Trip.com Just Took a $770 Million Hit and It's Changing the Rules for Hotels

0:10Tasmin Lockwood: Today, we're tracking a$770 million hit to Trip.com's books, American Airlines drawing a hard line on capacity if fuel prices don't ease up, and Sam's Club going all in on cruises. Welcome back to the Skiff Daily Briefing. It's Thursday, September 17th. I'm Tasman Lockwood, Skape's climate and experiences reporter. Let's get into it. First up, China's antitrust crackdown just cost Trip.com group millions and is reshaping how the company does business at home. Trip.com booked a$770 million regulatory hit in the second quarter, tipping the company from$730 million in profit a year ago into a$358 million loss.

0:57Tasmin Lockwood: But the biggest story isn't the one-time charge. it's what comes next. Trip.com is overhauling how it works with hotel partners in China, killing its old tier two distribution setup, moving suppliers into a new multi-tier framework, and rewriting its ranking algorithm to wait service quality and customer satisfaction more heavily. Executives admit this creates a near-term volatility as partners adjust, so Trip.com is leaning harder into international growth to offset it. International OTA revenue was up more than 50 % year on year. Premium flight bookings jumped over 70%. And the company says it wants to serve 200 million inbound travelers over the next five years.

1:40Tasmin Lockwood: The bottom line? The fine hits the books once. The new rules for how hotels compete on Trip.com's platform could last a lot longer. Next, American Airlines is putting the industry on notice. If fuel prices don't come down, expect fewer flights. CEO Robert Isom told investors at the Morgan Stanley Laguna Conference that sustained high fuel cost will force adjustments to capacity planning, with slower growth likely in 2027. CFO Devin May said American will already trim capacity in the third and fourth quarters. Jet fuel is running around$4.43 a gallon right now. American still expects revenue to grow and had initially guided third quarter capacity up 3-5%, with revenue up 16-19%.

2:28Tasmin Lockwood: The company is still betting big on premium. Newly retrofitted Boeing 777-300ERs, seatback screens coming back to narrow-bodied jets, and Starlink rolling out on about 500 more planes next year. About 30 % of American seats are premium, but they already generate half of the airline's revenue. The takeaway? American is growing faster than Delta and United right now, but fuel prices, not demand, are what could slow that down. Are what could slow that down. Finally, Sam's Club just made its move into cruises, and it's going after one of travel's last offline holdouts. The Walmart-owned warehouse chain relaunched Sam's Club Travel with a new cruise booking platform built by Boundless Labs, the company formerly known as CruiseBound.

3:16Tasmin Lockwood: cruises are notoriously hard to sell online because of all of the moving parts which is why most bookings still happen through a human agent sam's club is betting that curated itineraries rewards and a faster checkout can pull cruise shoppers away from a phone call that puts sam's club in direct competition with costco travel which already does billions in cruise and vacation package bookings in-house rather than through a partner but it's a different lane than walmart's own Expedia power travel arm, which doesn't sell cruises itself. The bottom line? Cruise bookings have resisted going digital for years.

3:53Tasmin Lockwood: If Sam's Club and Boundless can crack it, expect Costco and the cruise lines themselves to pay close attention. That's your SCIFT Daily Briefing for Thursday, September 17th. I'm Tasman Lockwood. For more travel industry news, head to SCIFT.com and sign up for the daily newsletter at SCIFT.com forward slash daily. Thank you.