Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Meituan Q3 2021 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, you may press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Ms. Scarlett Xu. Thank you. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. Good evening and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Our Q3 2021 Earnings Conference Call. Joining us today are Mr. Xing Wang, Chairman and CEO, and Mr. Shaohui Chen, Vice President and CFO of Meituan. For today's call, management will first provide a review of our Q3 2021 results and then conduct a Q&A session. Before we start, we would like to remind you that our presentation contains forward-looking statements, which include a number of risks and uncertainties and may differ from actual results in future.
This presentation is based on our management accounts, which have not been audited or reviewed by our auditor. This presentation also contains unaudited non-IFRS financial measures that should be considered in addition to, and not as a substitute for, measures of the Company's financial performance prepared in accordance with IFRS. For a detailed discussion of risk factors and non-IFRS measures, please refer to the disclosure documents in IR section of our website. Now I will turn the call over to Mr. Xing Wang. Please go ahead, Xing.
Thank you, Scarlett, and hello everyone. Welcome to Meituan's Q3 2021 Earnings Call. For the Q3 of 2021, our total revenue increased by 37.9% year-over-year to RMB 48.8 billion. Adjusted EBITDA and adjusted net loss were negative RMB 4.1 billion and RMB 5.5 billion respectively in 2021 Q3. We further enable our small and medium merchants and supply chain partners to improve their digital and online operations while also providing consumers with convenient, high quality and value for money, goods and services. We continue to achieve healthy growth in annual transacting users and annual active merchants, reaching RMB 667.5 million and RMB 8.3 million respectively in Q3.
Transaction frequency also grew to 34.4x for the past twelve months versus 26.8x during the same period last year. Moreover, during and after the Henan flood, we collaborated with the authorities to help affected merchants resume normal operations and help people in need through our various business lines, in addition to helping them rebuild their businesses to the extent we could. We hope to generate more social value in the various business we do for the greater community, supporting our mission, we help people eat better and live better. First on our Food Delivery, our business was resilient despite the spread of the Delta variant and impacts of extreme weather. In Q3, our total Food Delivery orders grew by around 25% year-over-year, while achieving a daily record of over 50 million orders in early August.
We are happy to see that our annual active merchants reached new highs of 4.1 million in Q3 for our Food Delivery business. More merchants came to realize the importance of running online and digital operations, and we are glad that they consider Meituan their trusted partner to increase online revenues. We designed multiple ways to improve merchant operational efficiency. For example, our Food Delivery manager program, also known as WaiMai Fu Wu Guan Jia, now operates in over 30 cities and serves more than 20,000 merchants in areas including store back-end marketing, event organization, and operational analysis. These merchants saw a meaningful increase in GTVs post-training. For new merchants on our platform, we provided tailored training and introductory programs to help them adapt to online delivery quicker and better understand their consumers.
In addition, hardware upgrades and digital toolkits were rolled out in August and helped the merchant address issues encountered in the ordering process. In Q3, transaction frequency and user stickiness improved as we brought greater diversity and higher quality categories and consumption scenarios to our platform to better address the evolving consumer taste buds and culinary preferences. Late night snacks were popular during the summer, and special promotions from quality merchants were provided to consumers in over 15 cities for this category. An interesting example is that spicy crayfish dish was so hot that close to 300,000 merchants now offer this SKU. The milk tea category also saw explosive growth into autumn. We collaborated with over 40 milk tea brands and over 5,000 stores to help them synchronize online and offline marketing to boost the consumption in this category.
gAlongside our first cup of milk tea in autumn promotions in early August, daily orders for this category alone exceeded 12 million orders on that day, setting a new record. In Q3 overall, afternoon teas and late night snacks categories both achieved around 30% two-year CAGR in order volume, with the drink subcategory alone achieving over 70% CAGR. On the delivery side, we were focused on providing more support and care for our couriers in Q3. We hosted more than 110 courier feedback panel sessions across days as of Q3 and improved their welfare with a more curated feedback by different channels and from different directions.
In Q3, we experimented changing the estimated delivery time for each order from a specific point of time to an extended time period in complicated situations such as long distance orders or in case of heavy order volumes, managing consumer expectation reasonably while alleviating the time pressure for couriers. We have also been upgrading our order dispatch system to reflect courier feedback and to ensure a smoother experience for both couriers, merchants, and consumers. For Food Delivery orders, consumers wish to receive orders in a timely manner. Merchants hope to pass orders to couriers as soon as meals are cooked, and couriers hope to pick up orders efficiently along the way. Our upgrades to the order dispatch system focused on meeting these needs.
First, we adjusted the pickup process for some piloted restaurants, whereby couriers are assigned and notified to pick up orders only after meals are ready, and the use of a new merchant device called a smart kitchen in order to relieve the pressure on both couriers and restaurants. Also, in times of unexpected situations, couriers can report to their station manager through the app to handle and redispatch orders to others. Most importantly, our system had prioritized courier safety to ensure they are not tasked with orders that they cannot handle. While we have made progress here, we are mindful of the fact that the order dispatch system is complex and have many important variables. We will continue to explore and improve the system, and the people are the most critical considerations of our operations.
We will also make the algorithms and the systems more transparent, taking in feedbacks from different parties to iterate our process and promote healthy industry development. Now moving to our second segment. Despite the impact from Delta variant and macro consumption environment, our In-store, Hotel and Travel segment posted strong growth in Q3. Transaction volumes, GTV and annual active merchants continued to reach new highs for both In-store dining and other In-store services. In-store dining GTV achieved a two-year CAGR of over 30% in Q3, despite a significant growth slowdown in August as a result of Delta variant control. On one hand, accelerating the digital transformation is an inevitable trend on the supply side, and we continue to build up our merchant service capabilities catered to different restaurant merchant groups.
We provided more diversified solutions and brought quality traffic to restaurant merchants in an ever more competitive restaurant market. Merchant penetration also rose as we expanded coverage of our wider merchant base, including chain and upscale restaurants. On the other hand, as consumer demand evolves, so do our strategies toward different culinary categories. During the holidays, we brought more light meal restaurants online, and during Chinese Valentine's Day, Qixi, our marketing events were effective in encouraging further consumption, with GTV and transaction volume reaching new daily records. Booking restaurants ahead of time on our platform was also being established as a habit for consumers, with the highest spending per meal during the holiday. Transaction frequency and user stickiness improved as we provide better services and more desirable supplies. Other In-store services GTV achieved 38% two-year CAGR in Q3.
As the merchant and category offerings widened to meet the higher consumer demand for personalized and quality consumption scenario. We also designed more customized services and products targeting different type of merchants. New consumption trends in healthcare and pet-related services, parent-child happiness, leisure, and entertainment, more exhibited a strong momentum. In lower tier markets, we increased coverage and accelerated the supply side digital transformation, leading to higher overall merchant base in the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day. We innovated products with cross-platform promotions that drove In-store category and GTV increase. Hotel booking business was heavily affected by the Delta variant and cross-provincial travel restrictions. The national travel and tourism revenue in Q3, less than 60% of the same year in 2019 for the whole industry. Still, our domestic room nights in Q3 grew positively relative to the same period in 2019 and 2020.
Growth of local leisure and short-haul travel was stronger than that of long-haul and business travel. Our established strength and consumer mindshare in local Hotel booking services allowed us to remain versatile in the challenging environment. On the high star segment, more high star hotels were onboarded with more competitive pricing and better customer service. Domestic room night contribution from high star hotels was maintained above 16%. By our Hotel Plus X strategy, we worked with more high star hotel brands. Collaboration with brands such as Shangri-La and Disney, while live streaming and working closely with the Universal Studios Grand Hotel on its grand opening, were just a few examples. Now let's move to the third segment, New Initiatives and Others. Our focus is on the retail business to provide greater convenience and variety for our consumers in different consumption scenarios.
In Q3, for Meituan Select, our community e-commerce business, we complied with new regulatory guidelines that ensure reasonable product pricing as we continue to pursue quality growth, elevated consumer experience, and build our long-term capabilities. In response to consumer needs, we increased SKU varieties and offered a wider array of categories. Our investments in cold chain logistics also allowed us to deliver fresh produce and frozen goods on time with a stable quality. Through careful, tailored, and targeted strategies at different nodes of the operations, our operational efficiency increased, and our unit economics also improved. In the future, we will persistently improve supply capacities and product quality, while continuing to explore different venture-aided and innovative warehousing and logistics solutions. Moreover, in the spirit of rural revitalization, Meituan Select collaborated with numerous provincial authorities in Q3 to open up green distribution channels for various farmers to sell their produce.
In September, we launched an agricultural festive month to assist over 400 agricultural producers increase sales and build unique local brands. Many employment opportunities are created in rural areas throughout the Meituan Select value chain, including new farmer merchants, rural e-commerce leaders, and group leaders. We rolled out specific and well-rounded training program for online marketing and digital operation to support the development of new talents in rural areas in six provinces already. This free training program aimed to help hundreds of thousands of farmer merchants and rural e-commerce leaders in over 160 less developed counties over the next three years. Meituan Grocery, our self-operated on-demand grocery model, completed the tier one market coverage, achieving further user growth.
In Q3, GTV increased by over 160%, and quarterly transacting users increased by over 100% year-over-year. Operating efficiency improved with our growing scale as we modified the warehouse operations and increased the logistical efficiency, putting more emphasis on aligning our strategies around products, consumers, warehousing, and logistics continued to iterate. Consumer experiences were enhanced as we further shortened the delivery time and provided wider SKU selections with a more diverse fresh produce and FMCG offerings. A key component of our on-demand business, Meituan Instashopping, demonstrated a strong business momentum in Q3. We believe that the online retail business will evolve from an everything store to everything now. On-demand retail supplements around the traditional retail markets, identifying changing consumer needs, but also accelerating supply chain innovation and online transformations.
Leveraging our on-demand delivery network and our comprehensive online tools for merchants, Meituan Instashopping provides consumer goods across a broad spectrum of categories, time areas, and consumption scenarios through marketplace model. In Q3, Meituan Instashopping achieved a strong growth on different metrics, with the GTV growing by over 100% year-over-year. We launched promotions on various holidays and festivals in Q3, such as the Chinese Valentine's Day and Mid-Autumn festivals, to effectively cultivate consumer habits and capture mindshare. During Chinese Valentine's Day, popular product categories expanded from flowers to gifts such as beauty and 3C consumer electronics, with peak daily orders exceeding 60.5 million. On the merchant side, we allocated more resources and deepened the collaborations with high-quality merchants, such as supermarkets, accelerating the online transformation of offline retailers.
GTV from supermarkets grew by over 140% year-over-year in Q3. In the medicines vertical, in addition to launching the 24/7 medicine delivery service last quarter, we also deepened our cooperation with offline pharmacies, not only to help them digitize operations, but also worked with several partners in launching the 24/7 smart pharmacies. We believe Meituan Instashopping will continue to strengthen its consumer mindshare and achieve a rapid growth. We will leverage our store marketing, delivery, and technological capabilities to serve brands and merchants holistically, connecting users with the merchant while creating more values.
gWe are delighted to see that the above retail businesses achieved a notable progress in Q3. Over the years, we have helped millions of merchants to digitize their operations and build our own on-demand delivery network, bringing convenient Food Delivery services to hundreds of millions of consumers. Now we leverage our on-demand delivery network and digital operational capabilities to deliver more categories of goods to everyone's doorstep via Meituan Instashopping and Meituan Grocery. We also have pre-order and self-pickup model for next day delivery via Meituan Select, serving mass and lower tier markets with diverse quality and value for money products. By different retail models, Meituan understands the needs of different consumer types in different consumption scenarios. More importantly, we will actively help strengthen different nodes of the value chain and accelerate retail industry digital transformation.
We are committed to the development of our retail businesses, and we'll continue to leverage technology to accelerate the merchant digital transformation and enhance the efficiency in distribution and logistics. Finally, we received the final decision on the antitrust penalty from the SAMR in October. We sincerely accept the penalty and will strictly ensure compliance practices. We will keep compliance as our priority, operate our business in compliance, actively contribute to fair competition in the market to build our social responsibility, and most importantly, contribute to the higher quality development of the national economy and society.
The penalty reminds us our responsibility to society, encouraging us to be more creative and to foster better social values. To bear our social responsibility in mind, further contribute to the high quality growth of the national economy. Do our best to contribute to the development of the greater society and support the objective of common prosperity through carrying out our mission to help people eat better, live better. With that, I will turn the call over to Shaohui for an update on our latest financial results.
Thank you, Xing. Hello, everyone. I will now go through our Q3 financial results. In the Q3, our total revenue reached RMB 48.8 billion, increasing by 37.9% year-over-year. Both our Food Delivery business and our In-store, Hotel and Travel business segment achieved resilient growth even in the resurgence of COVID cases, regional flooding disruptions and macro environment. Our New Initiative segment also continue its very fast-growing momentum. Our ongoing investment in New Initiatives, particularly in our retail business, drove the increase in cost of revenue. As a percentage of total revenue, cost of revenue increased on both a year-over-year basis and on a sequential basis to 77.9%. The growth from prior quarter was also driven by increased incentives for couriers working under extreme weather conditions and in a pandemic environment.
Selling and marketing expenses as a percentage of total revenue was 23.3% this quarter, up from 16.5% in the prior year period, but down from 24.8% in the previous quarter. The year-over-year increase was primarily due to increased promotion, advertising and user incentives for business expansion and promotional campaigns. In addition, the increased number of employees owing to our business expansion resulted in an increase in employee benefit expenses. The sequential decline was mainly driven by our improved marketing efficiency. R&D expenses as a percentage of total revenue increased to 9.7%, up from 8.4% in the prior year period and 8.9% in the previous quarter.
Our G&A expenses as a percentage of total revenue increased to 4.9% from 4% in the prior year period and 4.7% during the previous quarter. Both increases were primarily due to the increased number of employees resulting from our business expansion. Our first two business segments, Food Delivery and In-store, Hotel and Travel segment, achieved solid growth with growing engagement of our consumers and merchants, realizing an aggregate operating profit of RMB 4.7 billion, increasing from RMB 3.6 billion in the prior year. Nevertheless, we recorded a total operating loss of RMB 10.1 billion this quarter, primarily due to the RMB 3.4 billion fine imposed pursuant to China's Anti-Monopoly Law and the rapid expansion of our new business, particularly our retail businesses.
On a consolidated basis, both Adjusted EBITDA and adjusted net loss experienced negative year-over-year growth for this quarter, decreasing to negative RMB 4.1 billion and RMB 5.1 billion respectively. Now let's move on to our segment reporting. Starting with Food Delivery. Although we face the resurgence of COVID cases, regional flooding disruption and the overall slowing down of the catering industry, we see both quarterly transacting user scale and their purchase frequency were further stimulated by the expansion in high quality supply on our platform, by our optimized operation for delivering different consumption scenarios and an effective Food Delivery membership program. As such, the daily average number of Food Delivery transactions increased by 25% year-over-year, even on a very high base from last year. Meanwhile, with more restaurants embracing digitization, online marketing demand remains strong on our platform.
The expansion of our advertising merchant base and increasing merchant budgets for online marketing drove the steady growth of online marketing revenue on both a year-over-year and sequential basis. Monetization rate was 13.4% this quarter. A slight 0.1 percentage point sequential improvement was mainly due to the higher contribution from advertising revenue, while the decrease of 0.2 percentage points on a year-over-year basis mainly resulted from a higher user incentive ratio and a higher portion of incentives in net total revenue this quarter. Total Food Delivery revenue was RMB 26.5 billion in this quarter, representing a year-over-year increase of 28%. On the cost side, delivery cost per order was slightly lower as compared to the same period last year.
Increased on a sequential basis due to the increase in incentives paid to delivery couriers or working during summer season, the pandemic situation, and extreme weather. Operating profit increased by 14% to RMB 876 million, while our operating margin decreased by 0.4 percentage points to 3.3% from 3.7% on a year-over-year basis, mainly due to higher incentives and spending on brand marketing. Also a decrease in operating profit and operating margin on a sequential basis was primarily attributable to higher incentives for delivery couriers due to seasonality. Now turning to our second segment, In-store, Hotel and Travel. This segment's quarterly revenue grew by 33% year-over-year, despite the negative impacts of the spread of the Delta variant and heavy flooding impacting local consumption, especially consumption of Travel and Hotel booking.
We are the go-to platform for consumers exploring cost-effective and diverse services, while also serving as an important channel for local service merchants to attract users and increase revenue. Both our In-store dining and other local services demonstrate strong resilience, as evidenced by the more than 40% year-over-year growth of our In-store GTV and revenue. Meanwhile, we further deepen our merchant penetration this quarter. As we maintain the variety and quality of supplies on our platform, we are able to satisfy diverse online and offline operational needs of merchants by further diversifying and customizing transaction-based products for different service categories. In addition, we continue capturing user mindshare through marketing events. As a result, year-over-year growth of our In-store segment commission-based revenue exceeded 40% during this quarter.
Our advertising revenue also achieved commendable growth, driven by higher adoption rate of advertising products by merchants and their increasing budgets allocated for online marketing. In addition, the Mid-Autumn Festival also stimulated merchant demand for marketing. The production rate of our subscription-based services further increased during this quarter, with CPC advertising revenue increasing by over 50% year-over-year. With respect to our Hotel business, the Q3 is usually the peak season for travel. However, Delta variant cases in China during the Q3 were headwind for the domestic Travel and Hotel booking industry. Even in the face of these short-term challenges, we still achieved positive year-over-year growth of about 5% in domestic room nights. Over the long term, we deeply believe that the Hotel booking business has strong potential for sustainable growth and scalable monetization.
Operating profit and operating margin for our In-store, Hotel and Travel business increased to RMB 3.8 billion and 43.9%, respectively, during this quarter. Both the sequential and year-over-year increase were mainly attributable to our In-store business, which has a much higher operating margin than our Hotel and Travel business, and contribute a higher portion of this segment's revenue this quarter. Let's now turn to our third segment, New Initiative and Others. During this period, revenue in this segment increased by 66.7% year-over-year to RMB 13.7 billion, driven by the continued development of our New Initiatives to satisfy growing consumer needs. The increase in revenue mainly come from our retail business.
Operating loss for this segment expanded to negative RMB 10.9 billion during this quarter, from negative RMB 9.2 billion during the previous quarter, while operating margin decreased by about 2.7 percentage points quarter-over-quarter to negative 79.5%. Our retail business remained a key area for our investment. Our community e-commerce business delivered solid growth in both GTV and sales volume on a sequential basis, despite tightened regulations. Although we made investments in further enhancing our supply chain and fulfillment capabilities, our operating loss only widened slightly on a sequential basis. As a result, operating loss as a percentage of total GTV also narrowed on a sequential basis, implying our continuing improvement in operating efficiency.
For Meituan Grocery, as we further optimize our fulfillment system and labor efficiency, operating margin remained stable as compared to the previous quarter, given the launch of new warehouses. In addition, in this quarter, we also increased our R&D spending for advanced technology such as autonomous vehicles, drones and mapping technology, which caused our operating loss to expand on a sequential basis. Now, turning to our cash position. As of September 30, 2021, our cash equivalents and short-term investments total RMB 120.9 billion. Additionally, our net cash flow from operating activities turned into an outflow of RMB 4 billion during the Q3 of 2021 from an inflow of RMB 3.3 billion for the same period of 2020.
This was primarily attributable to losses resulting from our continued investment in retail business. For my closing remarks, I would like to highlight two points. The national economy has entered into a new phase in which high quality development will be prioritized. In addition, pandemic prevention measures are being normalized. Against this backdrop, we will continue to promote digitization transformation and further integrate technology into every aspect of our business segment so that we can leverage technology to power high quality growth. We will continue to provide firm support for the digitization transformation or the digital transformation of merchants, especially the integration of local service industries online and offline operations. In return, the improved variety and quality of supply on our platform will help us better meet consumers and their growing demand. We will also sustain our focus on retail business.
We will construct the core capabilities of our retail business with a long-term perspective, while maintaining a flexible and sustainable investment pace. We will continue to actively follow regulatory requirements to ensure our healthy, sustainable, and compliant growth and development. We remain optimistic for our business in terms of long-term development. We adhere to the integration of creating both economic and social value by providing extra services to our partners in this process. With that, we are now open for Q&A.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one on your telephone. To cancel a request, you may press the pound or hash key. The first question comes from the line of Ronald Keung from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Thank you, Xing Wang, Shaohui Chen, Scarlett Xu, and team. My question would be on recent strategy. We noticed that you have recently upgraded strategy from what we used to call Food Plus Platform, and we read about it now upgraded to Retail Plus Technology. Could you share with us the rationale and thinking? In addition, how should we understand the significance of your recent organizational restructuring that we read about? Thank you.
Okay. Thank you, Ronald. Yes, we recently upgrade our strategy from Food Plus Platform to Retail Plus Technology. Well, first of all, we are extending from food to retail. Many people see retail as it is in a narrower sense, which is selling goods to consumers as a 2C concept. However, we see retail as a much broader concept. Actually, that's the original definition of retail. That's to sell goods or services to end customers. I think retail can be classified into wholesale retail and services retail. The end customer can include both consumers and businesses, especially including small and medium-sized merchants. In this sense, we at Meituan have been in the retail business since day one.
Look at it this way. We started with services retail through the original group purchase business back in the beginning of 2010. We then gradually expanded into the wholesale retail by first providing restaurant food for consumers through on-demand delivery, our on-demand Food Delivery business. In recent years, we have expanded our categories of goods from just restaurant food to other categories through different business models. For example, we expanded from restaurant food to flowers to medicines to a lot of goods categories. We have Meituan Instashopping, that's our marketplace model. We also have Meituan Grocery, and that's our first-party retailing model. We also have the pre-order and self-pickup model for next day delivery via our Meituan Select business.
These businesses enable us to satisfy the diverse needs of different consumers in different scenarios across different markets. The retail will be our focus to remain as the main area where we will build our fundamental capabilities in future. Please understand retail in a broader sense as to sell goods or services to end customers. Second, we have upgraded from platform to technology. When we talked about platform in the past, we were usually referring to the mobile internet platform. Meituan started as a company from first launching a website and then launching a mobile app. Our mission is to help people eat better, sleep better, and we can achieve that through the power of technology. Through technology, we help accelerate supply-side digital transformation, especially for millions of small- to medium-sized restaurant and local services merchants.
This also led to the increase in users and the retention on our platform. We have built up the world's largest on-demand delivery network through persistent investment in technology over the years. We are leveraging on the on-demand delivery network to deliver almost everything to consumer's doorstep in 30 minutes. Meanwhile, we have invested heavily in relevant hardware, equipment and in research and development, particularly around autonomous delivery. Our R&D expenditure increased 58.8% year-over-year in Q3. We have also made equity investments in many related cutting-edge technology fields. Tech is critical in satisfying consumers' needs and driving company and industry growth for the betterment of our greater society. As a technology developers, we believe it will encompass the broader concept of automation, robotics, renewable energy, IoT, sometimes IoT tech and more.
As we expanded from food to retail, we need to invest into technology, deepening goods distribution and enabling digital transformation across a wider range of merchants throughout the entire logistic process, especially in less developed markets. The continuous development and application of these technologies will change everyone's lives for the better in many different ways, while importantly also helping us to better fulfill our mission. Recently, there was a reorganization at Meituan around our upgraded strategy. Food retail is an area where we expect to see major development in future.
We established a dedicated senior team as the brain to execute our food retail strategy and to enhance our organizational capabilities. The adjustments will encourage more synergies and integrations of resources across different business lines, which is critical to build the holistic fundamental retail business capability for the long run. Last but not the least, I would like to emphasize that no matter how our strategy evolves, our mission remains unchanged. To help people eat better, live better. To achieve this, it requires continuous effort and commitment. We will abide by our mission and hope to create greater social value for the greater community while generating business values. Thank you.
Wonderful. Thank you, Xing Wang.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Thomas Chong from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good evening. Thanks management for taking my questions. I noticed that for the Food Delivery business, the Food Delivery order volume year-on-year growth decelerate in Q3 versus the Q2. May I know the reason for that? Has it been impacted by the recent slowdown in the consumption? How should we expect the top line growth rate in coming quarters given the current macro environment? Thank you.
Thank you for the question. Yes, we can see that the Food Delivery order volume growth decelerate in Q3 versus Q2. Actually, if you compare to Q1, it's a further decelerating trend. There are several reason on this. The first, I think, it's easy to understand that due to you know the pandemic pace and control, they all have you know been volatile phases that we are facing from last year. In Q3, we have a much higher pace given that the Food Delivery consumption recovered during Q3 last year. On year-over-year basis, you will see a much lower growth rate.
Second, it was also due to the resurgence of COVID cases in the nation. We have seen the regional flooding disruption during Q3. Since late July, several regions, including Henan Province, were impacted by floods, which led to a sharp drop in Food Delivery order volume in those regions. In August, numerous cities had a resurgence of COVID cases. There have been very strict controls in these regions. I think I need to explain because sometimes, unintentionally, you may feel that, even under, you know, a highly controlled environment, the delivery should be still growing or even people should be expected to order more because they cannot go out.
In reality, when the COVID cases happen, when we have, you know, very strong strict control, we have seen some very important Food Delivery consumption areas will be heavily impacted. For example, in-person travel areas, even, you know, some office areas in which we may have some regulation that, you know, people need to stay home, you know, go to office. Those are all very, you know, usually very important consumption scenarios for our Food Delivery. Food Delivery actually could be heavily affected by these cases. We have seen these overall cases have negative impact.
Finally, on the macro level, as you mentioned, the year-over-year growth of national catering industry decelerate also in decelerate to about 4% in Q3. If we look at the two-year figure, it's actually a negative 1%. There's a deceleration growth of the catering industry also affect the Food Delivery industry. If we're looking forward, we expect that the growth of the catering industry could be, you know, continue decelerating over the next few quarters on the back of the current macro consumption environment. We expect that price-sensitive consumers will likely to have weaker demand for delivery under this environment.
Meanwhile, we have also continued to see in Q4 the COVID cases continue to happen in winter, which will likely further dampen the demand for Food Delivery, In-store, Travel and Other scenarios. As a result, we expect to see meaningful negative impact on order volume in Q4 and potentially in the first few quarters of next year. It's worth noting that Food Delivery order volume as a normalcy usually will fall in Q4 compared to Q3 and also fall in Q1, Q2. Q1's usually a very low season in terms of order volume. Also, Q4 last year was a high base.
Relatively speaking, Food Delivery should be expected to see, you know, relatively low growth rate compared to earlier quarters of this year. However, I want to share our long-term view on Food Delivery. Food Delivery business is still, I think, a very promising business in China. We have also seen it continue to show resilient growth compared to other consumption categories with order volume growing at 25% year-over-year. Actually in Q3, we have seen some big numbers such as Food Delivery daily order peak volume reached 50 million in August. While meal kits subcategory alone reached 12 million order peak volume.
We believe that by putting more effort into expanding high quality supplies, optimizing operation for different product category and different scenarios, and acquiring accurate insight into consumers needs, we are able to more efficiently meet the diverse needs of consumers and to improve their consumer transaction frequency and stickiness. Our average monthly Food Delivery membership subscribers also hit a new record this quarter, reaching over 60 million. In summary, our long-term view on Food Delivery remain unchanged. We continue to target 100 million orders a day and continue to see Food Delivery as a long-term growth for the company. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Alicia Yap from Citigroup. Please go ahead.
Hi, good evening management. Thanks for taking my question. Could you share with us the impact from the recent SAMR administrative guidance on your Food Delivery business? How are you adjusting your operation to satisfy these requirements? And also, how will this impact your financial performance and also the cash flow? Do you expect a similar antitrust state pressure on your other business? Thank you.
Thank you, Alicia. The enforcement and supervision on the Food Delivery industry from SAMR encourages a healthy and orderly industry development. We are fully supportive because we believe we can have better operations in a fair competitive environment. We fully respect merchants' choices. From the beginning of this year, we prohibited any exclusive partnerships. In Q2, we rolled out a new tiered pricing mechanism to promote a more transparent pricing and clearer cost structures for merchants. In the past few quarters, we continue to improve our couriers welfare and benefits. Our Food Delivery business maintained industry-leading business growth and consumer experience. In the past few months, we actively implemented various compliance requirements that improved our internal control mechanism. We conducted in-depth self-reviews and proactively rectified any issues to ensure full compliance. We set up a compliance rectification working group headed directly by me.
To formulate rectification plans according to the particular requirements of SAMR and the ministry guidelines. We have also founded six special teams to oversee antitrust compliance, couriers rights, data compliance, platform governance, effect reporting and compliant culture development effectively. On competition and its compliance, we improved our system and control of authorizations, as well as provided more legal and compliance training. We prohibited any use of exclusive partnership and are firmly against it. Going forward, we will pay more attention to service quality and technology innovation. We shall also work more closely with the merchants to jointly provide quality services to our consumers and forge win-win cooperation with the merchants.
With regard to other aspects such as the Food Delivery courier welfare, data security, et cetera, we have improved our internal control mechanism and formulated a series of measures to protect the legitimate rights and interest of our merchants, consumers, and couriers in accordance with the relevant laws, regulations, and policies. We have conducted checks on antitrust risk for all of our businesses. Going forward, we will continue to conduct in-depth self-inspection according to the administrative guidance.
All of our new business decisions are required to pass antitrust assessments, and we will insist on strict antitrust compliance for all of our operations. On the financial impact, total fine by SAMR was RMB 3.4 billion and are accounted in other losses net for this quarter. We have excluded the financial impact of the fines in our non-IFRS disclosure. In addition, we have refunded the exclusive partnership deposits to merchants, which has a limited impact on our balance sheet and does not impact our income statement. That's all. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Ya Jiang from CITIC. Please go ahead.
Thanks. My question is regarding Meituan Instashopping business. What do you think of the long-term prospect for this business and how should we expect its profitability level? Also I noticed that other players have recently upgraded the strategy on this vertical. How do we see our competitive advantages and future strategy? Thank you.
Thank you for the question. A few factors drive the consumers' needs for on-demand delivery, such as digitization, urbanization, and the wider reach of on-demand delivery network. Actually, I think the Food Delivery with its 30-minute delivery services have educated Chinese consumer of this very efficient and convenient lifestyle. We believe going forward, consumption habits may gradually shift towards on-demand retail. The retail trend may evolve from everything store to everything now. We hope Meituan could be an everything now brand. We will develop both the supply and demand sides to help us achieve this goal. On the supply side, given the more moderate offline retail growth, more and more brands across different categories and more offline retailers start to embrace the on-demand retail distributions. We also see new brands created, vetted at the on-demand network.
We hope to help with more and more brands and retailers digitize their business and operate more efficiently on our platform. We will launch more projects, for example, assisting 100 brands to realize more than RMB 1 billion GTV in the next five years. Collaborating with 10,000 supermarkets in 100 cities to operate digitally. On the demand side, we are delighted to see the stronger consumer mindshare for on-demand retail. As product category expanded from fresh produce to flowers, medicine, snacks, electric, electronic products, pet products, and more.
Consumption scenarios also widened from addressing urgent needs to more regular routine purchase. As product categories continue to diversify, we think that in the long term, most of our Food Delivery users will be able to converted into Meituan Instashopping users. Our Food Delivery business have proved the profitability capability. Meituan Instashopping, natural extension of our on-demand delivery services from food to other categories, has the potential to achieve higher AOV.
We also think it has good advertising potential for monetization. Hence, we are very confident about Meituan Instashopping's unique economic potential in the long term. Similar to our Food Delivery strategy, we believe quality growth on scale is more important than profitability in the short term for Meituan Instashopping. We will continue to develop structurally important categories to drive the long-term industry growth. On competition, we do notice that more players are joining into the on-demand retailing, which we think is a good thing. It's demonstrating the potential of this industry. We think the, you know, investment by different players together will reinforce their long-term potential of this market. We are very confident on Meituan's advantages.
First, we have built one of the largest, you know, on-demand delivery network and established very strong consumer mind share for quick on-demand delivery services. We also have the largest merchant and the most diverse by category offerings developed over several years with very strong nationwide business development capability. Our merchant base includes not only the large supermarket, but also much wider range of partners, including small to medium merchants. We have built very good know-how and capability in serving these SMEs. Our services are available nationwide in different tier cities with richer consumer experience and product categories. We are very confident that we are able to continue to build the mind share for Meituan as a everything now brand. Thank you.
Thanks, Shaohui, very helpful.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Jerry Liu from UBS. Please go ahead.
Okay. Thank you, management. Maybe I'll ask one on the In-store, Hotel and Travel business. There's been some, you know, industry-wide macro headwinds in the Q3 that we all saw, especially from the e-commerce platforms, and as management mentioned earlier as well. You know, first, when I look at Meituan's In-store business in the Q3, it still showed, you know, pretty good growth, better growth than peers. The first part of the question is, what drove that? The second part of the question is, how do we look at the Q4 and beyond? You know, management did mention, for example, in the food business, there could be some headwinds. How does that look for the In-store business? Thank you.
Thank you, Jerry, for the question. Thank you for noting that our In-store business revenue grown by 33% year-over-year. We are also very happy for this result. I think on a high level, we think the In-store business, as a percentage of total local services in China, the penetration rate is still very, very low. I think that's the most important reason and driver for our continued very fast growth. Although both In-store and Food Delivery have been affected by the COVID cases, we have seen that, when the government able to really have very effective control, the offline service consumption recover fast and our In-store business able to benefit from this very fast recovery.
Meanwhile, consumption activity during holiday, such as the Mid-Autumn Festival and consumption before National Day holiday remains more local service driven, such as dining, leisure and entertainment and parent-child activities versus long-haul travels as, you know, those travels were discouraged. Meituan is the go-to destination for local services benefiting from such trend. We also think a very diversified offering of different categories, different products on our platform provides a very strong foundation for us to achieve a resilient growth under different macro environment. In particular, the number of active advertising merchants maintains very steady growth when they're trying to recover and able to really, you know, get more business from online when their offline business was growing much slower.
The resilient growth of our second segment also is partially attributed to this very strong advertising revenue growth. Recently, there was a wider spread of COVID cases, which has impacted our second segment since the end of October, and I expect it to have meaningful impact on our revenue growth in Q4 and maybe Q1 next year. However, I believe that the COVID control will become more effective and more routine, and the impact may not last for long. Still, we believe the second segment still has long-term growth potential given its very low online penetration ratio.
The current macro environment, we think actually consumers could be more price sensitive and we provide a very diversified offerings for consumers to buy coupons and taxi deals and to enjoy their local consumption. This could actually be also an important driver for consumers who are looking for good deals to come to our platform. We remain positive on the continued growth of the In-store business. Also on the profit margin, we also have the confidence that it will remain stable. A few more sentences on Hotel booking. Our Hotel and Travel business are more heavily affected. We continue to leverage our competitive advantage in lower tier markets and lower star hotels to drive the steady room night growth.
We have also continued to collaborate with more high-star hotels to help optimize high-star hotel supply and improve service experience by driving growth in high-star hotels as well. In addition, we will explore more diversified products such as cooperation with popular theme parks as well as package deals across our platform to further strengthen our cross-selling capabilities. Thank you.
That's clear. Thanks.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Kenneth Fong from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good evening, Xing, Shaohui, Scarlett, and team, and thanks for taking my question. Congrats on the solid set of results. I have a question on the Meituan Select. Could you please give us some updates on the Meituan Select business, especially given that you have operated the community group e-commerce business for over a year now. Have you done any sort of like a business review? If so, what aspects that are consistent with your original expectation, and which ones are not? How should we see the Meituan Select potential regarding like various categories, order volume, and the ultimate time for profit turnaround? Lastly, with the regulations and the change in the competitive landscape, how will you implement your strategies in the future? Thank you.
Thank you, Kenny. Yes, you are right. It has been more than one year now since we started the Meituan Select in last July. As of end of Q3, Meituan Select already operates nationwide and continues to provide convenient, diverse and value-for-money products to consumers. The regulatory environment has evolved since Q3. We treated the compliance as a top priority, optimizing pricing strategy and focusing on user experience and our own long-term capability and developments. We put more focus on high quality growth, improving operating efficiency while maintaining industry-leading business scale. We actively optimize various operating strategies and strengthen our capabilities. On a product front, we continue to increase host diversity and optimize category structure, improving the quality of our fresh produce.
On the user front, we optimize operating strategy toward both regular and new users to further capture consumer mindshare. On the logistics side, we further refined the management of the entire logistics chain and optimize the warehouse layout, improving our operating efficiency while ensuring high product quality and timely delivery. We conduct ongoing review of the Meituan Select and continue to iterate the operations to remain patient and confident on its long-term penetration and scale potential. I think competition will become more rational under the new regulation environment. While the pace of its growth might be lower than our initial judgment on what the market expected, we believe that it's constructive for the healthy industry development.
After iterating our business model for over one year now, we will maintain our industry position in the first tier camp and focus more on high quality growth rather than the speed of ramp up in the short term. I would like to stress that retail is a very complicated business. We need to refine operations for different nodes of the retail value chain, which requires continuous enhancement of our long-term capability, especially to further strengthen our supply chain capability, iterate the logistics solutions, and refine operations.
We are delighted that our operating efficiency improved as we grow at healthy and steady pace. With the goal of achieving high quality growth in mind, we will continue to allocate resources more efficiently by refining our operation, improving product diversity and quality, and ensuring stable fulfillment. With this, we are confident to improve user satisfaction, stickiness, and transaction frequency, which will in turn stabilize volume growth. By carefully optimizing our operations and efficiency, we expect the unit economics to improve over the long run as well. Thank you.
Thank you, Xing Wang.
Thank you. I would now like to hand the conference back to our speakers today for any closing remarks. Please go ahead. Thank you.
Okay, thank you for joining our call. We look forward to speaking with everyone next quarter.
Thank you. This concludes your conference for today. Thank you for your participation. You may all disconnect your lines now. Thank you.