Thank you. Good morning and good evening, everyone. Welcome to Tongcheng Travel 2021 second quarter and interim results conference call. I'm Kylie Yeung, Investor Relations Director of the company. Joining us today on the conference call are Mr. Ma Heping, Executive Director and CEO, Mr. Julian Fan, CFO, and Miss Joyce Li, VP and Head of Capital Markets. For today's call, our management team will provide a review of the company's performance for the second quarter. Hong will walk us through the company's business performance for 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 section 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 and 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 statements. 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, Hong. Hong, please go ahead.
Thank you, Kylie. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining our 2021 second quarter earnings call. The past quarter was fundamentally encouraging for China's domestic travel industry. In April and May, we saw a strong recovery momentum in the sector, with enhanced willingness and demand for travel. In late May, however, we saw a slowdown in the industry's recovery as stricter travel restrictions were imposed to contain a new outbreak of COVID in Guangdong Province. The market players were inevitably impacted. Thanks to our strong operational capability and excellent market adaptability, we overcame all the difficulties and delivered outstanding results for the second quarter, continuously outshine the market. Moreover, we were awarded the Best Mini Program for the first half of 2021 by a well-known third-party mini program monitor, Aladdin, for our exceptional performance in the first half of the year.
Even under the shadow of the regional outbreak, our accommodation business, a key growth driver for the company, maintained its robust growth momentum in the second quarter, as we made continuous efforts to step up investment in lower-tier cities and build up our market influence there. Over the past quarter, we increased our efforts in leveraging the enormous traffic from our train and air ticketing business to drive cross-sell to our hotel products and services, which added to the decent growth in our accommodation business. Moreover, we further pushed ahead with our offline user acquisition initiatives by cooperating not only with the hotels, but also with other offline traffic hubs, so as to acquire more users.
For the second quarter, our domestic room nights sold saw an impressive year-over-year growth of over 65% compared with 2019, while the room nights sold in lower-tier cities registered an accelerated growth of more than 100% over 2019 levels. In addition, we continuously developed and innovated our value-added products and services by digging into the underlying needs of users and suppliers, expanding new revenue sources, and improving monetization for the accommodation business. Despite of uncertainties caused by COVID, the surging in Guangdong region, our transportation business, positioned as the backbone of the company, still saw solid growth in the second quarter and outperformed the industry of several consecutive quarters.
Our domestic air ticket volume for the quarter witnessed a satisfying growth of nearly 30% when compared to 2019, mainly attributable to our solid market position in lower-tier cities and our strategic focus on younger generations, as well as effective cross-sell initiatives. In late March, we launched an innovative product called Blind Box of Air Tickets, which was overwhelmingly welcomed by younger users, and as a result, boosted our brand recognition. As for our train ticketing business, we remained focused on enhancing user value. Throughout the second quarter, we made greater efforts in diverting the traffic to our air ticketing business by tapping deeper into users' needs. In an attempt to increase the value of train traffic, we continuously developed and innovated our value-added products and services to better fulfill our users' needs and make their journey easier and more convenient.
Meanwhile, we kept refining the infrastructure of our intelligent system to further enhance ticketing and refund efficiency for the sake of users' convenience. As an effective channel for the company to expand user base, our bus ticketing business has shown thrilling volume growth since last year. Over the past quarter, its volume almost tripled when compared with 2019. We rolled out more bus ticket vending machines to further penetrate lower-tier cities, and even villages and towns. We also enhanced the geographic layout of the vending machines to strive for higher users acquisition efficiency. By the end of June, we had more than 9,000 machines installed across almost 300 cities. For the current stage, given the extremely low online penetration rate of the market, we will remain focused on amassing a user base and will make gradual efforts to leverage the bus traffic.
In the past quarter, we had made a preliminary attempt in cross-selling other products to bus ticketing users so as to enhance our monetization capability. As for our other businesses, they also saw rapid growth in the past quarter, largely thanks to stronger recovery in the advertising business, the addition of corporate travel, as well as a quick expansion of paid membership program. Going into the third quarter, we were pleased to see stronger travel demand rebound at the beginning of July. Later in July, the country was sequentially struck by natural disasters. Firstly, was near torrential rain in central city of Zhengzhou, then a formidable typhoon that caused massive damages in the eastern region. What's worse, a new outbreak of COVID in Nanjing spread to several cities across the country. All those have caused severe disruption to the economy and travel in these regions.
As a socially responsible enterprise, we reacted swiftly and immediately introduced a low-penalty cancellation policy for the sake of our users. Meanwhile, together with Tencent Map, we co-launched a map of good-will hotels, through which users in Zhengzhou can easily locate hotels that provide rest areas, drinking water, and other relief services free of charge. Furthermore, this map also enables users to track flooding conditions in different areas, which helps them plan travel routes. The resurgence of COVID in the end of July and in August brought the country again under vigilance, which has put a pause on the emerging travel demand, and that's caused big fluctuations in our business. However, we are well-equipped to handle all the difficulties and uncertainties since we are experienced in coping with market changes caused by COVID.
As you may have seen over the past few quarters, we adopted flexible operational strategies and implemented a change in cost control amid COVID to alleviate the adverse impact, and still managed to lead the industry recovery. Since the outbreak of the COVID pandemic in early 2020, China's travel industry has been undergoing dramatic changes from user behavior to the supply end. Users are more inclined to ad hoc travel and online booking. Smart technologies are being widely adopted by industry players. All these changes, although causing challenges for the traditional industry, have also created great opportunities for all industry players. More importantly, the Chinese government has been making continuous efforts to promote the development of the industry, especially after COVID. Travel is a basic need for everyone and it brings happiness and satisfaction to people.
Before closing my speech, I would like to reiterate our optimistic stance for China's travel industry, especially the market in lower-tier cities, where we see greater opportunities and huge growth potential. Although facing uncertainties in the short run, we remain confident that with our strong execution capability, flexible operational strategies, and more importantly, our strategic focus on lower-tier cities as well as on empowering the travel industry with our technology, we will overcome all the challenges and emerge as a stronger company. We will consistently lead the industry growth and unwaveringly promote the development of the country, thus creating value for society. With that, I will turn the call to Joyce. She will walk you through our operational highlights for the second quarter. Joyce, please go ahead.
Thank you, Heping. The resurgence of COVID in Guangdong Province did put a brake on the roadmap to recovery in China's travel industry in the past quarter. As a veteran in the industry, we quickly responded and calibrated our operational strategies to adapt to the ever-changing market conditions and managed to outperform industry for another consecutive quarter. In the second quarter, we continued to set up investments in our branding campaigns to strengthen our brand influence in lower-tier cities and among younger generations. Our innovative and phenomenal product, Blind Box of Air Tickets, debuted in late March, has demonstrated its popularity among younger users, and has successfully seized rebound opportunities in Qingming and the Labor Day holiday, contributing greatly to our MAUs growth for the third quarter.
We joined hands with China's most influential beer brand to launch various marketing activities during summer vacation to enhance our brand presence among targeted users. Recently, we also launched an innovative marketing campaign called 48 Hours, aiming to build a branded short-haul travel product so as to better serve emerging needs for short-haul journey post-COVID. As part of the 48 Hours initiative, we launched Blind Box containing hotel coupons, tourist attraction tickets, and transportation tickets. As for next step, we will have tourist destinations on board to co-launch more marketing activities targeting younger users so as to further enrich our 48 Hours campaign. In addition, our paid membership loyalty programs continued to expand rapidly with the number of cumulative Black Whale members approaching nine million as of the end of June. We dug deeper into users' needs and launched different membership versions targeting different user cohorts.
Moreover, we further expanded cooperation with third parties to enrich our paid members' privileges to great effect. Throughout the second quarter, we continued to seek cooperation within the Tencent ecosystem so as to build a stronger bond with our users. We're entitled to several IP rights by Tencent Maps, which enable our users to enjoy user privileges at our cooperated hotels, as well as helping our partners attract more traffic. This strengthened partnership has not only helped increase our brand awareness among younger generations, but also reinforced our influence in the hotel supply chain. Besides, we joined hands with Weixin Pay to launch promotional campaigns to enhance our online user acquisition efficiency. More importantly, we successfully renewed our agreement with Tencent in late July, through which we continue to have two entry points in Weixin Pay interface.
In the future, we will further explore Weixin ecosystem to build deeper engagement with our target users. Apart from the Tencent ecosystem, we also explore cooperation with other traffic platforms. Since last year, we have established solid partnerships with China's major handset vendors and have continuously deepened mutual cooperation. In the past quarter, we co-launched a marketing campaign with one of the influential handset vendors and had our brand, Haglöfs, both at their tens of thousands of bricks-and-mortar stores, which are mainly located in low-tier cities. Meanwhile, to provide users with seamless experience, we cooperate with one of the handset vendors to create access for users to check their travel orders on their smartwatches. With our continuous efforts in diversifying our traffic channels, the MAU of our Trip.com app continued to grow tremendously in the past quarter.
At the same time, we continue to push forward with our offline user acquisition initiatives to further penetrate low-tier cities and enhance our market presence there. Apart from hotels, we keep seeking cooperation with other offline traffic hubs to assist more offline users from low-tier cities. We also expanded the roll out of bags and charging vending machines across the country with the help of our strong execution stability and well-established relationships with the upstream suppliers. These three initiatives have brought us a considerable amount of paying users in the past few quarters, and will continue to serve as an effective instrument for us to enlarge our user base. With above efforts we have made, our average MAUs for the last quarter reaches a record high of 277.9 million, a notable growth of 15.3% compared to the same period of 2019.
Our average MPUs for the quarter also hit a historical high of 33.4 million, a decent growth of 20% on a base of 2019. Many thanks to our comprehensive product service offerings, outstanding capability to enhance conversion, and effective offline acquisition initiatives. Moreover, our 12 months rolling paying users maintained its growth momentum and have reached 181.9 million at the end of June, representing a robust increase of 39% when compared with the same period in 2019. Cross-selling has been a crucial tactic for the company to leverage our huge traffic in the transportation sector. In the last three months, we adhered to the strategy and made more aggressive efforts to enhance efficiency within the transportation segment, as well as diverting the traffic to our accommodation and attraction business.
Even under the shadow of COVID outbreak in Guangdong Province, our one-trip cross-selling rate returned to high level in the second quarter, which was also dented by strict restrictions in the first quarter. As a customer-oriented company aiming to transform from OTA to ITA, we are dedicated to enhancing not only our internal efficiency, but also the efficiency in the travel industry. We proactively adopt technology innovation to consistently perfect users' experience and make their journey easier and more joyful. During the last quarter, we successfully developed and launched an intelligent customer experience platform, which can automatically analyze users' concerns and their underlying situational changes, hence enabling our customer service team to promptly respond to compliance and optimize our service. This not only improve customer service satisfaction, but also enhance our customer service efficiency.
We can optimize our intelligent travel solution, Huixing System, to enhance the user experience. We further optimized the fundamental functions within the system in the last three months and greatly elevated our ticketing and response efficiency. On the other hand, we are devoted to empowering the business of our partners with our internet expertise and technology solutions. To build a more resilient and highly efficient travel ecosystem, we have comprehensive set solutions to assist individual hotels and small chain hotels in daily operations and the management of inventory, revenue, and marketing. We provide technology solutions to airports with our well-built big data capability to help them enhance operational efficiency. In the last quarter, we deepened our strategic cooperation with Shenzhen Airport. Apart from developing many programs for the airport, we've built a more effective data analysis system to help it improve its internal efficiency.
Furthermore, we joined hands with the Beijing Daxing International Airport to establish structured cooperation to provide users with more privileges. The two of us will have in-depth cooperation concerning product innovation to attract more passengers for the airport, as well as sharing our membership benefits. With this, I will hand over the call to our CFO, Julian. He will talk through our financial highlights for second quarter of the year. Julian, please go ahead.
Thank you, Joyce. Good evening, everyone. For the second quarter of 2021, we still use the number of quarter two 2019 as the main basis of a comparison due to the COVID in 2020. In the second quarter, we reported a net revenue of RMB 2.14 billion, representing a 34% year-over-year increase from the same period of 2019, or a 78% year-over-year increase from the same period of 2020. If we don't consider the impact of the frozen international travel and the reduced pre-purchase business, the like-for-like net revenue achieved 45% growth compared with 2019. We are very satisfied to set another record in terms of the revenue this quarter. Meanwhile, we achieved a RMB 398 million adjusted net profit with 18.6% net margin, compared with 18.4% net margin in quarter one 2021.
The resurgence of COVID-19 in Guangdong in late May and June had very limited impact on our operations and financials, thanks to our strategic focus on lower tier cities and our geographically balanced revenue contribution across mainland China. At the same time, our management team, as always, kept monitoring COVID situation to timely adjust the market execution in different channels and different areas so as to minimize the impact by COVID, as well as pursuing a higher growth and a better ROI. In the second quarter, we booked the RMB 43.9 billion GMV with a 6% year-over-year increase compared with 2019, or a 96% increase from 2020. The growth rate of our net revenue in this quarter surpassed that of the GMV when compared with 2019, mainly benefiting from larger proportion of high take rate products, such as accommodation, as well as higher VAS attach rates.
However, the ADR and ATV were still down when compared with 2019. Accommodation reservation revenue achieved RMB 743 million, representing a 34% increase compared with 2019, or 93% increase compared with 2020. If we don't consider the negative impact of international travel and pre-purchase business, like-for-like accommodation reservation revenue recorded a 44% growth compared with 2019. Domestic room nights growth in the second quarter further accelerated to more than 65% compared with 2019. Geographically, room night sale grew over 50% and more than 100%, respectively, in high-tier cities and low-tier cities, thanks to the booming demand for staycation and short haul travel in the weekends, Qingming, Labor Day, and Dragon Boat Festival.
In this quarter, we further strengthened our efforts in air, train cross-sell execution, offline QR code scanning at hotels, and online promotions to bring more users to our accommodation segment as well as improving the conversion and repurchase rates. We also made initial efforts in leveraging the traffic from the bus ticketing business to cross-sell other products to improve the value of users that we got from bus ticket vending machine. ADR still dropped to compare with 2019 due to short-term headwind faced by the hotel industry, as well as our strategy to further penetrate lower tier cities. The take rate slightly improved if we compared with that of 2019, as the VAS revenue contribution continues to increase along with the effective implementation of our accommodation one-stop-shop strategy.
Transportation ticketing revenue for the second quarter of 2021 was RMB 1,235 million, representing a 32% increase compared with 2019, or a 17% increase compared with the same period in 2020. Bus ticket volume achieved more than 270% growth compared with 2019 as a result of our strategic focus on an investment in bus ticket vending machine across the country. Domestic air ticket volume increased by nearly 30% compared with 2019, which significantly beat overall market growth. Other business revenue achieved RMB 161 million in the second quarter, representing a 60% increase compared with the same period 2019, or a 78% increase compared with 2020. The increase was mainly contributed by new initiatives such as hotel advertisement, hotel PMS, TMC business, and paid membership cards. Gross margin was 76.4% for the second quarter of 2021, increased from 64.7% for the same period in 2019 and 74.6% for the previous quarter.
The continuous margin improvement was mainly driven by our streamlined operations, intelligent customer service ability, and revenue mix change in the past year. In the second quarter of 2021, our adjusted EBITDA achieved RMB 530 million, with a 24.8% EBITDA margin. Slightly decreased from 25.9% quarter-over-quarter, as we invested more in marketing in this quarter to pursue user growth more aggressively. Adjusted net profit achieved RMB 398 million, with margins increased to 18.6% from 18.4% quarter-over-quarter. Service development and administrative expenses in the second quarter of 2021 increased by 1% from the same period of 2019. Excluding share-based compensation charges, service development and administrative expenses in total accounted for 19.4% of revenue in the second quarter, compared with 24.5% of revenue in the same period of 2019 and 22.7% of revenue in previous quarter.
Selling and marketing expenses in the second quarter of 2021 increased by 117% from the same period of 2019 and increased by 43% from previous quarter. In this quarter, we aggressively increased investments in marketing campaigns to seize the clear recovery opportunities. We expanded advertisement placement at different offline scenarios. We heightened our efforts in offline user acquisition initiatives in lower-tier cities through our bus ticket and attraction ticket vending machines. We also stepped up investment in online promotions to accelerate cross-selling. All the efforts aforementioned are aimed at enhancing the purchase frequency and user value for the long run. We also successfully launched innovative marketing initiatives, Blind Box of Air Tickets, to closely engage with younger generations, which contributed about around 10% of our total MAU in this quarter.
Excluding share-based compensation charges, selling and marketing expenses accounted for 41.1% of revenue in the second quarter, compared with 45.2% of revenue in the same period of 2019 and 37.9% of revenue in the previous quarter. As of June 30, 2021, the balance of cash equivalents, restricted cash and short-term investments was RMB 6.4 billion. Now let's turn to our estimates for the third quarter of 2021. The resurgence of COVID in the city of Nanjing, Hunan Province and some other areas is more severe than that occurred in Guangdong in Q2. Meanwhile, the floods in Henan Province in July were one of the worst natural disasters in China in many years, followed by a powerful typhoon in eastern China that caused a massive cancellation of flights and trains in the region.
Consequently, the traveling demand in summer is being held back, and our performance in Q3 is unavoidably impacted. However, with the increasing vaccination rate in mainland China and effective control measures by the government, we believe the new COVID outbreak will be quickly contained and the impact will be temporary. After one year consolidation and preparation, the whole company is now in a better position to capture the post-COVID recovery opportunities and outperform the market no matter what challenges that we would encounter. Based on the situation in the first half of Q3, we are now expecting our net revenue to decrease by 10%-5% compared with 2019 or as similar as Q3 2020 level. If we don't consider the impact of international travel and pre-purchase business reduction, like-for-like revenue is expected to grow by 0%-5% if we compare it with 2019.
Our adjusted net profit is expected to be in the range of RMB 300 million-RMB 350 million. This forecast reflects our current and preliminary review, which is subject to change. With that, operator, we are ready to take questions now. Thank you.
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press the pound or hash key. Kindly limit your questions to only two to allow other participants to raise their questions. Your first question is from Brian Gong of Citigroup. Please ask your question.
Thanks, management, for taking my question. Congratulations on the recent quarter results. I have two questions. First one is about the second half top line expectation. I know it may be too early to say, given latest round of outbreak almost under control in China right now, how does management see the demand during the National Day, and do you think there will be some travel restrictions during the National Day? My second question is the margin trend in second half and next year. We just renewed the contract with Tencent, I know you probably cannot talk about Tencent numbers. How should we see margin expense trend and margin trend in the second half?
Thanks, Brian. First, I would like to explain the recent situation after the regional outbreak of the COVID and what the things look like in the second half of this year for both of the top line and the bottom line. Then I will put more comments, colors on the cost structure and the margin side for this year and in the future. Actually, as we talked in the prepared remarks, all of us can see that the travel demand rocket up when COVID was basically under control, and the travel restrictions was loosened in Q2. I think the enthusiasm of leisure travel and also the necessity of business travel were astonishing relief in the past quarter, which give us a very strong confidence more than ever in the China domestic travel industry in the long run.
I think, the stronger consumption power and also the infrastructure improvement, especially in lower tier cities. As to your question, the COVID virus changed to the new Delta variant in the past quarters and caused, I think, more severe impact on travel industry during this summer vacation, which is the hottest peak season of the travel industry. First appeared in Nanjing, in the middle of July, then spread to Sichuan, Hunan Province, finally got Beijing and Shanghai in early August. Actually, the travel restriction in Beijing and Shanghai was a very important signal of the negative atmosphere of the whole travel industry, which implied a pause on reemerging travel demand. Our business this quarter was very fluctuated. However, on the good side, the government was very assured and quickly responded to stop the spread of Delta, the situation was basically under control.
The numbers of new cases was reduced, I think, in the middle of August or just within two weeks. What's more, according to today's news, Beijing has already cleared all the middle to high-risk areas. Currently we are eagerly looking forward to the carnival of domestic travel industry in the Mid-Autumn Festival in September and the National Day in October. As we experienced for the past quarters, travel demand could be paused and come up, I think it will be released later in a far more stronger way. In terms of the margin side, actually, in the past several quarters, I think our cost and expense structure were relatively stable and became more and competitive than before. Selling and marketing spending as of revenue kept increasing to pursue an accelerated penetration in our target users and target areas post-COVID.
To support our hyper-growth, which outpaced the industry in several dimensions. While our GP margin kept improving, benefited from the change in revenue structure, just like what I mentioned since revenue contribution from accommodation side increased a lot, and our continuous improvement in operation efficiency. At the same time, a very important point, our head count, the total head count of the company was relatively stable, so that the service development and the general administrative spending as of revenue dropped driven by the scaling effect when our revenue recovered and increased. The selling and marketing spending, actually, nowadays, is the biggest portion in our cost structure. It could be flexible, adjusted, and controlled by adopting different operation tactics by the management team according to the market situation and COVID situation.
In this quarter, in quarter three, as I mentioned in prepared remarks, we promptly reduced the sales and marketing investment in all kinds of channels and scenarios after the resurgence of COVID cases since the end of July. Actually, we saved a lot of bullet for the rebound in National Day. Based on the situation that we have seen, actually we are expected to achieve the RMB 300 million- RMB 350 million adjusted net profit in quarter three, which means we are capable to maintain a very stable net margin during this difficult period caused by COVID resurgence compared with the first half of this year, very stable margin. What is more, the renewed price of recent quarter has already been fully considered in our estimation.
In the long run, I think post the pandemic, the main target of the company is still to maintain a sustainable growth with our dedication to provide better products and services to our users and contribute to the digitalization of the travel industry in the future. I think that is my comments for your two questions. Thank you.
Thank you. That's very helpful.
Your next question is from Alex Poon of Morgan Stanley. Please ask your question.
Hi, management. Congratulations on very strong execution. I have two questions. My first question is regarding our MAUs. Apart from Tencent MAUs, the non-Tencent part grew by around 86% year-over-year to more than 60 million. It's a very strong number. Can we explain the driver behind it and how should we forecast this MAU in future, and how's the monetization of these users going? My second question is regarding our very strong GP margin, again, record high at 76%. From third quarter onwards, should we expect this level to maintain or even increase a little bit further? Thank you very much.
Thank you, Alex. I will take the first question, and then Julian, just in a second. The first question, I think, is consider the MAU from the non-Weixin platform that you can see we have enjoyed high growth year-over-year. I think it can contribute to our strategy that we keep diversifying our traffic channels. In the second quarter, the MAU, our own app also increased significantly because of innovative lineups of air tickets. We have achieved overwhelming response from this initiative. Now we have positioned this as an effective way for our brand building. We'll continue to develop the new products and service to attract the users. In fact, I think we have been exploring various user acquisition channels even under the impact of the COVID.
In addition to Weixin and the standalone apps, we also have other online channels such as the quick apps as a mini programs and so on. We also continue to step up our efforts in the offline user acquisition, especially in the low-tier cities, with an aim to diversify our traffic channels and the user base. Later we will also see the rebound opportunity from the travel industry, and increase our investments in different channels to further ramp our business.
In terms of the GP trend, GP margin trend, Alex Poon, actually, I think in the past two years, our GP margin have already improved a lot since 2019. Like what I said, mainly because the revenue structure improvement and also our continuous improvement in operational efficiency, especially the automation in our call centers. In the long run, I think there must be some room to improve for the GP margin because the accommodation segment is the most important part of the company to pursue a hyper-growth. I believe the revenue structure will shift to accommodation side more in the following quarters as well. There's also some space to improve the operational efficiency as well. The other thing is that, for this quarter and the last quarter, the pre-purchase business is very limited.
If we increase the pre-purchase business after the COVID, the post-COVID period, I think next year or in the long run, I think the GP margin might be slightly dropped due to this reason, but it not impact on the bottom line. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
The next question is from Thomas Chong of Jefferies. Please ask your question.
Thanks, management, for taking my question. I have two questions. The first one is about our annual paying user. Our annual paying user has reached over 180 million in our second quarter. Can you share some color on the long-term annual paying user trend, and do we have any target on that? My second question is on the take rate for the accommodation. Can management share the trend of the take rate in top-tier city and the low-tier city? Thank you.
Thank you for your question. I'll take first question about the annual paying users. We all can see that our addressable market is still very huge. The online penetration rate for the low-tier cities, for example, for the hotels, only 25%. The online penetration rate for the bus tickets still very low. It's just low single digit, although we have achieved hyper-growth last year. For the users that we acquired from the bus vending machines, still more than 60% are completely new to our platform. After the pandemic, I think it's a golden time for us to get into the offline market and accelerate the digitalization and online penetration. We have previously mentioned we have a target to achieve the goal of 200 million annual paying users for the year 2021.
Although there is still uncertainties of COVID ahead, we think we will stick to our strategies here. We will strive to increase our annual paying users through the strategies. Firstly, we will continue to promote our offline user acquisition initiatives by cooperating with the hotels to acquire users offline and set up vending machines at bus stations, tourist attractions, and other offline hubs. Especially, we believe our bus ticket volume will increase and bring a significant amount of paying users in 2021. We will keep in mind the ROI and adjust our coverage of hotels and locations of the vending machines to improve the internal efficiency. Secondly, we will enhance the operation on our online platform, which has many mini programs, our own apps, quick apps we have mentioned, with more precise marketing and tailor-made recommendations to our users.
Thirdly, we will try to acquire the traffic through the new channels, such as we have initiated a cooperation with the handset vendor since last year. We work with the location-based apps and the short video platforms to attract the new traffic. Moreover, we will further enhance our product and services. For example, you can see that we have launched innovative products like the Blind Box of Air Tickets to fulfill the user's ever-changing needs. Recently, the 48 Hours initiative also helped us to capture the needs for the short-haul travel during the COVID. Our paying user in the 12-month period ended June has already reached 181.9 million. I think the number will further increase in July before the virus will outbreak in Nanjing.
With our effective user acquisition initiative, efficient operational on the online platforms, as well as our enhanced product and service innovation capability, supported by our advanced technology, we are very confident to further expand our user base.
Okay. Let's talk about the take rate from the accommodation side. Actually, I think people are caring about the take rate very much for the accommodation, because I think that is a very important signal for the competition level of the OTA area, and also, I think a signal of the relationship between OTA and hotels. Actually, in the past, I think three years, from 2018 to nowadays, the take rate of accommodation is very stable, no matter the high-tier cities and low-tier cities. There's only some kind of slight fluctuation recently for the accommodation take rate. It depends on the COVID situation. When the COVID is well under controlled, I think most of the players would like to invest more on the couponing side to appeal more and more users. The take rate might be slightly dropped.
When the COVID is most severe, for example, this quarter in August, the players are more and more disciplined to investment on the couponing side. Anyway, generally speaking, it's quite stable. I believe it will be stable in the future. What is more, for us, our blended take rate for the accommodation is steadily improved, I think since last year. That is because the one-stop-shop strategy of the accommodation will provide more and more VAS on accommodation side. In past quarter, I think in quarter two, the VAS revenue contribution has already taken more than 12% of our total accommodation revenue. That is another reason why our accommodation blended take rate is increased quarter-to-quarter and year-on-year. I think the trend might be continued for, I think, the following several quarters as well. Thank you.
That's very helpful. Thank you.
At this stage, I would now like to hand the call back to Kylie Yeung for the closing remarks.
Thank you. In lieu of the time constraint, 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.
Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now all disconnect.