Thankyou for standing by and welcome to the Trip.com Group 2021 Q1 Earnings Conference Call. All participants are now in listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press star key followed by the number on on your telephone keypad. I will now hand the conference over to Michelle Qi, Senior IR Director of Trip.com Group. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Trip.com Group's 2021 Q1 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 Group does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required under applicable law. James, Jane, and Cindy will share our strategy and business updates, operating highlights, and financial performance for the first quarter of 2021 as well as the outlook for the second quarter of 2021. After the prepared remarks, we will have a Q&A session. With that, I will turn the call over to James. James, please.
Thank you, Michelle. Thank you everyone for joining us on the call today. Due to China's successful containment of the pandemic, the recovery of China's domestic travel market continues to show momentum. With borders still shut, many have turned to domestic travel to high-quality scenic spot and destinations. During the May Day holiday, approximately 230 million trips were made by tourists domestically, representing a 3% increase compared to the same period in 2019 before COVID-19, setting a new all-time high for the holiday. On our platform, long-distance travel across provinces in mainland China has made a full recovery, and short-distance local travel continues its strong growth trajectory. Trip.com Group's mission is to pursue the perfect trip for a better world. Throughout the past two decades, we have continuously exploring and innovating to further improve our offerings.
We have established a leading global one-stop travel platform where users can easily find comprehensive products with reliable services and guarantees and differentiated travel content, all reachable within a few taps on our mobile application. Following the strong recovery of China's domestic travel market, we have successfully launched our secondary listing in Hong Kong in April. This marks a milestone in our development from which we embark on a new journey. Currently, our market share in China's domestic travel market is only 15%, while global market share is still in the low single digits. We're excited for the potential of our growth. Going forward, we'll continue to focus on the following major areas to sustain the Group's long-term development as well as bringing new value to the industry. First, continue to improve our product offerings and service quality.
We'll be pushing ahead with more in-depth tour products to meet the evolving needs of the post-pandemic travelers while strengthening collaboration and cross-sales between business lines to provide a comprehensive, yet hassle-free, one-stop travel experience. Second, use content-oriented innovation to engage users and stimulate travel. You'll continue to see Trip.com Group transform from solely purchasing platforms to hubs of travel inspiration hosting the best travel deals. By hosting more comprehensive travel content such as live streaming, enhanced information feeds, and short videos, we are able to ignite greater interest in travel and facilitate new trends such as significant increase in short-distance travel and trips to long-haul destinations witnessed in the past year. Third, foster a content ecosystem with our travel marketing hub, Star Hub, and incentives to boost our partners' marketing capability on our platform.
Star Hub functions as a flagship store for our partners, where they are able to integrate differentiated travel content and a wide variety of tailored product offerings, drive huge traffic volume and develop exposure with enhanced promotions, thereby bolstering their brand image and boosting customer engagement. Fourth, maintain and expand our global perspective. Every maneuver and initiative we've tested and proved successful in our domestic market is a new valuable asset for our global development. We are putting this advantageous position to use in our preparation for the upcoming global travel recovery.
Progressing in these areas will require investments in technology and R&D as a driver for efficiency and growth. We believe our investment will create long-term value not only for our users but also for our shareholders, the travel industry, and society as a whole. We want to thank our users for their loyalty and trust, our business partners for their understanding and support, and our more than 30,000 employees around the world for their hard work and commitment to customers and partners during such a difficult time. They are the ones driving us to greater success. With that, I will turn the call over to Jane for operating highlights.
Thanks, James. Good morning, everyone. I would like to first quickly walk through our Q1 results and then touch base on our post-pandemic growth drivers and future opportunities. First, Q1 overall highlights.
Due to the travel restrictions in mainland China to contain virus in January and February of 2021 around Chinese New Year, our top line decreased by 13% year-over-year and about 50% as compared to the same period in 2019. Despite such challenges, China's domestic travel market rebounded strongly in March and with even greater momentum in April and May. Both hotel and air tickets have grown strongly. Cross-sales between air to hotel products in Q1 increased significantly compared to the same period in 2019. We are also delighted to see revenue from other business lines in Q1 exceeded that the same period in 2019. Revenue from corporate travel management has completely recovered compared to 2019 pre-COVID, and new initiatives such as travel financing services and domestic travel advertisement have both delivered strong results. Second, May Labor Day holiday highlights.
As China control pandemic effectively, accelerate vaccination significantly, and removed domestic travel restrictions, the pent-up demand travel volume has been unleashed during the May Labor Day holiday. Our total number of domestic bookings for five-day break show year-over-year growth of approximately 270% compared to 2020 and represent a more than 30% increase compared to the same period in 2019 pre-COVID. Significant increase were recorded across many business areas. Daily average data were used since the 2019 May Labor Day weekend were one day shorter than it was for 2020 and 2021. Daily average domestic hotel GMV during the Labor Day weekend saw a surge of 390% growth compared to 2020 and close to 50% growth compared to 2019 pre-COVID. Daily domestic hotel GMV recorded a historic high in the first three days for the holiday season.
Daily average domestic air ticket booking also saw a 190% year-over-year growth compared with 2020 and approximately 30% growth compared to 2019 pre-COVID. During this period, we also observed new trends in customer behavior. First, with the national borders remain shut, domestic travel has become the best solution to meet the pent-up outbound travel demand. We believe this has driven the rapid growth of quality leisure travel. Bookings for mid to high-end hotels have spearheaded the growth in the past 12 months. The rising demand for quality travel is also shaping the supply side. In the past year, we have strengthened our product offering. We believe our newly expanded inventory will continue to contribute to the long-term growth of quality leisure market after the reopening of the national borders. Second, long-distance travel across provinces has completely recovered. In addition, short distance and intra-province travel represents a new growth driver.
In the May Labor Day weekend, average daily domestic hotel GMV for intra-provincial stay increased more than 60% compared to 2019 pre-COVID. An average daily GMV for domestic attractions and activities doubled compared to 2019 pre-COVID. Third, content strategy. When travelers are seeking an elevated travel experience, they also are increasingly enjoying the excitement of discovery, sharing, and being inspired by the rich content. Nowadays, we are all digitally connected. Technology constantly drives the evolution of the industry. The boundary between offline and online engagement has blurred. A true one-stop platform should transcend the conventional search-to-book model. Trip.com Group is not only focusing on the development of the very best purchasing platform but also becoming the hub of inspiration. As we continue to implement our content strategy, our Ctrip mobile app has undergone significant updates over the past month.
The livestream channel is now an open platform featuring KOLs and industry partners. Hundreds of live events were streamlined in April, and DAU for the live streaming section on app doubled month-over-month. We also launched Star Hub, our travel marketing hub. In late April, through Star Hub, partners and suppliers are given the tool to deliver differentiated and tailor-made travel content and a wide diversity of marketing activity to interact with our high-quality users and gain exposure. With Star Hub and existing Trip.com Group marketing channel in their arsenals, partners can expand and enhance their marketing performance to drive traffic volume and conversion. In less than one month, more than 150 destinations, hotels, theme parks, and attractions have already joined Star Hub. We expect to see it growing into a rich content ecosystem.
During the past quarter, the number of travel KOLs on our platform increased by more than 50% sequentially. The enriched content resulted in higher number of users visits and longer user time spent on the content channel. During the Labor Day weekend, more than 40% of the app users visited our content channel. We will continue to focus on the improvement of the content generation and delivery and create information feeds our users go-to source for travel destination and ideas and inspirations. Fourth, corporate travel management. While leisure travel is growing healthily, we are also excited to see corporate management business also fully recovered from the negative impact of the pandemic. Despite the alternative use of video conferences, business travelers recovered strongly along with economic growth in the domestic China market. We also see shifting trends with business travelers turning to corporate management services from other channels.
This will form a strong cornerstone for the long-term development of our corporate travel management. Fifth, overseas market. Although the world is still facing uncertainty due to the COVID-19, we're encouraged by the development of vaccine. On one hand, we are fully prepared to take advantage of the approaching international travel recovery. On the other hand, we also continue to support different destination markets to promote local domestic travel under the current situation before the border opens. For our overseas market, hotel reservation for the domestic travelers in the countries outside of China have already recovered to pre-pandemic level in the recent months, driven by increased number of domestic stays in respective markets. We expect to see volume bouncing back at a great scale once cross-border restrictions are lifted and global travel reopens. With that, I will now turn the call over to Cindy.
Thanks, Jane. Good morning, everyone. To avoid comparing with the same period in 2020 when the pandemic outbreak first appeared, I'll instead compare our annual performance in the first quarter with the same period in 2019 and the fourth quarter of 2020. For the first quarter of 2021, Trip.com Group reported net revenue of RMB 4.1 billion, representing a 50% decrease from the same period in 2019. The first half of the quarter was significantly impacted by the resurgence of COVID cases in China and the travel restrictions that followed. Our domestic business showed strong resilience and quickly rebounded after the Chinese New Year holiday. Both our domestic hotel and air business have fully recovered to pre-COVID levels since early March and achieved double-digit growth during the month compared with the same period in 2019.
Revenues from our corporate travel business grew 6% in Q1 compared with 2019, mainly driven by the expansion of its client pool and an increase of cross-selling to accommodation products. Revenues for other business grew 17% in Q1 compared with 2019, thanks to the fast development of our new initiatives, such as travel financing services and domestic travel advertisement business. Gross margin was 75% for the first quarter of 2021, decreased from 82% for the previous quarter, largely due to the travel restrictions at the outset of 2021. Excluding share-based compensation charges, our adjusted operating expenses decreased by 30% compared with the same period in 2019 and were flattish compared to the previous quarter. Adjusted product development expenses for the first quarter increased by 9% to RMB 2.1 billion from the previous quarter, primarily due to fluctuation in expenses related to product development personnel.
Total headcount in our product and development team is largely stable, and the average salary increased modestly as we entered into 2021. Adjusted sales and marketing expenses for the first quarter decreased by 22% to RMB 930 million from the previous quarter, mainly due to the decrease in expenses related to sales and marketing promotion activities in response to the decrease in travel demand in the quarter. Adjusted G&A expenses for the first quarter increased by 20% from the previous quarter, mainly due to the fluctuations in the allowance for the expected credit loss. Following the common market practice, we start to disclose adjusted EBITDA from this quarter. The difference between adjusted EBITDA and non-GAAP operating income represents the depreciation and amortization expenses, which is available on our 6-K form. Adjusted EBITDA was negative RMB 216 million, and adjusted EBITDA margin was - 5% for the first quarter of 2021.
Diluted earnings per ordinary share and per ADS were RMB 2.88 or $0.44 for the first quarter of 2021. 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 0.34, or $0.50 for the first quarter of 2021. As of March 31st, 2021, the balance of cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash, short-term investments held-to-maturity, time deposits, and financial products was RMB 66.1 billion or $10.1 billion. With the successful dual listing in Hong Kong in April, we have further strengthened our cash balance by around $1.2 billion. As a listed company on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, we need to comply with regulations and follow the common practices adopted by public companies in the Hong Kong market.
As a result, going forward, we will no longer provide guidance for the coming quarters. Instead, we would like to provide some recent colors of our business. For the quarter to date, our total revenues were up by more than 80% year-on-year, mainly driven by the growth in domestic accommodation and air ticket reservations, while international revenue was still under pressure. Compared with the same period of 2019, domestic accommodation and air ticketing reservations were both up by more than 20% quarter to date. The fast recovery of domestic China travel is gradually making up the loss of outbound business. Recently, our total hotel reservations have returned to pre-COVID-19 levels, while price is still under pressure. We remain committed to deliver sustainable growth and create long-term value for our shareholders. With that, operator, please open the line for questions.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. We do ask that you please limit your questions to one per queue today and rejoin the queue if you have further questions. Your first question comes from Alex Tung with Morgan Stanley.
Thanks, management, for taking my question. Congrats on the very strong results and rebound in travel demand. My question is regarding the resurgence of COVID-19 globally. International travel remains uncertain. How will Trip.com prepare a strategy and focus in this environment? Thank you very much.
Thanks for the question. We have full confidence in the complete resumption of international travel. We are already seeing the promising recovery of travel in some countries and regions with widespread vaccination rollouts. Across all markets, we're seeing domestic travel market rebound and gradually make up the loss of cross-border travel. Recently, our total hotel bookings have reached pre-COVID levels, while prices remain under pressure. In Q1, overseas hotel bookings by non-Chinese customers on our Trip.com platform have already recovered to the pre-pandemic level. Our teams are utilizing this time to enhance our fundamentals in price, product, service, and app user experience for overseas users. With that, we'll be best positioned to capture the pent-up travel demand when international travel recovers.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Ronald Keung with Goldman Sachs.
Thank you, James, Jane, Cindy, and Michelle. I guess following on that recovery path, could you give management here just how we see the forward, say, few quarters and maybe into 2022? Just how are we expecting that international recovery path may be, if not quantitatively, maybe qualitatively, that recovery path? How would we plan our sales and marketing or strategies on our spending alongside that eventual international recovery path? Are we thinking about how domestic will shift or domestic strength that we see now actually maintain while international will be incremental recovering with that expectation? Thank you.
Thanks for your question. We look at our business in three segments. The first one is domestic travel. The second one is for the areas outside of China, the domestic travel within each respective country. The third one is cross-border travel. First of all, for domestic travel with China, we have full confidence that our government have very effective control procedures to make sure Mainland China's economy will grow strongly. Normally, when the economy is growing strongly, our travel market will outpace the GDP growth in that market. We will work very hard to serve our customers to capitalize on this strong momentum. That's the first thing within domestic travel for Mainland China. The second thing is, outside of China, we also have seen a strong recovery in each respective markets we are targeting at.
Based on the numbers we are looking at for the most recent trends, these domestic travel in the respective areas outside of mainland China have already recovered to pre-COVID levels. We have very strong confidence that applying for whatever worked in mainland China will also be capitalized on some of the markets we are targeting at. The third one is cross-border travel. It takes more coordination between nations, but we are encouraged by the development of the vaccination. I think each government is pushing very hard to make sure the people within each country are well protected. For what we have seen, U.K., Europe, and the United States are moving very fast in that front. Also Asia, most of the countries have demonstrated their ability to control and handle these kind of crises quite well.
We are hopeful that Asia, Europe, America gradually will be opening up and with more vaccinations is taken, hopefully, the passport will indicate the passenger's information and therefore gradually, we will be able to capitalize on the pent-up demand for cross-border transactions as well. Thank you.
Your next question comes from Alex Yao with JP Morgan.
Thank you, management, for taking my question. I would like to follow up with Ronald's question, but from a slightly different angle. I think that ultimately, COVID will be behind us. It could be the end of this year, could be middle of next year. When we enter into the post-COVID stage, how do you think about the normalized growth rate in the next couple of years? What are the new revenue opportunities you are seeing, post-COVID, as a result of perhaps the consumer behavior change or business behavior change? Thank you.
Yeah, I think we are all very excited to wait for the pass of the COVID-19. From our search results on our site, the pent-up demand is very strong. We are confident eventually the scientists around the world will come up with very strong methods to contain this virus. Governments also, through the past year, have accumulated a lot of experience to make sure that going forward the virus will be well contained. Our team works very hard to accumulate our knowledge and experience to handle different situations. Within our domestic travel, there are also a lot of opportunity. Our market share still is quite low. It's in the teens. In 2019, our market share is around 13%. There is still a lot of unaddressed market that we have not tapped into. For example, our content-driven strategy is a new area.
The market will grow quite nicely in the next three to five years. If we can address and take about 3%-5% share, that's quite significant already. Secondly, we also saw the short-haul travel, which is serving as an alternative when people are contained within their own borders. Thirdly, corporate travel, as we discussed, is growing very strongly. Traditionally, it's addressed by the other channels, but we ought to use very good services to address the customers who need to travel from cities to cities and frequently on the road. With our strength in hotel and other area, we will be able to help the customers who travel so frequently around China. Fourth, also, the cross-sell opportunity. Our one-stop platform represents a good opportunity to make sure our customers' needs are addressed very nicely.
Rather than having our customers to search all around the website to find the right product, we ought to provide better services for them when we use our technology and one-stop shopping platform to provide the best service for our customers. These new initiatives are mainly centered around the domestic travel for China. In addition, I think the cross-border travel, inbound travel, and for the customers around the world will also add another layer of the growth. Our team is working very hard with our global team just to make sure that our strength in Mainland China eventually will be duplicated in the global places. We are excited for the future growth. Thank you.
Your next question comes from Thomas Chong, Jefferies.
Hi. Good morning. Thanks, management, for taking my questions. I have a question relating to the expense side. Given that we have done a lot of work to optimize the cost, how should we think about the trend in expenses going forward after COVID-19? Thank you.
Thank you, Thomas. Yeah, thanks to our largely flexible cost and the expenses structure and efficient operating management, during the past year, we actually further streamlined our operations across business lines. In addition to certain adjustments related to COVID. Our improvement of content and cross-selling going forward will further help us to lift our marketing efficiency. In terms of the cost trend in the year 2021, we expect a comparatively modest increase in personnel-related expenses. Sales and marketing expenses are largely discretional and adjusted in accordance with our business recovery. We will continue to adopt an ROI-driven strategy. Furthermore, we believe our improvement of content and cross-selling will help us improve our marketing efficiency in general. At the same time, we will also reserve certain budgets in the short term to develop content ecosystem and to prepare for recovery and growth of the international market. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from James Lee with Mizuho.
Great, thanks for taking my questions. My question is regarding advertising opportunity. I was hoping maybe Jane, you already spoke about live streaming and Star Hub. They all sound very interesting. Can we maybe get an early sense about understanding the friction that you're experiencing with advertisers when they try to adopt the new content platform, and how you plan to resolve it specifically? Also maybe early learnings from consumers, if you have any, and what do they like about your new content platform, and what needs to improve? Lastly, maybe over longer term, can you talk about what kind of critical mass that you need in terms of users and engagements, and that'll lead to ultimately improved monetization? Thanks so much.
Sure. From a long-term perspective, the content and also advertisement market currently is about a RMB 90 billion market. By 2025, the market size is expected to be around RMB 140 billion. Our target is that if we work very hard to address about 3%-5% of the total market, that can be quite significant for our top line and bottom line as well. Secondly, the strength of our platform is that the quality of our customers is very strong, and they're looking for inspiration when they decide where to go, particularly during the holiday season, summer vacations, Chinese New Year, et cetera. When we post our content onto our platform, we already see the users double for that channel. Also the stay for the time spent in this channel also doubled significantly in this channel.
That give us a very strong indication that customer needs the content. We will also offer a very customized match between the customers, what they're looking for to be suitable for their family needs, for their interest. Certainly, with the strong customer interest as well as their spending power, the areas, the hotels, travel destinations, and attractions, if we do a very good analysis, we ought to offer the best alternatives for customers to look at. That also is a strength for our platform. We have seen very strong conversion on our platform when we post the relevant and very carefully analyzed matching for our customers. These are the strengths for our platform. Of course, we only started this system four months ago.
The momentum is strong, it takes our team for our strong execution and to make sure the product is suitable for both our customers and partners. We are confident as long as we keep up with our strong execution, we'll be able to offer the best product for both our consumers as well as the partners. Thank you.
Your next question comes from Joyce Ju with Bank of America.
Good morning, James, Jane, Cindy, and Michelle. Congrats on the very strong result this quarter, and thanks for taking my questions. My question is related to government's recent antitrust push. We have seen a couple of segment leaders recently being inspected, and also some of them even pay the penalties, antitrust movement. Just want to ask, if we had related risk, and if we have been in any communications with the regulators in this perspective? Given, I think the antitrust route at very beginning, there are a couple areas of expectations. They actually include price discriminations, monopoly power of the marketplaces. Just try to understand how we actually avoid into a situation like be fined or get penalties from this. Thank you.
Thank you. We fully support our government for their efforts to create a healthy and sustainable growth market. Our belief is that if we can create a market that is healthy and sustainable, the industry will grow in a very healthy manner. Secondly, our market share is quite small still. The market share for 2019 is around 13%. The travel industry is faster growing. We need quality service provider to address our customers' needs. We'll work very hard with the government, with our partners, to make sure our customers' demand is very well addressed. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Tian Hou with TH Capital.
Good morning, management. Thanks for taking my question. I have two quick questions. On the income statement for the corporate travel, I saw a year-on-year 100% growth, and it's really outstanding. I really want to understand what are the drivers behind the 100% year-on-year growth and what could be the future growth in this line. At least I'll look for that. The second one is for other business. It's actually showing the year-on-year positive returns. Can management give some color to tell us what are within the others, and which item within the others are driving force for this part of revenue to grow that fast? That's my two questions. Thank you.
Thank you. The future is always the leader, especially in the business travel space. Of course, the 100% growth. The first reason is the comparatively low base of last year because the first quarter of last year is the outbreak of the pandemic. Basically, there is very low traffic, especially for the business travels. Therefore, we had 100% growth. In the second place, it actually reflects the fact that once there is a pandemic or any emergencies, a market leader will always consolidate or have growing our market share very quickly. This also reflected in our high growth in the business travel, especially the corporate travel. The third reason, as James explained, our hotel business in the corporate travel grow very fast, significantly. Firstly, because we have very competitive pricing or competitive product offering to serve our corporate travel needs.
We also successfully cross-sell hotel product from the air business, from the air customers, from the corporate travel. These are the three reasons why you see a very strong growth in the corporate travel. The second question, the others basically is the reflect of the market value adjustment for the available-for-sale investments. Actually, this basically reflects the grand trend of the market pickup for the first quarter. All our investment classified as available for sale they have to do revaluations on a quarterly basis. Compare with last year, fourth quarter last year, all the market pricing grow significantly. This is the reason why we had a one-time gain on this category.
Your next question comes from Brian Gong with Citi.
Thanks, Management, for taking my question. Congratulations on the solid results and recovery. With the strong recovery of domestic travel, management's expectation for following quarters by different segments, especially for upcoming summer break and the Golden Week National Day? Thank you.
The Golden Week holiday is very strong. As we discussed, the pent-up demand have driven the growth. As previously discussed, the volume growth for the hotel is a three digits growth for year-over-year. For 2019, it's also grown more than 50% year-over-year. For air ticket growth, it's also three digits compared to the last year. Also for 2019, it's more than 30% year-over-year growth. For the Q2 number, I will turn it to Cindy for highlights.
We will not provide quarterly guidance anymore in order to comply with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange regulations. We would like to share some recent colors with our investors. For the quarter to date, our total revenue was up more than 80% year-over-year, driven by the strong domestic travel recoveries. At the same time, the international revenues still remain under pressures.
Compared to 2019, both our domestic hotel and air ticket reservations grew more than 20% compared quarter to date. Specifically, during the past Labor Day holiday, our total domestic reservations grew by more than 270% year-over-year and 50% compared with 2019. Among which domestic hotel and air reservations were up by more than 50% and 30%, respectively, compared with 2019. The faster recovery of our domestic China travel will gradually and fully make up the loss of outbound business. Recently, our total hotel reservations have returned to pre-COVID-19 level, but the price is still under some pressure. Thank you.
Thank you.
That does conclude our question and answer session. I'll now hand back to Michelle Qi for closing remarks.
Thank you. Thank you everyone for joining us today. You can find the transcript and webcast of today's call on investors.trip.com. We look forward to speaking with you on our second quarter 2021 earnings call. Thank you and have a good day. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Thank you.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.