Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Tongcheng Travel 2025 first quarter results announcement. 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 need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising you your hand is raised. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your host today, Ms. Kylie Yeung. Thank you. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning and good evening, everyone. Welcome to Tongcheng Travel 2025 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. Hao Ma, our CFO, Mr. Julian Fang, and our Chief Capital Officer, Ms. Joyce Lee. For today's call, our management team will provide a review of the company's performance in the first quarter. Hao will brief us on the company's strategies. Joyce will discuss our business and 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 expectation and current market operating conditions and relate to events that involve known or unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause the company's actual results, performance, or achievements to differ from those in the forward-looking 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, Hao Ma. Hao will be presenting in Mandarin, and our colleague will provide the English translation afterwards. Hao, please go ahead.
谢谢 Kylie。各位晚上好，欢迎各位参与我们同城2025年第一季度业绩电话会议。2025年第一季度，中国旅游业持续稳步增长，国内旅游市场热度不断攀升。在公司整体战略的引领下，我们把握市场增长的黄金机遇，持续深耕国内市场，并加速布局促进业务。我们积极纵向延伸产业链，并横向拓展业务边界，构建覆盖旅游全场景的生态体系，进一步巩固和扩大市场优势。面对市场快速变化的时代，我们紧贴科技发展，将技术应用真正融入业务当中，不断提升服务品质和效率。基于公司多年积累的行业经验、丰富的文旅供应链资源和深厚的数据基础，我们持续加速AI产品的迭代升级，进一步提升用户体验并助力行业发展。进入二季度以来，我们注意到近期节假日期间整个旅游行业的活跃度极高，各类用户需求持续旺盛。同时，中国政府持续大力支持旅游业发展，推动旅游基础设施建设与服务质量提升，鼓励文旅融合创新，助力旅游业转型升级，并为旅游产业发展营造良好的环境。作为行业头部平台，我们在高质量发展浪潮中既把握着行业升级机遇，也直面消费需求转变带来的创新挑战。在用户运营层面，我们更聚焦用户价值提升与技术迭代的竞争力，同时拓展国际业务，深入挖掘市场需求，推动促进业务快速增长，不断拓展海外市场覆盖范围。我们非常看好中国旅游业的长期发展，通过持续深化在产业链上的布局，提升自身的竞争优势。今年4月中旬，我们宣布将收购万达酒店管理公司，正是看好中国酒店管理市场的增长潜力。此次收购将进一步提升我们在产业链上的影响力，助力公司的长远发展。我们会继续为利益相关者创造长期价值，为旅游行业的高质量发展做出贡献，实现可持续发展。接下来，Joyce将向大家详细地介绍2025年第一季度的业务表现和运营亮点，也请我们IR同事先做一下翻译。谢谢大家。
Good evening, everyone. Welcome to our 2025 first quarter earnings call. In the first quarter, China's travel industry has continued to grow steadily, with surging enthusiasm for domestic travel. Guided by the company's overall strategy, we see the golden market growth opportunities deepen our domestic market presence and accelerate expansion of our outbound travel business. At the same time, we have been actively expanding the industry chain vertically and broadening our business scope horizontally, with the goal of establishing a comprehensive ecosystem that covers all travel scenarios, thereby strengthening and expanding our market advantages. In response to the rapidly changing landscape, we remain committed to technological advancements and integrate technological applications into our business operations to continuously enhance service quality and efficiency.
Leveraging our extensive industry experience, abundant travel and cultural supply chain resources, and solid data foundation accumulated over the years, we're accelerating the iteration and upgrade of our AI products. This enables us to further elevate user experience and contribute to the development of the industry. Since the second quarter, we have observed exceptionally high activity levels in the travel sector during recent holidays, which sustained strong demand across all user segments. Concurrently, the Chinese government continues to support the growth of the travel industry, promoting the development of travel infrastructure and enhanced service quality. The government also encourages the integration of cultural and travel resources, aiding the transformation and upgrading of the industry and fosters a favorable environment for the industry's growth.
As a leading player in the industry, we're both capitalizing on opportunities arising from industry upgrades while addressing the innovation challenges driven by shifting consumer demands in the era of high-quality development. In terms of user operations, we're placing greater emphasis on enhancing user value and driving technological iteration to further improve service efficiency. On the business front, we're strengthening our competitiveness in the domestic market through a multidimensional business strategy while expanding our global supply chain network and delving deeper into market demand. These initiatives enable the rapid growth of our outbound travel services and the continuous expansion of our reach in overseas markets. We remain highly optimistic about the long-term prospects of China's travel industry. By continuously deepening our strategic positioning across industry chains, we seek to amplify our competitive edge.
In mid-April this year, we announced plans to acquire Wanda Hotel Management Company, demonstrating our confidence in the growth potential of China's hotel management sector. This acquisition will significantly enhance our influence within the industry chain and support the company's sustainable growth. We will continue to deliver long-term value for stakeholders, contribute to the high-quality development of the travel industry, and achieve 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 2025. Joyce, please go ahead.
Thank you. China's travel demand maintained its steady growth in the first quarter, with consumers putting more emphasis on diversity and uniqueness. Riding on this tailwind, we continue to expand our footprint across the travel industry, as well as strengthen our market presence. As a result, both our revenue and profits posted satisfying growth in the past quarter, extending the healthy growth trajectory. As a key pillar for the company, our transportation business has consistently demonstrated its competitiveness and resilience among peers, further solidifying its market influence. In terms of accommodation business, proactive efforts were made to explore opportunities arising from new travel scenarios, such as ethnic minority festivals, so as to engage a more diverse user base and further enhance our market presence. In the meantime, our international accommodation business continued to see rapid expansion in its market share on the backdrop of restrained pricing strategies.
During the quarter, its value registered more than 40% growth year over year. In addition, monetization capabilities have been improved further over the past quarters, driven by a continued focus on optimizing the ROI of investments in user subsidies. As for the transportation business, we provide users with a seamless experience rather than a single ticket. We offer users with a range of value-added services designed to enhance their travel experience during every stage of their journey. We also provide users with accessible and reliable travel solutions by leveraging our algorithm-driven questioning system. All these have led to higher user loyalty and improved monetization capabilities. For the past quarter, we have observed a sustained increase in demand for accommodation business. We continue to capitalize on emerging opportunities, including those driven by entertainment and sports events, as well as growing demand for the shuttle travel.
Meanwhile, more efforts were made to improve user experience. We optimized our membership benefits by placing greater emphasis on attracting and retaining high-tier members, which in turn further reinforced user loyalty on platforms. Additionally, we also sped up our response to user requests and worked to resolve their inquiries as soon as possible. On the other hand, our international accommodation business concentrated on strengthening supply chain capability to enhance our pricing competitiveness and attract more users. Besides, we started to elevate our efforts in implementing cross-sales strategy by diverting traffic from international accommodation business. Over the quarter, our international accommodation business maintained rapid growth momentum and posted more than 50% growth year over year. To seize the upward trend of China's travel industry, we have been strategically investing across industry chains to reinforce our influence within the sector.
We see significant potential in China's hotel industry, given the lower churn rate compared to developed markets, which presents special room for us to expand our hotel management business. Since 2021, we've been investing in the hotel management business through internal incubation, investment, and acquisition. As of now, we've established a comprehensive hotel brand portfolio ranging from economy to middle to high end, with our backend support systems such as PMS, supply chain platform, and membership program. By the end of March, the number of our hotels in operation totaled over 2,500, with more than 1,400 in pipeline. Back in mid-April, we announced acquired 100% equity in Wanda Hotel Management Company, a company that operates under an asset line model and specializes in managing middle-to-upscale and even luxury hotels, as well as providing hotel design and construction consulting business.
Wanda Hotel Management has a vast network of luxury and high-end hotels across China, standing out among domestic peers and showcasing its exceptional schedule within the industry. As of the end of 2024, it had 204 hotels with over 40,000 rooms in operation. We believe that the addition of Wanda Hotel to our existing portfolio will enhance our brand metrics for talents and expertise in operation of upscale and luxury hotels. This will substantially improve the profitability of our hotel management business and further strengthen our market presence and influence in China's hotel management sector. Turning to our user side, we remain our largest and most effective channels as we continuously sought to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness within the ecosystem.
Our standalone app, now the primary engine for new user acquisition, targets younger generations and has launched innovative market initiatives such as events centered around popular theme parks that solidify mindshare among younger cohorts. During the first quarter, its DAUs continued to activate a strong growth momentum, achieving nearly 60% growth year over year. Besides, we stepped up efforts in social media to boost user engagement. By fostering long-term user loyalty, we are dedicated to enhancing user value. Over the quarter, we have upgraded our loyalty program to offer more privileges and benefits to users, in particular to high-tier members. They now enjoy an extended range of travel benefits across a variety of scenarios, surrounding accommodation and transportation, such as free pickup service, free cancellation, as well as access to VIP lounges and medical assistance.
In addition, our members enjoy reciprocal membership of several hotel groups, which further enriches the user experience. Meanwhile, our Blackwell members program continues to explore travel scenarios at multi-brands, including shuttle travel and seasonal outings. As of the end of March, the number of its members reached more than 100 million after a 30.4% increase from the end of last year. With innovative marketing campaigns and effective user engagement, we have built the most extensive user base in China's hotel industry. For the 12 months ending in March, our annual paying user once again recorded a historical high and reached 247 million, with the cumulative number of travelers served achieving 1,496 million. This indicates an average of eight purchases per user annually. In the meantime, our NPUs for the first quarter also hit a new high and achieved 46.5 million and increased 9% year- over- year.
On top of that, our annual output continues to grow momentum and climbed to more than 62 R&D during the quarter, displaying nearly 26% increase year over year. We proactively embrace new technologies and are committed to transforming our business with generative AI. In late March, we upgraded our proprietary tourism-specific large language model Chenxing and launched an AI agent, Deep Trip, which leverages the reasoning capability of DeepSeek and the supply chain advantagement of our OTA platform. Deep Trip not only assists users in planning complex travel itineraries, but also enables direct access to booking service. More recently, we've added some social features, including visualizing the itineraries that increase readability and shareability. We also seek to integrate Deep Trip into bright booking scenarios to increase effectiveness of our cross-sales strategy. Meanwhile, generative AI has also been applied in our workflows to further enhance internal efficiency.
In terms of coding, it has substantially reduced our workload by 20%. As for customer service, generative AI currently handles 50% of our online inquiries related to accommodation reservations, which will be rolled out to more scenarios in coming quarters. Besides, we've also leveraged DeepSeek's reasoning capabilities to help customer service staff to better understand customers' requests and respond promptly. We're fully committed to implementing global best practice in ESG and have made a significant stride in improving our ESG performance over the past years. In May, we were included in S&P Global Sustainability Yearbook China for the third consecutive year, being recognition of our excellence in ESG performance, as well as our consistent efforts in sustainability. More notably, we will also reward industry movers for our ESG achievements, highlighting our leadership among the global peers. I will stop here and give the call to our CFO, Julian.
He will share with you the detailed financials for the first quarter. Julian, your turn.
Thank you, Joyce. Good evening, everyone. Over the past quarter, China's travel industry has sustained steady growth, marked by a diversification of travel demand. We have observed robust travel enthusiasm across various scenarios and have continued to enrich our products and services to satisfy travelers' evolving demand. Our profound comprehension of user needs, coupled with effective strategic execution, once again enabled us to deliver outstanding performance in this quarter. In the first quarter of 2025, we obtained outstanding results for both top line and bottom line. We reported a net revenue of RMB 4.4 billion, representing a 13.2% year-over-year increase from the same period of 2024. Thanks to our effective marketing investments and enhanced operational efficiency, we achieved a remarkable adjusted net profit of RMB 788 million, representing a 41.1% year-over-year growth. We then adjusted net margin of 18% compared with margin of 14.4% in the same period of 2024.
Our core OTA business revenue exhibited an excellent growth of 18.4% year-over-year and recorded RMB 3.8 billion, driven by growth across our accommodation reservation, transportation ticketing, and other business segments. Our transportation ticketing revenue for the first quarter was RMB 2.0 billion, representing a 15.2% increase compared with the same period of 2024. On one hand, we continue to optimize our VAS offerings to better meet the diverse needs of our users. On the other hand, we place the greater emphasis on the ROI and our sales marketing expenses to further enhance the efficiency of our user subsidy strategies. Meanwhile, our outbound business continues to deliver strong growth, now accounting for more than 5% of our total transportation ticketing revenues, making a year-over-year increase of 3 percentage points, driven by sustained demand for outbound travel.
Our accommodation reservation business achieved RMB 1.2 billion for the first quarter of 2025, representing a 23.3% increase from the same period in 2024. We continue to implement our cross-selling strategy by utilizing the vast traffic from the transportation business. In the meanwhile, we proactively explore diverse accommodation scenarios to capture emerging growth opportunities. As such, we saw robust growth in room nights sold in the past quarter. Besides, our international accommodation business also delivered stellar growth, further contributing to the overall performance of the business segment. In the first quarter of 2025, our extensive presence in China's mass market enabled us to maintain a resilient ADR. Thanks to our continued implementation of more precise and effective. 2.7% from the same period of 2024.
Excluding share-based compensation charges, service development, and administrative expenses in total, accounted for 15.8% of revenue in the first quarter, compared with 17% of revenue in the same period of 2024. Selling and marketing expenses in the first quarter of 2025 increased by 6.2% from the same period of 2024. Excluding share-based compensation charges, selling and marketing expenses accounted for 33.0% of revenue in the first quarter, compared with 35.0% of revenue in the same period of last year. As of March 31, 2025, the balance of cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash, and short-term investment was RMB 11 billion. China's travel market maintained its growth momentum in the first quarter of 2025, laying a solid foundation for the promising development of industry for the rest of this year. In April and May, travel demand continued to emerge across diverse market segments.
This trend was particularly evident during the recent Labor Day holiday, when surging travel activity underscored the enduring significance of travel in consumer priorities. Data released by governmental authorities indicated a decent year-over-year increase in the domestic tourist volume during the holiday period. Within this thriving travel landscape, we once again achieved solid growth, driven by our strategic execution and operational excellence in capitalizing on marketing opportunities. Looking ahead, we maintain a positive outlook for China's travel industry this year, as diverse travel preferences continue to materialize across various travel scenarios. With sustaining strong growth in our domestic business, we are also dedicating our efforts to expanding our outbound business to establish a stronger foothold in the global travel market. Concurrently, we will continue to delve into the industry chain to strengthen our competitive edge, with a particular focus on advancing our hotel management business as a secondary growth driver.
Given the solid business foundation we have established, we reaffirm our confidence in maintaining industry-leading positions and robust profitability. Additionally, we will continue to place greater emphasis on our ESG performance and are committed to creating more value for society and our stakeholders. With that, operators, we are ready to take questions now. Thank you.
Thank you. We will begin the question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star 11 and wait for your name to be announced. Kindly remit your questions to two questions at a time. If you have any follow-up, you may rejoin the queue. One moment for the first question. Our first question comes from Brian Gong from Citigroup. Please go ahead.
Thanks, Madam, for taking my question, and congratulations on the solid results. I have two questions. First one is, how does management think about our growth pattern of core OTA business in second, third, and fourth quarters, respectively? After May or June, our hotel takeaway space will normalize. What could be drivers for our core OTA business? The second question is for margin. From a margin perspective, the comps will normalize from second quarter onwards as well. Will our margin continue to expand ahead? If that's the case, what are drivers? Thank you.
Okay. Thank you, Brian, for the questions. For the first question, actually, I would like to address the latest performance first and then give you more color on the outlook of the rest of the year. The Chinese travel market continues to demonstrate resilience in the past few months, just like what we mentioned in our prepared remarks. According to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, tourists travel within China, and the tourism revenue increased by around 6% and 8%, respectively, year-over-year during the Labor holiday. Besides, the Ministry of Transport reported an 8% year-over-year growth in national passenger throughput. Both hotel ADR and air ticket price showed positive year-over-year growth in Labor Day holiday and also in April. Our accommodation and transportation ticketing business continues to record decent growth, with improving monetization and pricing during the Labor Day holiday and also in April.
Besides, our targeted and effective marketing initiatives allowed us to engage outbound travelers with improved efficiency, enabled us to capture market opportunities, and also strengthen our competitive position in the outbound business segment. For the rest of the year, we remain optimistic about the prospect of China's travel industry. The Chinese government has identified tourism as a vital engine for economic growth, actively supporting the sector with policies aimed at ensuring its sustainable development. Meanwhile, consumer preferences are changing, with travelers seeking more diverse and unique experiences from new destinations to specialized activities such as concerts, music festivals, and sports events, etc. This shift in consumer behavior highlights the growing importance of travel as a lifestyle choice, increasingly prioritized over traditional physical views. All of these factors represent the vast potential within China's travel industry. In the coming quarters, we will keep following our strategy to seize business opportunities.
While aiming for steady growth with healthy profitability, we will concentrate on boosting up growth by enhancing cross-sell and increasing user purchase frequency. We will also take a more disciplined approach to our sales and marketing investments, ensuring that we allocate resources efficiently and maximize returns. In terms of the growth of our accommodation segment, one thing is the takeaway still has some kind of improvement space to improve because we will execute our accurate risky sales marketing strategy to make our subsidies more accurate. Also, a good thing is that the ADR has been turning positive growth since April, and we are very optimistic to see a continuous trend of the ADR year-over-year growth in the rest of the year. I think that is the drivers for our accommodation revenue growth.
The room nights still have a high single to low double digits as well in the quarter two, and we believe this trend will be continued in the rest of 2025. For the second quarter, in terms of our margin improvement strategy, actually, one of our core competencies is our ability to operate with flexibility and efficiency. We always adjust our strategies swiftly according to evolving market dynamics. For the margin side, in the short term, we will continue to strive for market share gain, but we'll carefully monitor the ROI and our sales marketing expenses. We will continue to optimize the efficiency of both our performance-based marketing and also branding efforts based on market conditions. We will make sure every dollar we spend supports the execution of our strategy.
As such, we expect that the sales marketing expenses as a percentage of revenue will continually decrease year-over-year in the coming few quarters. Additionally, we have taken steps to enhance operational efficiency by streamlining processes and optimizing cost structures, leading to reductions in both service development and G&A expenses. Also, for our outbound business, while we remain committed to capturing opportunities by investing in service development as well as selling and marketing spendings, we will place greater emphasis on improving both marketing and operational efficiency this year. Therefore, we expect that the ROI of our outbound business investment will continue to improve, leading to profitability in the segment in 2025. As a result, with the above-mentioned efforts, we expect that the margin of our core OTA business will continually improve year-over-year in 2025, while we will maintain a decent growth on top of that, as always.
Thank you for the question. Thank you. One moment.
Thank you.
Thank you. One moment for the next question. Our next question comes from Chu Ting Wang from CICC. Please go ahead.
Thanks, Management, for taking my question. Congratulations on a strong quarter. I have two questions. The first question is about outbound business. Taking tariff impact into account, how do we forecast the growth rate of outbound business for the next quarter and the second half of the year? What is the adequate preparation of international business revenue in the total revenue in 2025? My second question is about AI and large language models. After Tongcheng launched AI agent Deep Trip in the first quarter, what have been the effects, such as whether it has brought incremental users or higher user commission rates? What new features will be introduced in the future? What are the potential collaborations with general AI agent platforms like Tencent or Yuan? Thank you.
Thank you, Chu Ting, for the questions. For the first question, it concerns outbound travel business. As I mentioned, our outbound travel segment has demonstrated remarkable growth, consistently surpassing the industry benchmarks. As I mentioned before, in the first quarter, our international room nights sales and international air ticketing volumes maintained a rapid growth momentum and increased by more than 50% and 40% year-over-year, respectively. We continue to see robust demand in key destinations, including Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, and Singapore. Building our strong and established user base, we are now proactively tapping into the growing demand for outbound travel. Our efforts are primarily centered on international air ticketing, where we implement competitive pricing strategies to build our market presence, attract new users, and deepen their connections with our platform. Currently, the revenue from our outbound air ticketing business accounts for over 5% of our total transportation ticketing revenue.
We also started to explore the opportunities of cross-selling from outbound air tickets to accommodation, so as to drive both revenue and profit growth. Now, with a deeper understanding of the preference and behavior of outbound travelers, we have optimized our resource allocation to enable more precise and efficient promotional strategies. Building on this progress, we have implemented a margin improvement program for our outbound business in 2025, focusing on marketing and promotional efforts with a stronger emphasis on ROI. We will continue to enhance our outbound travel offerings through strategic partnerships with leading global OTAs, wholesalers, airlines, and various overseas TSPs. Additionally, we will also increase our investment in research and development to improve service capabilities and provide a seamless booking experience for our outbound travelers.
Over the next two to three years, our primary focus will be on increasing business volume and strengthening our mass user base while maintaining a clear emphasis on profitability. We are confident that this segment will evolve into a key growth driver for the company and deliver higher margins compared to our domestic business in the longer term. The second question is concerning Deep Trip. We believe that Deep Trip is a cutting-edge multilingual travel planning platform designed to serve both domestic and international tourists. Currently, it's powered by our Chenxing AI and integrated with DeepSeek technology. It offers accurate, actionable, and personalized travel solutions in nine languages, including English, French, Japanese, and more. I believe Deep Trip is still in its early stage of adoption, and the current user patterns reflect the natural process of user behavior evolution.
As an advanced AI-driven travel planning tool, Deep Trip introduced innovative features that require time for the user to fully integrate into their decision-making habits. Building user trust and familiarity with AI-generated recommendations, I think it is a gradual process. Additionally, I should mention that Deep Trip is designed as a special vertical application within the travel domain rather than a standalone product that users actively seek out. Planning is a relatively low-frequency scenario, which means the focus is on embedding Deep Trip into a boarding business environment and enhancing its role as part of a seamless travel ecosystem. Recently, we've added some social features, including visualizing the itineraries so as to increase readability and shareability. We will also seek to integrate Deep Trip into the various booking scenarios to increase the effectiveness of our cross-sell strategy.
As we continue to refine the product and integrate it into more user cases, we expect adoption and engagement to grow organically over time. We will stay at the forefront of AI advancements, continuously strengthening our investments in this area, and introducing innovative user-oriented features to enhance the travel experience of our users. Thank you.
Thank you for the questions. Our next question comes from Tom Tang from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Thank you for the opportunity to ask questions and congratulations on a very strong quarter. I have two questions for the Management. The first one is on our standalone app. We just want to have an update on the current progress of the standalone app and how it has contributed to our strong performance in the quarter and probably in the future as well. The second question is that we noticed that our MTU has reached an all-time high and our output is still growing. Just wondering what has the Management done to improve the user transaction frequencies and user values for the quarter and in the future. Thank you.
Thank you for the question. In terms of our standalone apps and also how we will improve our output in the rest of this year. First, I would like to address the performance and also the future strategy of our standalone apps, how we would like to develop this business. We have been actively diversifying our traffic sources, I think, since 2023, with a strategic focus on growing our standalone apps since last year, especially the second year of 2024. Our app users tend to have higher purchase frequency and spending, making them a valuable segment. Given the distinct user behaviors between Wixin platform and our standalone app-based platforms, there is a very minimal overlap between the two user bases. The good news is that developing our app channel enables us to attract purely new incremental users rather than simply shifting existing ones.
In recent quarters, we have expanded collaborations with leading handset vendors to install our app on selected new device models. We also have seen a steady increase in activation rates and encouraging conversions of our new users into paying customers in the first half of this year. Additionally, we have intensified our efforts to acquire users through app store promotions and social sharing initiatives. Besides, we continue to strengthen brand promotion and marketing efforts to enhance user engagement and loyalty. Through innovative campaigns and tailored offerings, we have successfully attracted substantial numbers of young users. As a result, the DAU of our standalone app in quarter one increased by more than 60% year-over-year. Moreover, our app achieved a significant milestone during the Labor Day holiday, with DAU surpassing 4 million on average, marking yet another, I think, important milestone in our growth journey.
To support this expansion, we have strategically allocated our sales marketing budget to prioritize user acquisition for our standalone app while keeping overall sales marketing expenses relatively stable. Although user acquisition costs for app are higher than that for Wixin with longer payback periods, we believe that higher ROI and stronger user loyalty will drive long-term returns. For the revenue from our own app now contributed for around 7% of our core OTA revenue already. We remain committed to the strategy and expected revenue contribution for our app to continue growing in the rest of this year. Also, for our boarding, that is a very successful strategy since the second half of last year. The app improvement actually drives a lot of contributions for our total revenue growth of the company.
The ongoing focus is to continue enhancing our user value rather than solely expanding user volume because we have already established a very huge user base, as we always hope. We will emphasize enhancing user engagement and increasing ROI through various methods. For example, we will refine our recommendation algorithms and use tailored promotion to encourage cross-selling within different business segments, aiming to increase revenue per transaction and take an overall pay grade. We will continue to strengthen our outbound and international business, capitalizing on the growing demand for overseas travel. This approach will help drive further improvements in our ROI. Also, we will continue to promote our VAS products and services that cater to our users' travel needs. For example, we will further optimize our intelligent travel solution quitting system so as to improve our monetization.
Moreover, we will continue to introduce innovative products and services across all different scenarios to improve user satisfaction. We will continue to expand our product and service offerings on our platform so as to enhance user purchase frequency and user value on our platform. Lastly, we will leverage new technologies, just like Joyce mentioned, our priorities, tourism-specific AI, Chenxing, to enhance user experience. This will drive higher user engagement and also encourage repeat transactions, ultimately boosting our ROI in the future. Thank you for the question.
Thank you for the question. One moment for the next question. Your next question comes from Wei xiong of UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good evening, Management. Thank you for taking my questions. Firstly, I want to get your thoughts on how the macro uncertainties, given the tariff tension, the continued recovery of economics, etc., will impact the sustainability of travel demand in the second half of this year. Are we seeing any changes in travel spending or travel patterns so far? Second, given our recently announced acquisition of Wanda Hotel Management business, could you please elaborate your thoughts on the rationale behind the move and how do we plan to drive synergies with our core OTA platform and also our strategic planning and resource allocation for hotel business longer term? Thank you.
Thank you for the question. For the first question, I think we have addressed a lot in previous of this conference. Although the macro has some kind of uncertainty for the whole domestic market, for industry markets, we do not see any drop or any uncertainty in this segment. Just as we talked a lot of times, we find consumer behavior changed since 2023 and after the COVID. They sweep the consumption power from the traditional physical goods to the experiential consumption. Actually, we find a lot of additional consumption power released in our industry. That is why we say that we are very optimistic of the growth for the whole industry, travel industry, for this quarter and the rest of this year. Also, since April, I think there are a lot of signals to show the encouraging of this industry growth.
For example, the ADR, the ADR have a job in the past year in 2024 because we have a high base in 2023. Since this quarter, the quarter two, we see a clear signal that the ADR has already turned positive. Also, for the APP, it's also turned positive in Labor Holiday in the future. We think the users would like to pay more for the hotels and also for the air tickets and train tickets. The users would like to pay more for the high-quality accommodations as well. In terms of the Wan W, I think Joyce will give you more color on this question.
Thank you, for the question. As we have mentioned a lot of times before, we think that the hotel chain management market is huge in China, given the low hotel churn rate when compared with the regional markets. That is why we are very optimistic about the long-term prospects of the hotel management business. We have been focusing on scaling our hotel management business for the past three to four years. Now we have over 2,500 hotels in operation. Now we have a platform which does not only include 12 major hotel brands, but also has various travel services such as PMS companies, etc. With the investments in hotel chain companies, we believe we can better utilize our membership program for higher stickiness and retention. Meanwhile, we also share the benefits with the hotels and offer secure service to our users.
Besides, hotel chain is a very important offline user acquisition channel for the company to accelerate online penetration in low-tier cities. In terms of this acquisition, Wanda Hotel Management, it has a comprehensive portfolio of luxury and high-end hotel brands with a strong market influence and significant brand value, especially in tier two or below cities. It has an extensive network of nine major hotel brands across China. The addition of this brand will further enhance our portfolio and secure forecasts in the luxury and high-end hotel market, which has traditionally been dominated by international players. Besides, it has a management team with extensive industry experience and has already built a well-established talent pool. Through this acquisition, we will also gain access to valuable operation talents and expertise.
Comparing to building a high-end hotel brand from scratch, which requires significant investment in capital, mental work, and time, and comes with huge uncertainty, we believe acquiring a merchant brand is an optimal choice for us at this stage. As one of the leading OTA platforms in China, we have extensive user coverage and deep insights about users and industry. This advantage can be leveraged to support the targeted companies, improving marketing and user acquisition efficiency. Moreover, our existing technology of capabilities in hotel management can further enhance through opening efficiency and accelerate the expansion of targeted companies. In addition, the existing membership program of targeted companies demonstrates strong customer loyalty. This membership program can be seamlessly integrated with Tongchuan Yilong Hotel's existing membership systems, unlocking substantial value. Last but not least, from a financial perspective, targeted company has strong profitability.
Its consolidation to the company's financial statements will also enhance overall profitability of our business. Thank you.
Thank you for the questions. There are no more questions from the line. I'd like to hand the call back to Kylie for closing remarks.
Thank you. We are closing the call now. If you wish to check out our presentation and other financial information, please visit the IR section of our company website. Thank you and see you next quarter.
That concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your line.