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Earnings Call: Q2 2022

Sep 22, 2022

Operator

Hello, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Trip.com Group 2022 second quarter earnings conference. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press Star and one on your telephone. It is now my pleasure to introduce Senior Director of Investor Relations, Michelle Qi. You may proceed.

Michelle Qi
Senior Director of Investor Relations, Trip.com Group

Thank you. Thank you. Good morning and good evening. Welcome to Trip.com Group's second quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Joining me today on the call are Mr. James Liang, Executive Chairman of the Board, Ms. Jane Sun, Chief Executive Officer, and Ms. Cindy Wang, Chief Financial Officer. During this call, we will discuss our future outlook and performance, which are forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. As such, our results may be materially different from the views expressed today. A number of potential risks and uncertainties are outlined in Trip.com Group's public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Trip.com does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required under applicable law.

James, Jane, and Cindy will share in our strategy and business updates, operating highlights and financial performance for the second quarter of 2022, as well as outlook for the third quarter of 2022. After a prepared remark, we will have the Q&A session. With that, I will turn the call over to James. James, please.

James Liang
Executive Chairman, Trip.com Group

Thank you, Michelle. Thank you everyone for joining our call today. In the second quarter of 2022, despite the challenging market environment in April and May due to the outbreak of Omicron and strict pandemic control measures, we are encouraged to see the strong release of pent-up demand in the back half of this quarter. While the sporadic resurgence of COVID continues to disrupt the recovery of domestic travel in China, the effect on traveler sentiment has been fading and the market has shown its resilience. Following the easing of the restrictions, we have seen overall domestic China bookings, hotel bookings on our platform quickly rebounded and surpassed 2019 level at the end of June. Such trajectory continued as we entered July with authorities adopt milder and more precise control measures. On the international front, the global travel industry continued to...

It's progress towards full recovery to 2,000 pre-pandemic level. Demand is staying strong despite the challenges facing the industry. In Q2, our revenues in Europe and US markets have already surpassed the 2019 level. That, you know, Asia Pacific markets are also rapidly growing. While pace of growth in the European market has moderated due to headwinds such as airline capacity shortage and labor strikes, our air reservations in Europe has been approaching the 2019 level, and our hotel reservation in the same region increased by about 400% year-over-year. Travel activities in Asia Pacific also rebounded with border reopening and further lifting of travel curbs, and have started to recover faster than ever since the outbreak of COVID.

Together with product innovation, service enhancements, and the holiday demand, we expect to see recovery in APAC continue to accelerate in Q3. While in the short term, the world may still face challenges such as regional instability and inflation, the fact that travelers have not been deterred by these challenges points to the industry's resilience and a strong recovery. With governments continuing to open up and COVID containment becoming hopefully more manageable, traveler confidence has grown together with improved safety perception, which leads us to believe the market outlook will only continue to improve. With our strength and the product capability optimized to operating efficiency and enhanced value proposition, we're as confident as ever with our capabilities and competitive position in the markets and navigate through any uncertainties and challenges.

We do not necessarily need a crystal ball if we're able to offer whatever interests the market and match customers' aspirations. We remain confident and positive in the attractive long-term growth profile of the travel industry. With that, I'll turn the call over to Jane for operating highlights.

Jane Sun
CEO, Trip.com Group

Thank you, James. Good morning, everyone. I would like to start with a quick overview of our performance in the second quarter and updates on our operational highlights. In the second quarter of 2022, the China domestic travel industry was largely impacted by the resurgence of pandemic in multiple regions in China. In spite of the challenges, we are delighted to see that the fundamental demand for travel remained solid. Travel activities in the region that are less affected by COVID have recovered much faster. Hotel bookings in the Southern China and Western part of the country have surpassed 2019 level since mid-May. Our total domestic hotel bookings have fully recovered to and surpassed 2019 level in late June. Same-city staycation hotel reservation in this quarter grew more than 30% versus 2019.

Our business continued to recover in July as authorities adopted more precise pandemic control measures. On the other hand, the global market continues to show steady improvements as more and more countries choose to leave COVID behind and move forward with minimal restrictions. Our global business continued to ride on a growth trajectory. First, on international flights. Overall air ticket bookings on our global platform have increased over 100% year-over-year, in which our global brand, Trip.com, has managed to increase approximately 680% year-over-year. The growth in Trip.com was mainly driven by strong recovery of international flights, and we're glad to see such momentum continued in Q3. In July, total air ticket bookings on Trip.com was heading towards 90% recovery of 2019 level. Second, international hotel.

Overall, hotel bookings on global platforms have increased by more than 50% above the 2019 level in the second quarter. With domestic hotel bookings in non-China markets, Trip.com increased by 300% versus 2019. We have outperformed the industry across all key markets, especially in Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, U.K., and the U.S., also in triple-digit growth in overall hotel bookings versus 2019. Hotel bookings in Europe markets also increased by nearly 400% year-over-year. Now let's talk about our operational highlights and the progress we have made on the strategic focus. First, our accommodation. In the China domestic market, we continue to fortify our one-stop service model with accommodation at the core by strengthening our value proposition to our customers and our hotel partners.

Our value-added hotel package products now cover 20% more hotels since year-end of 2021. 65% of which are high-end hotels. We continue to further expand the coverage and the source for special perks and offerings to match customers' demand for better value for money while helping partners to create incremental upsides. Over 240,000 hotels have also joined us for our TripPlus program and rewarded our loyal customers with extra benefits. Over 50% of the reservations come from high-end hotels. In the meantime, we also joined hands with hotel partners to launch co-branded membership program and currently have more than 30 million co-branded members, significantly contributing to our users acquisition. Second, global business. On the international front, we continue to work closely with local authorities and suppliers to strengthen our supply chain and improve the brand awareness of our international brands.

Trip.com has been named the 10th most downloaded OTA app globally in the first half of 2022, with app downloads hitting record high. We also delved into post-pandemic travelers' evolved needs and sourced for truly unique product offerings to improve product competitiveness while also working hard to enhance the reliability of our services. We continue to localize and fine-tune our campaigns to align with heartbeats of the local markets and better capture the local demands. Our activity offerings in the overseas market have also been seeing continuous improvements following the robust recovery of the global travel and tourism. On top of the achievements in the previous quarter, reservations for global in-destination activities on our platform continued to grow by 24% sequentially and maintain a three-digit year-over-year growth in the first half of 2022.

We will continue our work attracting customers through close collaboration with our global destinations and attractions. Third, content platform. Updating on the status of our content platform development. We continued to strengthen our content creation pipeline to provide better inspiration and help users to make educated travel decisions. Catering to the new users' need under the pandemic and better serve the travel demand of the younger generation, we focused on providing inspiring content, help users exploring for ideas and tips to get better products, foods, activity, transportation, and accommodation experience, especially for their local and short-haul trips. Besides live stream and information feed, we also created a guest list of travel topics based on service quality and the customer's feedback to help users make well-informed destination.

For example, our domestic hotel bucket list handpick the high-quality hotels and alternative accommodation properties under different travel scenarios in various regions across the country to build stronger use cases and respond to users' aspirations, which also help improve the conversion rate. The amount of daily average user-generated content increased by 16% year-over-year in the second quarter. The number of KOLs also increased by 17% over the first quarter. Despite pandemic influence, we are delighted to see user engagement level remain stable compared with that in the previous quarter. Average view duration continues to see sequential improvements. Average number of content viewed per user also increased by about 50%. Fourth, corporate responsibility. Besides our rural revitalization initiatives and continued efforts in nurturing local alternative accommodation and tourism talents, we are also committed to embracing the global transition to sustainable and more environmentally responsible travel.

As part of our sustainability initiative, we have partnered with CHOOOSE to help customers adjust their CO2 emissions by contributing towards highly effective CO2 mitigation projects around the world. Our corporate travel teams also outperformed 85% of other global companies and was awarded a silver rating by EcoVadis, an internationally recognized CSR rating platform. In our car rental business, alternative fuel vehicles rental orders is also growing at an annual rate of approximately 140%. All these initiatives help make it easier and simpler for our users to improve awareness and travel more responsibly. Over the past two years, the travel industry has proved its resilience.

With our confidence in the long-term growth of travel and the years of hard work and solid progress in maintaining our traditional advantage and further strengthening our competitiveness in domestic, short-haul, and international travel, we are optimistic that we're very well prepared to face any challenges that lies ahead. With that, I will now turn the call over to Cindy.

Cindy Wang
CFO, Trip.com Group

Thanks, Jane. Good morning, everyone. For the second quarter of 2022, Trip.com Group reported net revenue of RMB 4 billion, representing a 32% decrease from the same period last year and a 2% decrease quarter-over-quarter, primarily due to continued disruptions from pandemic resurgence to the China domestic travel industry. Our overseas markets, on the other hand, are becoming significant contributors to our top line and bottom line performance. Accommodation reservation revenue for the second quarter of 2022 was RMB 1.4 billion, representing a 45% decrease year-over-year and a 6% decrease quarter-over-quarter, recovering to 40% of the 2019 level. This is mainly due to the severe impact from the Omicron outbreak in China and the following strict lockdown in several first-tier cities, while offsetting by solid local and short-haul demands.

Transportation ticketing revenue for the second quarter of 2022 was RMB 1.8 billion, representing a 15% decrease year-over-year and a 6% increase quarter-over-quarter, recovering to 52% of the 2019 level. The impact of travel restrictions in the first two months of this quarter was largely offset by the strong air reservations on our international platforms. Among which China domestic recovery momentum was largely disrupted by resurgence of COVID, while air reservations on our international platforms saw significant increase. Package tour revenue for the second quarter of 2022 was RMB 122 million, representing a 67% decrease year-over-year and a 2% decrease quarter-over-quarter, recovering to 12% of the 2019 level. This is mainly due to pandemic related travel restrictions in domestic China markets and largely muted outbound tourism.

Corporate travel revenue for the second quarter of 2022 was RMB 210 million, representing a 46% decrease year-over-year and a 5% decrease quarter-over-quarter, recovering to 68% of the 2019 level, primarily due to the impact of pandemic related static management in April and May. Excluding share-based compensation charges, our total adjusted operating expenses decreased by 27% year-over-year and was a saving of 44% compared to the same period in 2019, reflecting our continued efforts in pushing forward with effective cost control and streamlining our operations. Adjusted product development expenses for the second quarter decreased by 13% from the previous quarter. It was a saving of 33% compared to the same period in 2019 as we continued to pursue lean operation.

Adjusted sales and marketing expenses for the second quarter decreased by 3.3% from the previous quarter. It was a saving of 62% compared to the same period in 2019 as we continue to stick with our prudent marketing protocol. Adjusted G&A expenses for the second quarter decreased by 2% from the previous quarter. It was a saving of 29% when compared to the same period in 2019. Adjusted EBITDA was RMB 355 million for the second quarter, compared to RMB 916 million in the same period last year, and RMB 91 million in the previous quarter. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 9% for the second quarter, compared to 16% in the same period last year and 2% in the last quarter.

Diluted income per ordinary share and per ADS were RMB 0.10, or $0.01 for the second quarter of 2022, excluding share-based compensation charges and fair value changes of equity security investments and exchangeable senior notes. Non-GAAP diluted loss per ordinary share and per ADS were RMB 0.31 or $0.05 for the second quarter. As of June 30, 2022, the balance of cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash, short-term investment, held to maturity time deposits and financial products was RMB 65.6 billion or $9.8 billion. Turning to the third quarter of 2022, we would like to share some colors of our business. Robust pent-up demand release was seen in July and early August, leading to a largely improved market outlook following the relaxation of travel restrictions.

The industry level air passenger volume recovered to 60% to 70% and industry level hotel RevPAR recovered to 80% to 90% of the 2019 level in the first half of Q3. In July, our China domestic hotel bookings were about 20% growth above the 2019 level. We continued to grow over the 2019 level in August and achieved a hyper growth versus 2021. Domestic travel momentum stalled due to the resurgence of COVID cases and related travel restrictions since late August. In the recent mid-autumn festivals, industry level air passenger volume was lower than 30% of its 2019 level. Hotel business was relatively less affected with the support of staycation demand. Our local hotel bookings continued to recover well and was about fully recovered when compared with the same holiday in 2019.

Outbound travel remains rather muted under current conditions. Outside of China, the recovery momentum in Europe and the U.S. remains robust, while the Asia-Pacific region is accelerating. Our international brands showed further improvements in July and August, benefiting from the higher price and more long-haul travels. Although we are still catching up with the 2019 number, we expect to see a healthy revenue growth in Q3 on a year-over-year basis, which is driven by strong demand for summer travel in China and robust recovery in the global markets. While global travel has been gradually moving towards a brighter future, we will probably still be experiencing pandemic related challenges in the near term, especially for the China domestic market. Solid execution paves the way for long-term growth.

We will continue to stick with our prudent cost control protocols, while remain cautious and flexible to capture the potential growth opportunities. With that, operator, please open the line for questions.

Operator

Certainly. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press Star one one on your telephone. To ask a question, please press Star one one on your telephone. Our first question comes from the line of Thomas Chong with Jefferies.

Thomas Chong
Managing Director, Jefferies

Hi. Good morning. Thanks management for taking my questions. My questions is about our meaningful cost savings in Q2, especially in the product and development segment. Given our solid cost control measures, how should we think about the further cost savings and margin trend in the next coming quarters? Thank you.

Cindy Wang
CFO, Trip.com Group

Thank you, Thomas. In Q2, our total adjusted operating expenses decreased by 27% year-over-year and 9% quarter-over-quarter. It was a saving of 44% compared to the same period in 2019, thanks to our largely flexible cost structure and effective cost control. Firstly, following a strict ROI-driven investment protocol, our sales and marketing expenses were largely considered discretionary. In the second quarter, we also swiftly reduced the marketing investment in the China domestic market, which was partially offset by the increase of marketing activities for the international brands. Decrease of personnel-related expenses were mainly related to the flexible part of our performance-based bonus. During the past two years, we have streamlined our operations across business lines in addition to certain adjustments related to COVID.

We are also able to run a very lean and stay productive in our domestic operations with the current team structure and will continue to improve our operating efficiency. In addition, our improvement on the content as well as the cross-selling and the technology have further lifted our marketing efficiencies. We are very confident that we are going to deliver a very healthy operating margin once the market can go back to the normal. Thank you.

Thomas Chong
Managing Director, Jefferies

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Simon Cheung with Goldman Sachs.

Simon Cheung
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Hi, can you hear me?

Cindy Wang
CFO, Trip.com Group

Yes.

Jane Sun
CEO, Trip.com Group

Yes, we can.

Simon Cheung
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Oh, sorry. Hi, thanks, James, Jane and Cindy for the thorough presentations. I just have one or two quick questions. In relation to what you mentioned about the guidance on the third quarter that you're expecting a healthy growth, year-over-year on the top line. I just wanted to drill a bit more. Would you be able to share with us, you know, how you're thinking about, you know, the hotel versus the transportation divisions, you know, respectively? How are you seeing the trend in the end of third quarter?

If you can provide us with some guidance, that would be great. Secondly, I think Thomson earlier did mention that, you know, the take rate, particularly on the hotel segment actually trend a bit better in the second quarter, as well as maybe in the third quarter as well because of some, you know, scale-down of the rebates. Wondering, are you seeing the same trends? Now that, you know, the travel starting to recover, would you see the necessity to basically, increase the rebate again? Thank you.

Cindy Wang
CFO, Trip.com Group

Thank you, Simon. Yeah, as we said before, we are glad to see the domestic travel market at least show some resilience, especially starting from the summer. Overall, our domestic China hotel reservations on our platform quickly rebounded and surpassed the pre-COVID level from late June. Such trajectory continued with the authorities adopted wider and more precise control measures. The total domestic hotel bookings was around 20% higher than 2019 level in July. We continued to grow over the 2019 level in August and achieved a hyper-growth versus 2021. With the recent outbreak of COVID cases spreading to more than 20 provinces and lockdowns becoming more frequent since late August, the long-haul travels was significantly impacted.

Number of total domestic air passengers was down by 70% to 80% versus the 2019 level in the recent weeks. Hotel business was relatively less impacted with the support of staycation demand. This is basically the outlook for Q3. In terms of the long-term outlook, we are still very confident that as long as we can provide competitive products as well as a variety of product offerings, we are going to continuously gaining market share, both domestically as well as in the international market. As for the margins or take rate of our hotel business, we are closely monitor the marketing.

As we always did, we will have different, slightly different strategy for both the mid to high end as well as the lower end, comparatively lower end of the market. For the lower end of the market, especially local demand, for staycations, we are continuously to have competitive pricing. This always is the first priority for us. For the mid to high-end market, we will closely monitor and. Overall, we expect to have a very healthy margin for the quarters to come. Thank you.

Simon Cheung
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Thanks a lot. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Alex Yao with JP Morgan. Pardon me, Alex, your line is now open.

Alex Yao
Managing Director, JPMorgan

Sorry, I was on mute. Morning, management. Thank you for taking my question. I'd like to get an update on your international part of the business. Can you share with us the growth momentum revenue contribution from Skyscanner and the Trip.com in second quarter? How do you expect these two operating units to perform in second half this year? Thank you.

Cindy Wang
CFO, Trip.com Group

Thank you, Alex. With the easing and dropping of travel restrictions in more and more countries outside of China, the global travel market quickly went back to recovery. As we shared in the prepared remarks, the overall air ticketing bookings on our global platform have increased over 100% year-over-year, in which our global brand, Trip.com, has managed to increase by approximately 680% year-over-year. The growth in Trip.com was mainly driven by the strong recovery of international flights, and we are happy to see such momentum to be continued in Q3. In July, our total air ticketing bookings on Trip.com was heading towards 90% recovery of the 2019 level.

Overall hotel bookings on our global platform also have increased by more than 40% above the 2019 level in the second quarter, with domestic hotel bookings in non-China markets on Trip.com increased by 300% versus the 2019 level. In terms of the financial contribution, driven by the growth, growing travel demand following relaxing travel restrictions and improving hotel ADR and air ticketing prices, revenues generated from our key international brands grew more than 200% year-over-year and contributed 20% to 30% of our total revenue in Q2. Revenue is generated from our Europe and American markets already surpassed the 2019 level, while revenues from the Asia Pacific excluding China markets also are a faster recovery trend.

We are also glad to see the adjusted EBITDA of some international brands has turned positive, supported by our fast business recovery and improved operational efficiency. Thank you. In terms of the outlook for our international markets, while in the short term there are still some uncertainties and challenges from the macro environment, we still have a very strong confidence in the consumers' strong desire to travel across the world. With governments continued to open up and COVID becoming hopefully more manageable, travelers' confidence grow together with improved safety perceptions, which lead us to believe the market outlook will further improve. We will continuously to strengthen our one-stop service capability, improve supply chain and technology, and strengthen our collaborations among the different brands within the group. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. One moment, please. Our next question comes from the line of James Lee with Mizuho.

James Lee
Analyst, Mizuho

Great. Thanks for taking my questions. My question's relating to outbound travel. I was wondering, can you guys talk about the pace of recovery in recent months, as we have seen the length of quarantine has been reduced pretty meaningfully? Secondly, maybe is there any update on the reopening policy? I assume, you know, maybe give us a sense once the borders start to reopen, how fast do you think the outbound travel demand will return? Thanks.

Cindy Wang
CFO, Trip.com Group

Thank you, James.

Jane Sun
CEO, Trip.com Group

Yes.

Cindy Wang
CFO, Trip.com Group

Jane, please go ahead.

Jane Sun
CEO, Trip.com Group

Okay. Yeah, sure. I think the trend is quite positive. As everyone observed, we started with 21-day quarantine and then was reduced to 14 days, and now it's seven days. In Hong Kong, it's further reduced to 4 plus 3. As more measures is being put in control and more people are getting vaccine, we are confident eventually the quarantine period will be shortened and therefore the release of the outbound travel will be able to achieved. When we look at the pent-up demand from our consumers, I think the pent-up demand is very strong. Once we're in a good stage to open the travel borders, we are confident with our coverage for comprehensive products, we'll be able to capitalize on these opportunities. Thank you.

James Lee
Analyst, Mizuho

Great. Thanks, Jane.

Operator

One moment, please. Our next question comes from the line of Elinor Leung with CLSA.

Elinor Leung
Managing Director of Internet and Telecom Research, CLSA

Hey, thank you very much for management taking my question. My first question is regarding the domestic competition. Can you comment on that under such difficult situation right now? The second question is just follow up on the international business. How fast is the Skyscanner has been recovering so far? You talk about the contribution of international business for the top line, and how much is it contribute to the bottom line for the second quarter? Thank you very much.

Cindy Wang
CFO, Trip.com Group

Thank you, Elinor. In terms of the domestic competition, we believe the competitive environment in the domestic market is stable. Despite the ups and downs in the industry, we are happy to see that we were able to deliver very strong performance, outpacing the market by 20% to 25% for the domestic hotel reservations. Firstly, over the past two years, we've built a very strong use cases for the short-haul travel through multiple initiatives in product and marketing innovations. Now, short-haul and local travel activities has become a key contributor to our domestic recovery, especially in the Q2.

Despite the severe pandemic influence, especially on the long-haul travel, our local hotel reservations still increased by more than 30% compared with the 2019 level. Such growth momentum continued to gain steam, and the local hotel reservations increased by more than 60% compared with the 2019 level in July and August. While the long-haul travel also saw significant recovery during the same period. Secondly, our cross-selling from transportation to accommodation and other travel products has also achieved a significant improvement in the past two years.

We are confident that once the pandemic is under effective control, or if there's any change of the pandemic control policies, we can enjoy a higher recovery potential in both our long haul and short haul travels. In terms of the contributions of our international brand, as I explained earlier, all the international brands contribute about 20% to 30% on the top line. We also see, in terms of the adjusted EBITDA, almost all our major international brands, they have turned positive and becoming one of the key contributors of bottom line. Thank you.

Elinor Leung
Managing Director of Internet and Telecom Research, CLSA

Thank you.

Operator

One moment, please. Our next question comes from the line of Tian Hou with TH Capital.

Tian Hou
Founder and CEO, TH Capital

Morning, management. I have a question regarding your international business strategy. As China took a different approach for COVID control, I guess international markets can become much more attractive to tourists. As international business contributing higher portion of your top line and bottom line, can you help us understand your global expansion strategy at this point? Thank you.

Cindy Wang
CFO, Trip.com Group

Thank you, Tian. Following our local focused global vision strategy, we will continue to integrate and upgrade the supply chain and technology of our international brands and further strengthen the reliability and efficiency of our customer services. We actually provide very strong value not only to the Chinese users, but also to our travelers around the world. Firstly, on the one-stop shopping platform, Trip.com actually was one of the largest global air ticketing platform, and our team will continue to add more product categories onto the platform and improve the cross-selling from air to other products, such as accommodations as well as the activities.

In the Q2, our overall hotel reservations through our key international brands grew more than 40% compared with 2019 level, which also more than doubled our 2021 level, which benefited from both the strong demand of the domestic travel as well as the cross-selling from recovering international air reservations. Second, we are an app-based platform. We usually see higher user engagement and user retention on our mobile apps. In the second quarter, Trip.com was named the top 10 most downloaded OTA apps in the first half of 2022, with Trip.com mobile app installations reached the record high. The mobile app contributed more than half of Trip.com's order and reached more than 70% in certain Asia Pacific markets.

Thirdly, we provide high quality services. We believe a high quality in-house customer service team will continue to be a driving force behind our business success. We have an in-house customer service team and have established our global call centers with multi-language capabilities to ensure a swift response. Customers can connect with us and receive direct solutions with a human touch 24/7 via phone calls, free in-app international call and in-app online chat or emails. With the help of the AI chatbot, self-service functions and automatic prioritization mechanism, we are able to improve the efficiency and have our team handle more complicated and urgent situations. The automation rate of our global call center has reached around 80%, which is on par with our domestic call center. Thank you.

Tian Hou
Founder and CEO, TH Capital

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. One moment please. Our next question comes from the line of Wei Xiong with UBS.

Wei Xiong
Equity Research Analyst, UBS

Hi. Good morning, management. Thank you for taking my question. I want to understand more about your content strategy. Could management share more color on the update of your content strategy, and how's the progress there, helping with our user acquisition and user engagement, as well as our competitiveness against some other short video platforms? As we further invest in the content side, how should we think about the potential financial implications in the coming quarters? Thank you.

Michelle Qi
Senior Director of Investor Relations, Trip.com Group

Thank you. Despite the pandemic influence, our content strategy continued to progress in terms of the content generation and user engagement. Catering to the new user needs under the pandemic, and to better serve the travel demand of our younger generation, we focused on providing inspiring content to help users explore for ideas and tips to get better food, activity, transportation, and accommodation experience, especially for their local and short-haul trips. In the second quarter, the amount of the daily average user-generated content increased by 16% year-over-year, and the number of KOLs further increased by 17% over the previous quarter. We are also delighted to see user engagement level remain stable compared with that in the previous quarter. The average view duration continued to see sequential improvement.

Average number of content viewed per user also increased by about 50%. Besides the live streaming and information feeds, those are the products that people may be quite familiar with. We also created a bucket list of travel topics based on service quality and customer feedback to help users make well-informed decisions. For example, our domestic hotel bucket list handpicked the high quality hotels and alternative accommodation properties under different travel scenarios in various regions across the country to build strong use cases and respond to the user aspirations, which also help us to improve the conversion rate.

In terms of the financial impact of the content, as I explained, we think the support or the improvement on the conversion is the top priority in terms of the content. On top of that, we also see significant efficiencies or cost savings on the sales and marketing end due to the very helpful content that help us to have a better engagement on our platform. The content product itself also generated very healthy top line as well as the bottom line to our total financial. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. That concludes our question and answer session. I will now hand the call back over to Senior Director of Investor Relations, Michelle Qi, for any closing remarks.

Michelle Qi
Senior Director of Investor Relations, Trip.com Group

Thanks. Thank you everyone for joining us today. You can find the transcript and the webcast of today's call on investor.trip.com. We look forward to speaking with you on the third quarter of 2022 earnings call. Thank you, and have a good day.

Cindy Wang
CFO, Trip.com Group

Thank you.

Jane Sun
CEO, Trip.com Group

Thank you.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect.

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