Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the 2021 fourth quarter and annual results conference call. At this time, all participants are in 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 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero. I'd like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Ms. Kylie Yeung. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, and good evening, everyone. Welcome to Tongcheng Travel's 2021 Fourth Quarter and Annual 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 Fang, and Ms. Joyce Lee, VP and Head of Capital Markets. For today's call, our management team will provide a review of the company's performance for the fourth quarter. Hope will walk us through the company's business performance in the quarter. Joyce will discuss our operational highlights, and then Julian 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 relates to events that involve known or unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which will cause the company's current 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 financial measures, please refer to our disclosure documents in the IR section of our website. Now, let me introduce our CEO, Hope. Hope, please go ahead.
Thank you, Kylie. Good evening, everyone. Thanks for joining our fourth quarter and annual earnings call. Also, big thanks for your consistent trust and support. We have been doing our utmost in return. In the past two years since the initial outbreak of COVID, we stood firm on our core strategies. We consistently penetrate the Chinese lower-tier cities and fulfill the users' underlying needs with our comprehensive products and services. We continuously lead industry recovery amid huge uncertainties riding on our nimble response to market changes and excellent execution capabilities. We spared no effort to seize every opportunity arising from the COVID crisis and managed to solidify our position in the travel industry, especially our presence in lower-tier cities. Our user base has grown gracefully in the past two years, with MAUs and MPU's hitting all-time high during 2021.
Moreover, our annual paying users climbed to a historic high at around 200 million by the end of 2021, against the backdrop of uncertainties, marking an important milestone for the company. As we mentioned earlier, we aim at achieving rapid growth for our accommodation business. With our persistent efforts, the business has maintained its leading growth momentum in the past two years. We constantly step up the investments in lower-tier cities to seize emerging demands post-COVID and enhanced our market presence there. During the final quarter of 2021, cross-sell continued to play a crucial role in the segment's growth. More efforts were made to encourage our transportation ticketing users to experience our accommodation products and services by digging deeper into their consumption patterns and preference.
Meanwhile, we continue to dive deep into users' underlying needs at various scenarios and act precisely to grab potential opportunities, which to some extent alleviated the burden caused by COVID resurgence in the fourth quarter. As for our offline user acquisition initiative, we optimized our operational strategy and further enhanced our efficiency. For the first quarter, our domestic room nights. So continued to show preeminent year-over-year growth of more than 20% versus 2019 level, and reassuring growth of more than 40% in lower tier cities.
Our transportation business, a backbone for the company, has established a solid moat and won credibility in the past two years as we persistently developed and launched innovative value-added products and services to facilitate users' travel under various variants of COVID. In the fourth quarter, our air ticketing business saw stronger presence in some advantageous regions and even gained foothold in some markets. More efforts were made to attract frequent travelers through telemarketing services to pursue a more diverse user base. Meanwhile, we cooperate with several consumer brands, which are locally influential to help build our presence in those regions and enhance our influence there. As for our train ticketing business, it remained solid in the past quarter.
Our intelligent Huixing system, which provides optimized travel solutions, continued to play a key part in better serving users' underlying needs. We dug deeper into the unexploited transport capacity and further refined the smart system by providing a combination of train tickets that connect different legs of the trip, of which the users only need to change seat on the same train during their journey. This has effectively solved users' travel difficulties when the supply was in shortage and won great popularity among users, once again demonstrating the significant value of our products and services. Furthermore, we increased the system's coverage of transport routes by integrating bus ticketing and car sharing services, so as to provide greater convenience to our users.
Our bus ticketing business has seen weakening growth over the past two years, contributing meaningfully to the expansion of the company's user base. In the fourth quarter, although under the shadow of the COVID resurgence, the business showed strong momentum and maintained impressive growth. Its volume registered more than 400% growth compared with the same period of 2019. During the period, we continued to roll out bus ticket vending machines across the country, which by the end of December reached more than 10,000. Besides, we sought further penetration into counties and towns across Mainland China by cooperating with urban and rural bus operators, which has added to the growth of the business. At the same time, efforts was stepped up to increase offline users' frequency of online repurchase through effective marketing initiatives.
The repurchase rate has improved greatly since the beginning of 2021. Besides, we matched device value-added products and services to bus ticketing users to serve into their potential needs. In the coming year, the bus ticketing business will remain a crucial instrument for the company to grow its user base, while more efforts will be made to enhance monetization capability of the segment. Looking back into the past two years, I'm thrilled at what we have achieved under such disruptions caused by coronavirus. Our user base has grown bigger. Our core business have gained greater shares, and our brand has established a stronger presence in lower tier cities, along with our organizational efficiency and capabilities being greatly improved. As such, we have emerged bigger and stronger under the baptism of COVID.
In February, the NDRC published a guideline with multiple supportive measures to help the recovery of service-related sector, including the travel industry. Earlier, the State Council has also announced the 14th Five-Year development plan for the travel industry, which emphasized the importance of promoting smart tourism with digital and intelligent scenarios, as well as expanding the application of new technologies in tourism. All this signaled that the government is very supportive of the development of the travel industry. The road to recovery has been bumpy and rough as coronavirus continues to evolve and uncertainties linger on, which poses persistent disturbance to the travel industry. However, we remain confident on China's travel industry, which possesses huge growth potentials and contributes meaningfully to the nation's economy.
We will make sustained efforts to increase the efficiency of China's travel industry by exporting our technology and internet expertise to our suppliers and partners within the travel industry. We will bear in mind our core corporate value, customers come first, and constantly provide users with supreme travel experience. Besides, we will make continuous efforts to fulfill our social responsibilities and contribute to a society with common prosperity. With that, I will turn over the call to Joyce. She will share with you our operational highlights for the first quarter of 2021. Joyce, please.
Thank you, Hope. Last quarter of 2021 was brimming with challenges as resurgence of COVID-19 cases occurred from time to time throughout the period, which led to strict travel restrictions and consequently weighing on travel willingness and demand. Both business and leisure travel was hit during the quarter. Nevertheless, we held onto our flexible operational strategy and proactively sought opportunities in the huge fluctuations. Our efforts paid off. We once again managed to outperform the industry peers, constantly demonstrating the resilience of our business and the excellence of our execution capability. Last year, we further deepened cooperation with Tencent and built more solid relationships. We joined hands with quite a few players within Tencent ecosystem to best engage younger users at different scenarios. During the past quarter, we increased our advertising in Tencent ecosystem to enhance engagement with our target users, as well as increasing brand awareness.
We sought broader cooperation with several widely known IPs entitled by Tencent and co-launched a series of interactive marketing campaigns aimed at Generation Z in an endeavor to be the one of a kind travel platform that understands younger users. Meanwhile, we continued our cooperation with the QQ Browser and had our brand highly exposed at several portals, which enabled users to get access to our Weixin mini- program whenever and wherever possible. Besides, we further optimized our operation in Weixin searching portal by directing users not only to our mini program, but also to our Weixin video accounts to establish a sustainable interaction with the users. On the other side, we pushed forward with our efforts to diversify our traffic sources. We enriched the content on our own app and optimized its interface to enhancing user experience, thus uplifting the overall marketing efficiency.
Besides, we continuously extended cooperation with China's major handset vendors at multiple fronts. We launched meta search function with one of the handset vendors, through which the users can easily find their preferable travel products and services by keying in keywords on their mobile phones. We have also developed innovative voice assistant function. This has facilitated users' access to travel information and order placing, greatly enhancing user experience. At the same time, we upgraded our itinerary reminder service by integrating the change of locations to better care for our users. For the past year, we were awarded the Most Popular Quick App and Best Partner by one of the most influential handset vendors. As for our offline user acquisition initiatives, they continued to contribute meaningfully to the growth of our paying users as well as facilitating our penetration into lower-tier cities.
In the past quarter, we continue to roll out the bus ticket vending machines, covering most of the cities across China. To further penetrate the counties and the towns, we joined hands with urban and rural bus operators to have our scanning code on those buses, which brought even higher user acquisition efficiency. More significantly, we successfully tapped into the huge student market through our tailor-made campus card, which went viral in a short period, and helped us win considerable amount of the student users. Furthermore, we increased investments to enhance our brand presence among the younger generations as part of the efforts to build a travel platform that is fit for young people. We continue to roll out online advertising inserts, especially targeting the younger cohort.
In addition to online dramas, we also place advertisements in programs such as animation movies and indie games to have our brand highly exposed and enhance brand awareness and recognition among our target users. Through a series of branding campaigns, we believe we have preemptive advantage to occupy a distinct place in the mind of younger users and win over such populations. Our paid membership program, Black Whale, has also made huge progress since its initial launch in 2019, as we consistently dug into users' underlying needs and act precisely to satisfy the needs that they were even unaware of. During the quarter, we further optimized our membership service by allowing users to customize the period of validity and benefits based on their preference and needs, innovatively creating new demand.
By end of December 2021, the cumulative number of Black Whale members further increased over 11 million, which, with the purchase frequency more than two times the rate of ordinary users. With those aforementioned efforts, our average MAUs for the fourth quarter posed a healthy growth of 15.9% versus 2019 quarter four, and reached around 238.6 million, despite the pessimistic sentiment throughout the quarter. Our average MPUs for the fourth quarter maintains growth momentum and climbed to 30.8 million, registering a year-over-year growth of 13.67% over 2019 quarter four level. Many thanks to our effective offline user acquisition initiatives and user-oriented products and services.
During the year, we launched an innovative marketing initiative called Blind Box of Air Tickets, which attract massive younger users to our platform, and thus contributing to the growth of our user base. Our average MAUs hit a record high at 277.9 million for the second quarter of 2021. While our average MPUs struck a new high at 33.6 million for the third quarter of 2021. Moreover, our 12 months paying users continued to grow and hit a historical high of nearly 200 million, even in the depth of COVID resurgence, achieving the goal we set at the very beginning of 2021. In the coming quarters, we will continue to increase investments to win over more target users, which we believe will benefit us in the coming future. Turning to our transformation from OTA to ITA.
On one hand, we are devoted to perfecting users' travel experience by constant investments in technology. Our intelligent Huixing system provided users with optimized travel solutions, especially when there are no available tickets or direct routes, which not only meets users' demand, but also help run the transport network more efficiently. Meanwhile, we further enhanced the intelligence of our AI-driven customer service, making it more human-like when interacting with the users, thus improving the customer experience. On the other hand, we are committed to empowering the business of our partners by our advanced technology and internet expertise, aiming to build more resilient and highly efficient travel ecosystem. We provide technology solutions to several major airports and airlines to help increase their operational efficiency. We also provide such solutions for more individual and small chain hotels to help run their daily operations more efficiently.
As a socially responsible enterprise, we are fully aware of our social obligations and could actively participate in social welfare activities to give back to our communities. In the depths of COVID pandemic, we launched various initiatives such as penalty-free changes or cancellations to help users better plan their trips and protect their safety. When the Omicron variant occurred in Suzhou and Shenzhen, we act swiftly and joined hands with the hotels to provide medical staff and volunteers with free accommodation to pay tribute to their sacrifice. Entering the spring festival travel season, we joined hands with the local government in Guangzhou and Bijie to help migrant workers return home safely by providing end-to-end pickup and drop-off service. This was not the first time we've been doing so for several years.
On the other hand, to help revitalize the rural areas and facilitate the sustainable development of the local economy, we worked with Yan'an Airport and a local government in Yan'an to promote local produce on our platform by leveraging our internet expertise and brand influence. In the coming future, we will consistently take part in social activities that contribute to a better society. With that, I will hand over the call to our CFO, Julian. He will share with you our detailed financial results for the fourth quarter and the year of 2021. Julian Fang, please go ahead.
Thank you, Joyce. Good evening, everyone. The past year was striking with uncertainties brought by evolving COVID resurgence. However, we almost fully recovered to the pre-COVID level for all business lines and significantly beat industry average. Thanks to the successful execution of our strategic initiatives, such as lower tier cities penetrations, offline user acquisitions, innovative product and service offerings, and cross-selling. Although there were sporadic COVID cases arising in some domestic regions in the fourth quarter, the Chinese government reacted more precisely and effectively to minimize the negative impact on travel and the economy. In the fourth quarter of 2021, we reported a net revenue of RMB 1.85 billion, representing a 1.8% increase from the same period in 2020, or a 5.6% decrease from the same period in 2019.
If we exclude the impact of the frozen international travel and reduce the pre-purchase visits, the like-for-like net revenue achieved a 1% growth compared with the same quarter of 2019. For the bottom line, in the fourth quarter, we achieved RMB 250 million adjusted net profit with 13.6% net margin compared with 16.9% net margin in quarter four, 2020. The temporary margin decrease was for the sake of our mid- to long-term growth and market penetration. On one hand, we invested more in branding and advertising, as Joyce just mentioned, to strengthen our brand image among our targeted users. On the other hand, we kept investing in new products and services for future business growth, such as bus ticket vending machines, car hailing services, content and private traffic acquisition, as well as Hotel Star solutions.
All those investments will be additional contribution to revenue growth in the following years. Accommodation reservation revenue achieved RMB 562 million, representing a 13% decrease from 2020 or a 9% decrease from the same quarter of 2019. If we exclude the negative impact of international travel and pre-purchase visits, the like-for-like accommodation reservation revenue recorded a 2% decrease compared with the same quarter of 2019. Domestic room nights booked more than 20% growth compared with the same period of 2019, way better than the industry growth. Geographically, room nights sold grew over 40% in lower tier cities compared with the same quarter of 2019. Thanks to the effective execution of our cross-selling within the company and the accurate offline and online marketing campaigns in targeted markets.
ADR dropped compared with the same quarter of 2019 due to short-term headwinds faced by the hotel industry, as well as our strategy to further penetrate lower tier cities. The blended take rate of the accommodation reservation business continued to improve when compared with that of 2019 as the VAS revenue contribution increased along with the effective implementation of the one-stop-shop strategy in our accommodation business. Transportation ticketing revenue for the fourth quarter of 2021 was RMB 1,075 million, representing a 7% increase compared with the same period of 2019, or a 9% decrease compared with the same quarter of 2019.
The year-over-year increase compared with 2020 was mainly driven by the additional revenue contribution from bus ticketing, which achieved more than 100% growth compared with 2020, as well as the continuous improvement in blended take rate, thanks to our cross-sale execution and more contribution from Huixing solution and other value-added products and services. Other business revenue was RMB 209 million in this quarter, representing a 29% increase and 37% increase compared with the same period of 2020 and 2019, mainly driven by the expansion in our Black Whale membership card, PMS business, and advertisement business. The other revenue have contributed 11% to our total revenue, a further increase from the same quarter in 2020 and 2019.
We are looking forward to a further monetization and contribution from new products and services in the following quarters and following years. Gross margin was 74.6% for the fourth quarter of 2021, compared with 73.7% in the same period of 2020 and 73.9% in the previous quarter. The margin improvement was benefited from our streamlined operations, intelligent customer service ability, and revenue mix change in the past year. In the fourth quarter of 2021, our adjusted EBITDA achieved RMB 422 million, with a 22.8% EBITDA margin, slightly dropped from 24.3% year- over- year. Adjusted net profit achieved RMB 250 million, with margin decreased to 13.6% from 16.9% year- over- year.
The temporary margin decrease was due to more investments in branding and in R&D for new product development. Service development and administrative expenses in the fourth quarter of 2021 increased by 7% from the same period of 2020. Excluding share-based compensation charges, service development and administrative expenses in total accounted for 25.7% of revenue in the fourth quarter, compared with 22.5% of revenue in the same period of 2020, mainly because we hired more employees in product and R&D for new products and service development while further optimizing staff composition in this quarter. Selling and marketing expenses in the fourth quarter of 2021 was flat compared with the same period of 2020.
In this quarter, we reduced some of the investments in online marketing and user promotion activities due to short-term headwind in the industry caused by COVID resurgence, while investing more resources in branding and advertising, both online and offline, to strengthen our brand image for the long run. Excluding share-based compensation charges, selling and marketing expenses accounted for 39.4% of revenue in the fourth quarter, compared with 39.9% of revenue in the same period of 2020 and 40.2% of revenue in previous quarter. As of December 31st, 2021, the balance of cash equivalents, restricted cash and short-term investments was RMB 5.4 billion. Now let's move to our results in fiscal year 2021. As Hope, Joyce mentioned, we successfully led the industry recovery and achieved several important breakthroughs in the past years.
All our product lines have almost fully recovered to pre-COVID level or even surpassed the performance in 2019. Net revenue in 2021 achieved RMB 7.54 billion, representing a 27.1% increase year-over-year or a 2% increase compared with 2019. We held on to the flexible operation strategy during the year to further enhance our back end and marketing efficiency. The main focus of the company in the past year turned to further market penetration and investing for the future under the post-COVID backdrop. Our user base further expanded in the past year, and both MAUs and MPUs hit record highs during the year.
Our domestic accommodation room nights for the whole year of 2021 booked almost a 40% increase from 2019, thanks to successful execution of lower tier cities penetration strategy, with more than 60% growth in lower tier cities compared with 2019 level. Bus tickets sold achieved more than 270% increase from 2019. In terms of profitability, our gross margin in 2021 increased to 74.9% compared with 71.4% in 2020, due to the continuous improvement in operational efficiency and the upgrade of customer service automation. For the full year of 2021, adjusted EBITDA achieved RMB 1.9 billion compared to RMB 1.4 billion in 2020. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 25.1% in 2021, increased from 23.0% in 2020.
Adjusted net profit achieved RMB 1.3 billion in 2021 compared to RMB 950 million in 2020. Adjusted net margin was 17.2% increase from 16.1% in 2020. Entering 2022, the Omicron variant rampaged through the country and again shaken the travel industry again. However, the Chinese government is now more experienced in controlling the spread of the virus, and we believe the situation will be under control in a quick and effective manner. Though facing challenges for the short run, we are still very optimistic that the recovery will be on track as willingness and demand for domestic travel remain resilient. More importantly, we have built an effective and flexible strategy to deal with uncertainties caused by COVID.
Based on latest situation, we expect our quarter one net revenue to increase by 0% to 5% year-over-year compared with 2021, and we expect that our adjusted net profit will be in a range of RMB 200 million-RMB 250 million. This forecast reflects our current and preliminary view, which is subject to changes. Before closing my speech, I'd like to reiterate our optimism about the future of our company. We will definitely catch the opportunities post-COVID through strategic priorities, so as to grow our businesses in targeted markets and thus create more value for our users, suppliers, employees and shareholders. With that, operator, we are ready to take questions now. Thank you.
As a reminder, to ask question, you will need to press star one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, press a pound or hash.
Please note that due to time constraints, each caller will be allowed two questions. Your first question comes from the line of Alex Poon from Morgan Stanley. Please ask your question.
Thank you management for taking my question and, congrats on the very good results in a very difficult environment. My first question is related to our margin trend in 2022. Since we already achieved 200 million annual paying users, what's our strategy on marketing expenses in 2022? Do we still aim for much stronger paying user growth? Or we would start protecting margin because of the uncertainty in the COVID situation? Thank you.
Okay. Thank you, Alex. Actually, for the margin guidance in fiscal year 2022, actually with the very uncertainties brought by the resurgence of COVID cases recently, it is extremely difficult for us to give a full year guidance at this moment. Actually from our results in the past two years, you know, it is very clear that we are able to recover faster than the industry and outperform other players. In terms of the margin guidance, actually, we will adhere to our flexible and lean management. On one hand, focus on the efficiency of our marketing investment. On the other hand, keep improving our operational efficiencies.
Meanwhile, this year, we will utilize the savings from efficiency improvement and scalings to enrich our product portfolio for better monetization in the long run. We'll also be devoted to the sustainable development of the company so as to create more value for the whole society. In sum, actually, we will try to maintain a same level of the profitability as last year, because after we do the flexible and the lean management. Thank you.
Thank you, Julian . If I can have a follow-up question regarding our market share gain strategies in 2022. Can you elaborate a bit more on the strategy to gain market share in 2022? Thank you.
Actually, for the market share gain, of course, you know, after the post-COVID, you know, the first important one is the online penetration. We think there is still very ample opportunities to further increase the online penetration rate of the whole travel industry. Moreover, we believe that the pandemic is driving the acceleration of online penetration of the travel industry. That will create more opportunities also for large platforms like us, and to gain market share from the offline and also from the small-scale platforms, et cetera. Also, you know, we have a lot of weapons to do this. For example, we have a good relationship with Tencent ecosystem.
We believe there are still a lot of potential for us to further develop. You know, in the past year, we further deepened the cooperation with Tencent and encouraged new users at different scenarios. For example, the WeChat Moments and also the public account, et cetera, which allowed us to gain more user continuously and gain market share as well. At the same time, you know, we put extra effort in developing other channels, including quick apps and offline user acquisitions, and have achieved outstanding results in those channels. For example, for offline user acquisition, we join hands with hotels, bus operators and tourism attraction operators to transform offline booking habits to online patterns.
All of these offline initiatives serve as effective channels to acquire new users and also to gain market share for the company as well. Actually, we think our addressable market is still very huge because the online penetration rate for lower tier city hotels and is only at 25%-30%. We mentioned this number a lot of times. Also the online penetration rate for bus ticketing is still very low single digits. Although we achieved a hyper growth last year, and for the users that we acquired from the bus vending machine, more than 60% was completely new to our platform. This trend is ongoing.
It is golden time for us to dig into the offline market and accelerating the digitalization and online penetration at this moment, especially post-COVID. Meanwhile, for existing online users, our main target is to enhance the frequency and stickiness to pursue a higher ARPU in the future. For example, we will execute the cross-selling. We will strengthen the cross-selling within the company from transportation to accommodation and also inside the transportation from train to bus, from bus to air tickets, etc. That is several weapons that I would like to list for you.
For the company, all of those weapons are very important tools to take market share in the whole travel industry.
Got it. Thank you very much, Julian.
Your next question comes from the line of Brian Gong from Citigroup. Please ask your question.
Yeah, thanks management for taking my questions. It's a quite decent results, especially considering current environment. My question is about can management share your expectation for the full year top line performance, you know, considering more difficulty to control Omicron now? Do we still expect a more material recovery in the second half of this year? Also, you know, the short-haul travel has been relatively resilient compared to long-haul travel last year. There have been more lockdown and stricter movement control recently. My question is that how do those stricter measures impact our short-haul travel performance based on our observation recently? Thank you.
Okay, thank you, Brian. Actually, as I just mentioned, we can see that the market is still very fluctuating. User booking window is very short. For the long run, for Q2 or fiscal year, the whole fiscal year, we think it's too early to tell, as the visibility is still quite low. We believe the government can effectively control the spread of the virus, and the domestic travel market can rebound quickly. Actually I can share some latest performance for Q1, because in Q1 actually it's very volatile, the performance.
At the very beginning of this quarter, we could see the travel demand was still very suppressed by the negative impact of the pandemic. However, we were very encouraged by the performance during and after Chinese New Year. Although the government suggested people to stay in their working cities during the Chinese New Year to reduce traveling, but it was not mandatory, like what was required last year. The sporadic cases appeared in some of the cities in January and February, but the government controlled the spread of the virus with more targeted and flexible management and travel restrictions.
As we mentioned in our prepared remarks, the NDRC also published a very positive guideline with multiple supportive measures to help the recovery of service-related sector, including the travel industry to stimulate economy rebound of the domestic market. Actually, in the late January and the whole February, we observed a very strong rebound for our performance, which largely beat the industry. Our accommodation room nights grew very nicely, and ground transportation tickets also realized a hyper, super hyper growth in volume compared with the 2020 and 2019, supported by the drastic increase in bus ticketing volume. However, things changed in March. The pandemic became more severe and was spread in most of the provinces and cities and big cities.
The government also adjusted the control level promptly aiming to stop the virus spread effectively to trade-off for faster reopening in the near future. For sure, the business especially, I think especially the transportation business was badly impacted in March, and the performance dropped year-over-year, hugely. We are very optimistic for a faster rebound in the next few quarters as what we observed in the past year and also in the Chinese New Year this year. What's more, we are well prepared for the release of pent-up demand and we'll capture the opportunities by providing our supreme product and service to our users.
In sum, for the whole quarter of quarter one, we had a very good start but met some challenges in March, which was somehow a trade-off for an earlier reopening in the near future. We now forecast a 0%-5% revenue growth compared with the same quarter of last year, as we mentioned in our prepared remarks, and looking forward much higher growth rate for the rest of the year. In terms of your second question is related to short haul. Just to recite to my comments before.
Actually, the short-haul traveling in March have, for sure, some impact by the COVID-19, by the virus spread, but was very limited compared with the long haul. For example, for the company, we observed that the transportation for the air and for the train in March, especially in the second week and the third week of March, dropped like 50% or even higher compared with last year. For the accommodation or the short haul, because, you know, accommodation and attraction ticketing is a signal for the localization consumption and also for the short-haul traveling, just dropped for 20%, around 20%. The impact is very limited.
Because, you know, the areas that not impacted by the recent resurgence are still very robust and energetic. That is also why we are very confident for the pent-up demand release in the quarter two and the rest of the year when the situation back to normal. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Ellie Jiang from Macquarie. Please ask your question.
Hey, thank you management for taking my question. I just have a quick question to follow up on our profit comments. Just now we were talking about for the full year profit, we're hoping to kind of make it comparable with last year. What's our base assumption for the full year profit kind of outlook given the current pandemic situation? I guess quickly just to follow back, if we look at the prior rounds of COVID waves in China, we usually see this V-shaped rebound curve, and it's usually released immediately after the ease of travel restrictions.
Just for this round, do we expect to do something differently, or do we expect some pickup in, for example, sales and marketing expenses for heading into, for example, second quarter or third quarter, for a potential release for the demand? Thank you.
First, I think Joyce could give you some comments on the second question for the rebound. Also, I will give you some color on the profitability. Joyce, please.
Yes. Because, you know, currently we all see that we're still under the depths of COVID, and also the government has implemented strict control measures to contain the spread of the COVID. Currently we couldn't tell when the overall policy will be changed. We can see that the Chinese government is more experienced in controlling the spread of virus with more precise and flexible approaches to administer the affected areas. For example, recently, for the confirmed cases, just with mild symptoms, the patients should be quarantined but don't need to be sent to the hospital. As Hope mentioned earlier, according to the NDRC guidelines released in February, the government is also eager to support the recovery of the economy and the travel industry.
It also guides the local government to avoid excessive control measures and travel restrictions, which is a signal that the government wants to prevent the unnecessary control and lockdown. We are still very confident in the resilience and vitality of the domestic travel industry. What we could see in the past, the travel market can rebound very quickly once the COVID situation is stable.
Yeah, I will add more color on the margin side. Actually, we are very confident that the margin in the short- to medium-term future will be relatively stable because our business is relatively mature. Also, the margin improvement. There is some kind of space for margin improvement, for example, from scaling as our revenue rockets up in the rest of the year, and also from operational efficiency enhancement. Plus, we will definitely reinvest it in brand advertisement and ad marketing and new product development. We will reinvest these savings, this kind of savings, in those parts. For example, we'll be more aggressive to develop and penetrate the markets for our accommodation, plus ticketing and attraction ticketing business.
We will explore the cross-sell and monetization opportunities for car hailing and local consumption, et cetera. We may also start to develop our outbound business when the road is open, and also the content leisure business to drive additional revenue sources for the future. All of those initiatives are the revenue engines for the next two years' hypergrowth for the revenue. That is our simple logic. We will save the money from the scaling and from efficiency enhancement, and we will put the additional money to reinvest on the marketing dollars and also our new product and development, and also the research. Thank you.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Ronald Keung from Goldman Sachs. Please ask your question.
Thank you. Thank you management for taking my question. I have two questions. First is I wanna ask about how you just talked about expecting much faster growth from the second quarter and onwards. What we've seen, for example, is some recurrence in August, in kind of fourth quarter and in first quarter. As you talk about expecting hypergrowth and the cost planning, just wanna hear if we are expecting hypergrowth, is our cost planning usually in sync or would actually revenues and costs have some lag? If we are planning for a hypergrowth and we plan more costs and if another wave of COVID comes, how fast do we adjust our cost base to maintain a more stable margin outlook for the year? It's about recurrence of COVID and our cost planning.
Second question is on take rates, 'cause recently we just had the very unfortunate and sad air accident yesterday. If we have more people taking high speed rail, for example, in the short term, could you remind us the take rate of rail versus air ticketing around sort of on a per ticket basis? How is our profitability on these two channels? Just wanna hear have we seen any change in shifting modes, just at least for the short term? Thank you.
Thank you, Ronald . In terms of the first question, actually, we have mentioned a lot of times the company is very good at on the flexible and lean management. You know, our total headcount is relatively stable and the total cost or the spending for the employees are relatively stable. That will be adjusted down as a scaling effect for the rest of the year. Actually the most important part of the cost structure is the sales marketing dollars. You know, the sales marketing dollar for the management team, we can very flexible and adjust the strategy, sales marketing strategy, according to the market situation, according to our revenue growth.
In total, I will give you more color of how we spend our sales marketing dollar in 2022. We have already explained a lot of times that I would plan to continue our investment in the market to penetrate the market and especially in the post-COVID time. There will be a cost saving as I mentioned from scaling and improvement in operation efficiency, but we will reinvest these savings for future business expansion. For example, for online part, we will launch more accurate promotion in target areas and scenarios so as to acquire more users. We will explore new traffic channels such as short video platform, content platform, local location-based platform.
For example, the Baidu Maps and Gaode Map by sharing platform, et cetera, for user acquisition online. At the same time we will continue to penetrate the market with our offline user acquisition initiatives, including the bus vending machine, attraction ticketing vending machine, et cetera, and bus conductors. All those investments, it is relatively related to the ROI. We will control the ROI. That was a very positive relationship to the revenue growth. Also we will invest in brand advertisement so to strengthen our brand image and awareness.
That is our how we manage our business and how we manage our sales marketing dollars and what its relationship with the for the sales marketing dollar and the revenue growth. In terms of the take rate, recent take rate, actually for transportation, I will explain separately for accommodation and transportation. For transportation, you know, in the past several quarters or past two years, the blended take rate from transportation is quite stable.
In the past quarter, in quarter four, it slightly improved for the take rate of transportation because of the, you know, in quarter four, there's a sporadic cases spread in the mainland China, so people would like to buy the insurance and also would like to use the Huixing system for the convenient service. In the future, actually, the blended take rate for transportation, actually we think is quite stable, because that is another important focus for the company to improve the take rate from transportation side.
The most important one is to cross-sell the users from transportation to accommodation and also attraction tickets from air, train, bus to accommodation because, you know, accommodation has a far more higher take rate, blended take rate than transportation. That is not our main task to improve the take rate, but we guess it will be quite stable in the future. For the Accommodation segment, you know, in the past quarter, several quarters and past two years, you can observe that we have a very obvious improvement on the accommodation take rate year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter. There are two reasons obviously.
One is that all of the players, OTA players right now in the markets are very prudent or very disciplined on the couponing. That is the first reason. The second reason is our one-stop-shop strategy for accommodation reservation business. Nowadays, we have more than 10% of the contribution, revenue contribution from our VAS, value-added service, in the accommodation group. In the future, we are very confident that the VAS will be improved, will be increased in the future, because we have now offered a variety of product and service to our customer and also the creative product and service is ongoing. That is my comments on the take rate. Thank you.
Your last question comes from the line of Thomas Chong from Jefferies. Please ask your question.
Thank you, management, for taking my question. I have a question on the outlook for the accommodation volume, and how should we see the pricing in the top and low-tier city in the first half of 2020 and through the year? Thank you.
Actually, as I mentioned, we have some visibility in quarter one, but actually, especially for the accommodation, you know, the booking window is quite short. We have very limited visibility on the pricing and also on the volume side for the first half of the—for the quarter two. But on the pricing, or the ADR side, you know, we still met some challenge on the total industry for the hotel industry. The ADR, or the pricing of the hotel, dropped significantly, compared with 2019. Anyway, we think that is a short-term headwind and it will be turned back after the situation is back to normal. Thank you.
There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to hand the conference back to today's presenters. Please continue.
Thank you. We are closing the call now. If you wish to check 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.