Mid Autumn Festival and National Day holiday come to an end. According to data from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the number of domestic tourists and total domestic travel expenses during the National Day holiday in China reached 738.375 billion yuan, an increase of 6.3% and 4.3% year-on-year, respectively.

Multiple online travel platforms have disclosed the popularity of holiday travel from different dimensions: Ctrip reported double-digit growth in domestic ticket orders year-on-year, Tongcheng reported an increase of over 20% in overnight tourists to traditional long-term travel destinations, and Fliggy reported an increase of over 40% in bookings for natural scenery and village related travel products. The three sets of data have different calibers, but all show that peak season travel is still active.

Beyond the excitement of the peak season, a longer-term issue is emerging: the accommodation industry, as the "compass" of the tourism industry, is facing multiple pressures: both the macro economy and the accommodation industry are in the "late winter and early spring" of the Kangbo cycle; In the past three years, the supply growth rate of the accommodation industry has continued to exceed demand, and the scissors gap is still widening.

At present, Fliggy is the only OTA that discloses the overall situation of hotels. Its data shows that the number of room nights for long holiday hotels has exceeded historical peaks for four consecutive days, with a year-on-year increase of nearly 70% in daily room nights. Hotel room nights in more than 100 cities have doubled, and there are over 70 official flagship hotel room nights on the platform.

This means that under the low single digit growth rate of the entire accommodation industry, Fliggy is rapidly gaining more market share. A certain merchant stated that in recent months, the proportion of orders from Fliggy has approached 50%, while this number has remained at around 20% for a long time.

Half is seawater, half is flames. This indicates that the accommodation industry is growing, but the logic of growth may have changed.

The general rise and fall, supply growth is changing the way of competition

According to the "Report on the Development of China's Hotel Industry" by the China Hotel Association in the past three years, as of December 31, 2025, the number of hotel facilities in mainland China has reached 375000, with a total of 18.736 million guest rooms. From 2022 to 2025, the compound annual growth rate of hotel stores and guest rooms will exceed 10%, and the supply side will maintain double-digit growth.

But the other side of the coin is that hotel revenue has not been synchronized. The semi annual report for 2026 confirms this trend - the overall RevPAR of several listed hotel groups still slightly increased due to new stores, but for mature stores operating for more than 18 months, the year-on-year decline in RevPAR was between 2% and 6%. The pressure of the stock game has been transmitted to the operational data of mature stores.

In order to compete for limited customer sources, many hotels are forced to engage in price wars: lowering prices to attract traffic, compressing costs, and even sacrificing RevPAR to maintain OCC. The result is that both RevPAR and OCC are under pressure, and the space for upgrading service quality is also squeezed. This is not a problem with a single hotel, but a collective dilemma faced by the entire industry in the face of supply-demand imbalance. When "price reduction" becomes the most effective means of competition, the value creation ability of the industry is gradually being consumed.

For hotel industry professionals, there are only two directions in front of them: one is to reduce operating costs and save on food and clothing, and the other is to seek incremental space and increase revenue through open sources. The former is almost impossible, in fact, in the past two years, the rigid costs such as manpower and linen in hotels have been increasing year by year. Therefore, finding increment in the existing market is the most core proposition for practitioners.

Shift from general traffic to high-quality customer base

Competition and opportunities never disappear, they only shift.

In the past year, there have been some changes in the traffic structure of online travel platforms. Last June, Fliggy joined Alibaba's China e-commerce business group and quickly gathered resources on Taobao and Gaode domains, including adding a first level traffic entrance on the Taobao app, launching a Taobao flash purchase channel for discounted hotels, and establishing a membership system with Taobao. Under the strategic guidance of Alibaba's big consumption platform, the high-frequency exchanges have gathered over 400 million DAUs, becoming the strongest source of traffic for Fliggy's liquor and tourism orders.

The results of this collaboration are first reflected in the growth data of Fliggy itself. Fliggy disclosed that during the Mid Autumn Festival and National Day holiday in 2025, the Spring Festival in 2026, and the summer vacation in 2026, their hotel room nights increased by 78%, 75%, and 66% year-on-year, respectively; During this long holiday, the daily average room nights of hotels increased by nearly 70% year-on-year, exceeding the historical peak of the platform for four consecutive days.

These data belong to a single platform caliber and cannot directly represent the overall trend of the accommodation industry, nor are they sufficient to derive market share changes separately. However, they provide an entry point for observing structural increments: platforms and merchants that can access new scenarios and specific groups still have the opportunity to obtain new sources of orders in existing competition.

Among them, high-value members have become a variable worth paying attention to. According to data from Fliggy, during this National Day holiday, the per capita hotel consumption of 88VIP users in Fliggy was 34% higher than the overall market, driving a year-on-year increase of over 80% in the number of contracted room nights in Fliggy's high-end hotel market. Obviously, in addition to traffic, 88VIP users have become the most prominent engine in this round of growth.

According to industry insiders close to Fliggy, Fliggy has significantly increased its resource investment in high-value groups such as 88VIP, Fliggy F4, and above in the past year. For example, with the help of Taobao's Super 88 and other activities, reaching over 60 million 88VIP users through coupon distribution and other means; Provide additional fallback protection for typical user pain points such as ticket refunds and changes, hotel price reductions, etc; During the 618 and Double 11 promotions, even exclusive premium products were launched, with refined operations carried out directly from the product level.

For hotels, the value of this type of customer group lies not only in higher unit prices, but also in their stronger demand for room types, services, and brand experience. The revenue generated by a high-end room type may be higher than that of multiple basic room types sold at a low price. From this perspective, the focus of platform competition is shifting from "who can bring in more traffic" to "who can more accurately identify and organize effective demand".

Brand flagship stores provide another path. Hotel groups can accumulate members on the platform, present brand supply uniformly, and form more stable repurchase relationships through differences in packages, benefits, and services. It may not necessarily replace the hotel's own membership system, but it has become an important means for brand hotels to attract new customers and connect platform public traffic with brand private domain operations.

Industry insiders have analyzed that this is also the trump card used by Fliggy in the past year to quickly attract supply from the hotel industry - for hotels, it is better to find a precise target audience and continue to operate instead of competing for lower prices and profits.

New channels bring new increments, but also new costs

From the perspective of OTA platform, the thriving wine travel business of the content platform represented by Tiktok and Xiaohongshu cannot be ignored. Tiktok data shows that among the group purchase orders for the Mid Autumn National Day holiday this year, hotel orders increased by nearly 79% year on year.

For hotel professionals, in addition to the huge traffic pool that content platforms have, businesses have the opportunity to actively create traffic through filming short videos, live streaming, and other content methods, transforming "emotional value" into "transaction value".

But content channels are not without cost. Continuous production of short videos, live streaming, and collaboration with influencers all require costs; When traffic competition intensifies, merchants may also fall back into low-priced group buying. More importantly, hotel transactions are not just about seeding content once, but also involve room availability, prices, inventory, fulfillment, and after-sales service in the future. The ability to establish stable conversion and fulfillment capabilities determines whether the popularity of content can be accumulated into long-term returns.

Therefore, for hotels, the significance of adding new channels is not to "open an additional account", but to establish a channel combination: traditional online travel platforms undertake clear needs, content platforms stimulate potential needs, and brand membership systems are responsible for building relationships. How to allocate budget, products, and inventory between different channels will become a part of hotel merchants' revenue management balance.

AI is becoming a new variable

In the long run, the imaginative space of AI cannot be ignored.

Since the 1990s, the digitalization of the accommodation industry has not undergone significant changes in the past 30 years, with only a few dozen labels for a hotel or a room. But the demand side is already different: family outings need to take into account shuttle services, hotels must be within a few kilometers of a certain place, a room with a sunset view, and customized services that can meet both meetings and meals at the same time... These complex and segmented needs are difficult to meet with traditional shelf based searches, but AI can.

This is a new opportunity for all AI participants. The data disclosed by the platform has shown some early changes. According to Fliggy data, during the long holiday, the number of machine wine bookings guided by Fliggy Help increased by 110% month on month, and the number of completed check-in, refunds, and changes increased by nearly 100%; Doubao data also shows that the order volume of "Doubao hotel booking" increased by 56% month on month.

These numbers are still in the early stages of the business and are also affected by the base and holiday effects. They are not yet sufficient to indicate that AI has reshaped the booking landscape, but at least they indicate that AI agents are trying to enter the wine and travel trading chain.

For hotels, the first challenge brought by AI is to reorganize the supply information. In the past, a hotel may only need to maintain the address, star rating, room type, and price; In the future, details such as connectivity, pet policies, accessibility facilities, landscape orientation, and parent-child services may all affect whether it can be accurately found in a natural language Q&A.

The supply side is indeed taking action upon hearing the wind. According to previous reports, Fliggy has partnered with Qianwen to establish AI partnerships with nearly 100 major hotel and travel brands, providing exclusive subsidies to AI channel users of Fliggy and Qianwen, including well-known hotel groups such as Wanda, Jinjiang, Huazhu, Shoulv Home, Hyatt, Dongcheng, Shangmei Shuzhi, and Green.

The second challenge occurs on the business side. AI can be used for repetitive tasks such as room status and inventory adjustment, invoice processing, real-time data analysis, etc. The merchant tool test data previously disclosed by Fliggy shows that the decision-making time for price management in some hotels has been reduced from an average of 2 hours to 10 minutes. It suggests a possibility that AI's short-term value to the hotel industry may not be primarily about replacing people, but rather shortening the business decision-making process.

These two challenges, to put it more bluntly, are that whoever reorganizes or even creates supply for the AI era first is more likely to make it easier for users to find and find themselves through the AI booking portal, and gain a first mover advantage; Whoever is good at using AI tools is more likely to widen the gap in business efficiency and taste the sweetness first.

Competition is cruel. Some people eat away their share, while others lose their share. The long-term growth of the accommodation industry has benefited from the online rate, chain rate, and expansion of tourism consumption. When these dividends gradually return to normal, growth is no longer just a natural result of the overall market's rise, but becomes a capability that needs to be actively constructed.

In the short to medium term, anchor those identified incremental sources. Taking Fliggy as an example, the high-quality customer base represented by 88VIP, the private domain members represented by brand flagship stores, and the cross scenario traffic brought by Alibaba's ecological collaboration - these are the deterministic directions that can be redeemed as room nights and revenue in the next peak season.

In the long run, prepare for the supply and operation mode of the AI era. When consumers' expression of needs changes from "filtering criteria" to "natural language description", when search changes from "shelf style" to "dialogue style", and when business decisions change from "experiential" to "data switch", hotels need to make a new round of adaptation in terms of supply information and operating methods. Of course, this is not something that the platform alone can accomplish, it requires joint investment from both merchants and the platform.

In the past few decades, China's wine and tourism system has been catching up with the online and chain rates of developed countries. When the market no longer provides a general upward dividend, growth becomes an ability that needs to be actively built.

And this ability is defining the competitive landscape of the accommodation industry in the next cycle.