The State Administration for Market Regulation, the Cyberspace Administration of China, and the National Railway Administration recently summoned seven third-party travel platforms to regulatory meetings over irregular business practices in train ticket sales. The platforms were Trip.com Group, Tongcheng Travel, Qunar, Fliggy, Meituan, Zhixing Train Ticket, and Gaotie Guanjia.

The regulators cited issues including improper promotion of waitlist ticket assistance and paid seat selection, inducements for users to buy longer-distance tickets and get off early, or to buy shorter-distance tickets and travel beyond their ticketed destination, as well as improper collection and use of personal information. Regulators said they would step up enforcement.

The meetings addressed disorder in the train ticketing businesses of online travel companies. They also exposed a deeper contest over travel traffic.

As regulation tightens, the traffic logic that traditional online travel agencies (OTAs) have relied on is starting to weaken. At the same time, the possibility that 12306 China Railway, the official railway ticketing platform, could expand further into hotels and travel services has introduced a new variable for the online travel industry.

Around major holidays and long weekends, OTA train ticket pages are often filled with slogans such as “express ticket grabbing,” “waitlist acceleration,” and “high-success-rate ticket assistance.” Links promising “ticket grabbing” and “acceleration” frequently spill over onto social platforms. Some platforms also offer tiered paid acceleration services, attracting users with claims such as “the more you pay, the faster it goes and the higher the chance of success.”

For a long time, major OTAs have tried to build the impression that third-party platforms are faster than 12306 at securing train tickets. They have treated train ticket grabbing as an important traffic entry point, hoping to use China’s massive rail passenger flow to lift overall platform traffic.

But judging by the actual operating rules, much of this marketing is exaggerated.

The 12306 China Railway website and relevant technical personnel have said several times that 12306 has not opened any ticketing interface or priority ticketing channel to third-party platforms. Third-party train ticket booking and waitlist services are essentially queueing and refreshing operations through public online access points. They are no different from ordinary users manually buying tickets or joining the waitlist.

In other words, these services cannot change ticket allocation rules or improve a user’s chance of successfully buying a ticket.

Some platforms also guide users to buy longer-distance tickets and get off early, or buy shorter-distance tickets and ride past their ticketed destination. Others default users into value-added services during the ticket purchase process, while excessively collecting mobile phone numbers, travel history, identity information, and other private data. These were among the main reasons the leading OTA platforms were summoned this time.

Behind the disorder, it is not hard to see why OTAs have pushed into train ticketing. The goal is not only to complete their product ecosystems, but also to turn rail travel into a low-cost traffic gateway.

Rail travel has a large audience, high usage frequency, and strong user stickiness. It is a natural traffic pool.

As a result, attracting users through train ticket grabbing and booking services, then directing railway passengers toward higher-margin businesses such as hotel booking, leisure travel, vacation services, and local services, has become a common model for OTA platforms.

The financial data of leading companies shows how this model works.

Trip.com Group’s 2025 annual report showed that total revenue reached RMB 62.4 billion (USD 9.2 billion), while net profit attributable to shareholders reached RMB 33.3 billion (USD 4.9 billion), up 95.08% year-on-year. Accommodation booking generated RMB 26.1 billion (USD 3.8 billion) in revenue, accounting for about 41.8% of total revenue. Transportation ticketing generated RMB 22.5 billion (USD 3.3 billion), accounting for 36%. Together, the two core businesses made up nearly 80% of total revenue.

In terms of growth, Trip.com’s accommodation revenue increased 21% year-on-year, while ticketing revenue grew 11%. This shows that accommodation expansion played a stronger role in driving overall profit.

Tongcheng Travel’s financial data tells a similar story. In 2025, Tongcheng recorded total revenue of RMB 19.4 billion (USD 2.9 billion). Transportation ticketing revenue reached RMB 7.9 billion (USD 1.2 billion), accounting for 37.92% of total revenue and growing 9.6% year-on-year. Accommodation booking revenue reached RMB 5.5 billion (USD 810.4 million), accounting for 27.07% and growing 16.8%.

Several BOCOM International research reports on Tongcheng’s performance in previous quarters noted that the rise in the platform’s overall profit margin was driven mainly by accommodation revenue growth continuing to outpace transportation ticketing.

There has also long been market consensus that OTA commission rates differ between accommodation and ticketing suppliers. Accommodation typically carries a higher base commission rate, generally 10–15%. Transportation ticketing, by contrast, is largely priced by rail operators and airlines, so OTA platforms have to rely on value-added services such as acceleration packages and insurance to make money.

This highlights the internal division within OTA platforms: transportation ticketing is mainly for user acquisition, while accommodation is where profit is realized.

If the train ticket traffic channel is restricted, the traffic foundation of OTA platforms will be hit.

Can 12306 move into hotels and travel?

With regulation tightening, OTAs’ marketing tactics and profit margins in train ticketing will inevitably be compressed. Rail travel’s ability to funnel users into other services will also be reduced.

As third-party platforms gradually lose their traffic advantage in railway ticketing, another question emerges: will the official railway platform, which already holds a massive base of travel users, move more forcefully into hotels and travel, and take a share of traditional OTAs’ core business?

At present, China Railway 12306 has China’s largest travel user base. Its users span age groups and regions, and travel demand is often closely tied to accommodation and tourism. The 12306 platform has gradually added sections for hotels, homestays, tourism products, and other services, though it has not yet promoted them at scale.

Compared with traditional OTA platforms, 12306 has two natural advantages:

• First, it has a high level of user trust. As the official railway platform, it does not face the same concerns around false promotion or bundled purchases.
• Second, its traffic costs are low. It does not need to spend heavily on marketing to acquire users the way OTAs do. It can rely on existing ticket buying traffic to achieve organic conversion.

A similar transformation has already taken shape in civil aviation.

Umetrip, under TravelSky, previously launched a platform function for direct civil aviation sales, integrating direct sales resources from 37 domestic airlines and emphasizing transparent pricing, no bundled sales, and the prevention of algorithmic price discrimination. By directly connecting with official airline channels, it has quickly captured market share through public credibility.

The same could apply to the railway industry.

In recent years, China’s railway system has faced multiple operating pressures. On one hand, profitability has diverged among high-speed rail lines. Only a small number of trunk routes can generate stable profits, while many routes in central and western China rely on profits from trunk routes to subsidize operations. On the other hand, as passenger traffic growth slows, growth in rail ticketing revenue alone is plateauing. The system needs to accelerate market-oriented exploration, tap derivative user demand, and broaden revenue sources.

The Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway (HSR), the country’s busiest line, shows how growth pressure has emerged in recent years. Financial reports show that in 2025, Beijing-Shanghai HSR recorded revenue of RMB 43.1 billion (USD 6.4 billion) and net profit attributable to shareholders of RMB 13.2 billion (USD 1.9 billion), up only 2.15% and 3.16% year-on-year, respectively.

Its gross margin remains strong in absolute terms, but it has been slowly declining since 2024, falling from 47.39% to 45.82% in the first quarter of this year.

Accordingly, Beijing-Shanghai HSR, often considered the most profitable high-speed rail line in China, has started another round of price adjustments, raising the published fares of some electric multiple unit trains by 20%.

Although published fares may not necessarily match the actual fares passengers pay when buying tickets, the move still lifts the ceiling for high-speed rail pricing.

To some extent, this reflects operating pressure in the railway industry.

If 12306 continues to expand into hotel, travel, and tourism businesses, traditional OTAs’ profit margins may come under further pressure.

As the train ticket traffic channel tightens, the difficulty of acquiring external traffic will increase. At the same time, railway travelers who could previously have been converted by OTAs may be intercepted directly by the official platform, putting pressure on their core profit segments.

This change may have a more obvious impact on smaller and midsize OTAs, as well as platforms focused mainly on train ticketing. They usually lack the diversified business layouts of Trip.com and Tongcheng, as well as their brand and funding advantages.

Still, 12306 has clear shortcomings in hotel and travel services at this stage. Traditional OTAs have spent years cultivating the accommodation and tourism markets, building extensive hotel resources and advantages in product breadth, refined services, and offline supply chain integration.

By contrast, 12306 started as a ticketing platform. It is still in the early stages of hotel contracting, homestay operations, travel itinerary design, after-sales service, and other areas. In the short term, it will be difficult for it to replace traditional OTAs.

For OTA platforms, however, the business model that once relied on ambiguous promotion, bundled value-added services, and information asymmetry is now facing adjustment. Ticketing will return to its role as a basic service. Reducing reliance on rail traffic gateways, while improving competitiveness in tourism products, user experience, and supply chain integration, will become the next task that major OTAs need to answer to the market.

KrASIA features translated and adapted content that was originally published by 36Kr. This article was written by Wang Hanyu for 36Kr.

Note: RMB figures are converted to USD at rates of RMB 6.79 = USD 1 based on estimates as of June 23, 2026, unless otherwise stated. USD conversions are presented for ease of reference and may not fully match prevailing exchange rates.