Guided by our strategic vision, we are poised to further consolidate our industry-leading position, maintaining robust growth and consistent profitability. Well, with that, operator, we are ready to take questions now. Thank you.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please limit to no more than two questions at a time. If you have further questions, please request to rejoin the queue again. Once again, that's star one one for questions. Our first question comes from the line of Brian Gong from Citi. Please ask your question, Brian.
Thanks, management, for taking my question and congratulations on pretty decent results. So my question is regarding... So how does Management see the travel momentum after Labor Day holiday for domestic and outbound OTA business? And do we see any impacts from, you know, weaker consumption by travelers? And also, how should we think about recovery momentum for, you know, the newly acquired package tour business ahead? What is its recovery status now versus 2019 level? Thank you.
Thank you, Brian. I would like to provide, provide some more colors on the latest performance, and I would like Joyce give you more color on the package tour business that we just acquired last year. So actually, the travel demand during Labor Day holiday was very solid, despite some impact from the bad weather in southern China, especially in Guangdong province. Maybe you see a lot of the information in the media. According to industry data, actually, domestic tourists and revenue also the revenue grew by 7.6% and 12.6% year-over-year, which are 28.2% and 13.5% increase versus 2018, 2019 respectively, during the five days Labor holiday.
It represents a further improvement versus the growth in Chinese New Year this year, and also the growth in Qingming this year. The performance when compared with those performance with 2019. For example, our air ticketing business once again surpassed the industry with several multiples and recorded a very robust growth of over 20% in volume in the Labor Day holiday. For April and also for May, we still observed a solid growth in domestic transportation and accommodation business. Additionally, the international air ticketing and also the accommodation business that we mentioned a lot of times, we will invest more our sales marketing dollar this year on the global and the international penetration. The performance is also very very charming.
Our accommodation business and also air ticketing, international ticketing business, created about 150% growth year-over-year, becoming a significant growth drivers for us. As well, we have made significant strides in executing our multi-channel traffic strategy that we mentioned a lot of times in April and May. The DAU of our standalone apps surges to a record high of over 2 million, and the MPU and the business volume from our standalone apps experienced more than 100% growth compared with the same period of 2023. These achievements demonstrate a solid additional drivers for the future growth of our user base and top line revenue as well.
For the full year, we believe that the booming travel demand will also continue, given the resilience and the vitality of China's travel industry. It is evident that the consumers, both the younger and older generations, consistently prioritize spending on travel and experiences over physical goods, according to our observations. We have also noticed a more diverse travel preferences, creating additional opportunities for the industry and also for our company as well. Then for the packaged tour business, I would like Joyce to give you more details.
Thank you, Brian. In terms of the recovery trend of our tourism business, we believe that the package tour industry will continue to improve this year. In the first quarter of 2024, the domestic business of Beijing Tongcheng Tourism Investment Group has recovered to around 75% of 2019's level, while outbound package tour market only recovered to around 30% of 2019's level due to the previous flight capacity, visa issue, and supply chain issue. However, we are quite optimistic that the outbound business will rebound and grow continuously this year, with positive signals and increasing favorable visa-free policies to Chinese travelers and the gradual recovery of flight capacity.
By the end of March, as I mentioned before, our package tour business has around 500 travel agencies, stores cross-country, and we are now currently seeking franchises to join us. We provide support to franchises regarding the brand image, products, technological infrastructure, service, and staff training, et cetera. We plan to be more aggressively in expanding our franchise network this year, and we are also enhancing the business system, so to improve the operational efficiency of the business. At the same time, we are also ramping up efforts to expand our product offerings and enrich travel route options by strengthening the connection with the TSPs and enhancing our product research and development.
In terms of the whole market of the offline package tour business, we believe the industry in China, the package tour business is huge, but it's quite fragmented, so it offers tremendous growth potential for us. Despite the increasing online travel options, we believe many travelers in China still prefer package tours for their convenience and comprehensive experience. Nowadays, we also observe there is a rise in the tailored, themed, and high-end package tours to meet diversified customer demands. We believe the package tour business will bring significant synergies, which allow us to capture immense market opportunities. Thank you.
Thank you, Brian. Our next question comes from the line of Sardonna Fong from UBS. Please ask your question, Sardonna.
Yep, thank you, management, for taking my question. I'm asking on behalf of Kenneth on the international business. Could management give more color on the company's progress of international expansion, especially on the recent trends observed during the Labor Day holiday? And how would we think about the growth outlook this year, and what's your key strategy in this segment? Thank you.
Thank you for your questions. We have witnessed a significantly fast growth in the outbound business in the first quarter, with outstanding performance in destinations such as Thailand, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, and Japan, et cetera. As I mentioned, our international accommodation volume in the first quarter have recorded around 150% growth when compared with the last year. The international air ticketing volume in the first quarter have registered more than 250% growth when compared with last year. As for the industry, the international flight capacity only recovered to around 70%-75% of 2019's level at the end of April. The recovery of our outbound business outperformed industry significantly.
Later, we also anticipate a robust expansion in outbound travel this year, with easier visa access and the gradual resumption of international flight capacity. We have already intensified our effort to pursue the growth of our international business. We have been more aggressive in the marketing activities for international travel products to enhance our user reach and boost the volume on international business. At the same time, we continue to expand our product service offerings for the international travel by forging partnerships with leading international OTAs, wholesalers, airlines, and various overseas TSPs. With our dedication to meeting the diverse demands of our users, we are committed to continuous global exploration and innovation in the new products and services.
For the outbound travel business, given our substantial growth in user base over the past few years, we see these users as the cornerstone for our expansion into the outbound travel market. As such, we focused on the enhancement of outbound air ticketing, hotel booking, and package tour business. Specifically, within our OTA business, our goal is to increase user awareness and recognition of our outbound travel services by launching more attractive and innovative promotions. We also allocate more resources to research and development to enhance our outbound travel product services. Our package tour business, as I mentioned, we aim to build both online and offline customization channels to capitalize on the recovery of the outbound travel. And furthermore, we endeavor to expand our product offerings, enrich travel route options, and elevate overall customer experience.
Also for the overseas local markets, we are stepping up our efforts in Thailand, expanding our business through investments in overseas TSPs, and setting up offices in overseas markets. In conclusion, we'll put more emphasis on development of international business, which we believe will become an important growth driver for the company in the next few years. Thank you.
Thank you, Sardonna. Our next question comes from the line of Alex Poon from Morgan Stanley. Please ask your question, Alex.
Thank you, management, and congratulations on a very strong quarter. My question is regarding the hotel business. Can you please talk about the growth of hotel business for the rest of 2024, given the higher base in Q1, higher base starting from Q2, and we have a lot of different segments growing at the same time. And if you can also talk about the impact of supply growth driving the RevPAR and ADR decline for the industry, does it stimulate more demand growth, or it is hurting the whole industry GMV growth overall? Thank you very much.
Thank you, Alex. In terms of the accommodation reservations growth, yeah, as we mentioned in quarter one, the growth rate is only 16%, compared with last year. Actually, the growth rate is a little bit slower compared with 2023, compared with 2022 or 2019. That is mainly because in quarter one last year, or 2023, it's just a reopening from the COVID-19. And also in that Spring Festival, you know, a lot of pent-up demand released, and especially for the short-haul travel, which is advantageous for our company. So actually, last year's Spring Festival, the short-haul traveling is especially high base in the last year.
So that is why, in the first quarter, our accommodation revenues just recorded a 16%, but it's... We think it's still a very good numbers in the industry. And in the second quarter, actually, the accommodation reservations revenue growth is still met some challenge because of the high base in last Qingming and Labor Day, because of the short-haul still have some pent-up demand last year. But I think everything will be normalized in the quarter three or quarter four, the second half of the year. And we expected a higher growth rate in accommodation segment in the second half. So that is the general expectation.
For the transportation, this is not have this impact. So, you can see that in the first quarter and second quarter, we also expected a high growth rate, higher than accommodation growth rate for our transportation-wise. In terms of the ADR and the commission, actually, maybe the industry have an impact on the ADR, because, you know, last year, the ADR is really high. But for our company, we don't observe the ADRs reduced. Also the commission rate is also very stable year-over-year. So thank you.
Thank you, Alex. Our next question comes from the line of Thomas Chong from Jefferies. Please ask your question, Thomas.
Hi, good evening. Thanks management for taking my question. My first question is about our user acquisition and engagement strategies. Can management comment about, if there's any latest, updates? And my second question is about, our use of cash and our thoughts on M&A. Thank you.
Thank you, Thomas. It's good, good question. You can see that for the user growth strategy for this year, we will continue to explore diversified channels to acquire high-value users. For example, we'll continue to deepen our cooperation with Tencent. We'll also increase investment to various user acquisition channels, such as pre-installed and app store. We'll further enhance our own apps to attract incremental users and, cultivate rural users. In addition, we plan to allocate resources towards brand advertising to reinforce our brand image and increase awareness.
We believe that branding is the long-term investment that requires consistent effort to establish and build our brand equity. And as we have already gained a substantial number of paying users, our focus this year is to continue enhancing user value rather than solely expanding our user base. We will emphasize on enhancing user engagement and increasing ARPU through the targeted promotions. Firstly, we will invest in tailored promotion and refine our recommendation algorithm to encourage cross-selling between our transportation and accommodation services. I think this approach aims to boost revenue per transaction and overall take rate. Secondly, we'll remain committed to promoting our best product services tailored to our user travel needs. For example, we'll further optimize our Huixing system, which provides intelligent travel solution to our users and help improve our monetization.
Besides, I think the new promotions for our innovative product and services will be introduced across different scenarios to enhance user satisfaction. Thirdly, we continue to extend our product service offerings on our platforms. For example, the packaged tour products, thus enhancing the user purchase frequency and user value on the platform. Furthermore, we'll continue to promote our Black Whale membership program to foster growth, loyalty among our users, with an aim to increase our overall ARPU and purchase frequency. So as of the end of March 2024, our rolling ARPU and user purchase frequency in the past 12 months continued to increase month by month and surpass the levels in 2019.
Our 12-month cumulative number of travelers increased by 57.4% to RMB 1.8 billion, is signifying a noticeable increase in user purchase frequency to nearly eight times per year, which was much higher than more than five times in 2019. So with our consistent efforts in improving user value, you can see ARPU for 12 months ended the end of March, further increased over RMB 55. We expect these indicators will continue to grow this year. And in terms of your second question, the use of the cash and MA strategies, I think first of all, we'll emphasize that we'll allocate the capital towards our business operations.
The investments will continue to support our organic growth strategies, including developing the new technologies, introducing new products and services, expanding into the new markets, improving the internal efficiency, et cetera. And secondly, we will also allocate capital towards investing or acquiring other companies to complement our existing operations. For example, the expansion in the international business and hotel management business. Last but not least, we're also grateful for the support of all our shareholders, and we'll allocate capital towards returning value to our shareholders. Thank you.
Right. Thank you, Thomas. We have now reached the end of the question and answer session. Thank you very much for all your questions. I'll now turn the conference back to Ms. Kylie Yeung for closing comments.
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.