James Lee: Great. Thanks, Cindy.
Operator: Thank you for the questions. The next question is we have Jiong Shao from Barclays. Please proceed.
Jiong Shao: Thank you very much for taking my questions. Given the China’s reopening has been €“ the pivot has been very decisive and swift, I was wondering if you can share some of your thoughts about the outlook for Chinese New Year travel this year? Do you see it will be back hopefully? And any outlook for the outbound, which obviously is Chinese travelers haven’t been able to do much last few years, what do you think that spike is going to happen sometime by next year, how that’s going to evolve in your view in the next 12 months? Thank you so much.
Jane Sun: Thank you. So, the Chinese New Year is not a €“ the calendar New Year is not a big holiday in China. And due to the short booking window, the visibility for Spring Festival, the Chinese New Year reservation, at this moment, is still low. However, the search interest went up by three times €“ several times following the announcement of the new COVID policy. We are also seeing significant increase of reservations as well. But the current orders are not meaningfully to forecast the travel activity in Spring Festival just because of the very short booking windows in the past couple of years. And with regard to the recovery of the outbound travel, following the recent release of COVID policy optimization, and the message is that the authority will continue to refine cross-border related healthcare measures.
I think it’s reasonable to anticipate further changes that will facilitate the cross-border travel. And many airlines also announced the plans to increase international flight capacity. And to-date, the average weekly inbound €“ outbound flight has more than doubled in the past four months to five months to about 10% of 2019 level, and will continue to grow. And furthermore, following the release of the new policies in November, the search volume for inbound and outbound travel skyrocketed in the subsequent days. Cross-border air ticket reservations in Mainland China also reached the highest level since 2020. To-date, the inbound and outbound flight reservations recovered to about 20% of the pre-COVID level. With regards to the outlook of our recovery, outlook towards the next year, we are encouraged to see the very strong rebound of travel demand in the overseas market in the previous quarters.
And we believe it is the same case in China where travelers, especially the mid to high-end travelers, also have very strong desire to travel internationally.
Jiong Shao: Thank you.
Jane Sun: Thank you.
Operator: Thank you for the questions. The next question comes from Alex Poon from Morgan Stanley. Please proceed.
Alex Poon: Thank you, management for taking my questions. Congrats on very strong results, the future outlook, and wish everyone keeping good health. So, my question is related to €“ so I think as things are getting reopened, we will get to normal very quickly. So, how should investors think about once we get back to 2019 level, the post-pandemic future growth outlook drivers? Thank you very much.
Jane Sun: Yes. So, for the future growth, we have seen very strong pent-up demand in the long-term. As soon as the government relax the policy, our site has a surge of the search for both domestic travel as well as international travel. So, for Trip.com, we look at domestic travel and international travel very positively. First of all, I think for the domestic travel, for people who are staying in the high-end hotels, value for money and also a comprehensive product offering has been very well liked by our customers who prefer to stay in the high-end hotels. So, that segment has enjoyed a resilient growth in the past, even during a very difficult time. Secondly, our team also penetrated further into the lower-tier cities to encourage the users’ engagement and make sure we are tapping to these untouched markets as quickly as possible.
Thirdly, for international travel, because we offer a very high end of the comprehensive product as well as solid customer service, we are able to bring the customers who have the interest to travel abroad even during the lockdown. And with the relaxation of the travel, we have seen a huge surge for the outbound travel. And going forward, in the long run, that will become another very strong driving initiative for our team to capitalize on. So, overall, I think with domestic travel as well as international travel, the opportunity is very prevalent. So, our team is working very hard to strengthen our service products and also the technology infrastructure to build the infrastructure to enable our customers to see the best of the domestic attractions as well as the global attractions.
Thank you.
Alex Poon: Thank you.
Operator: Thank you for the question. Our next question comes from Tian Hou from T.H. Capital. Please proceed.
