On July 25, 2026, the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) imposed an administrative penalty on Ctrip for abusing its market dominance, marking another major monopoly case in China's platform economy. The case focuses on two monopolistic practices by Ctrip: exclusive cooperation and the 'lowest price across all platforms' clause. While exclusive cooperation has been involved in several previous platform economy monopoly cases, such as the 'choose one from two' cases of Alibaba and Meituan, as well as the CNKI case, this is the first time an anti-monopoly enforcement agency has directly penalized the 'lowest price across all platforms' clause.
Globally, monopoly issues in the online travel platform market, particularly platform most-favored-nation (MFN) clauses represented by 'lowest price across all platforms', have been a focus of anti-monopoly enforcement agencies. Well-known global OTA platforms like Booking.com, Expedia, and HRS have all faced investigations in multiple countries or regions for imposing such clauses on merchants. In this case, Ctrip's 'lowest price across all platforms' requirement for hotel merchants has some unique features compared to standard platform MFN clauses, effectively making it an 'upgraded version'.
First, Ctrip's requirement goes beyond a 'parity' obligation for merchants, imposing a 'lower price' requirement on some. MFN clauses are often called 'parity obligations' in practice, meaning the platform requires the merchant's price on its platform to be no higher than on other platforms; if the price drops on another platform, it must also drop on this one, ultimately ensuring the price is roughly the same. In this case, Ctrip categorized hotels into 'Special Card', 'Gold Card', and 'No Card' tiers. It required 'No Card' hotels to have prices no higher than on other platforms (parity), but demanded 'Gold Card' hotels to offer prices 20 yuan or 5% lower than other platforms (lower price).
Second, technology was used to enforce the 'lowest price across all platforms' clause. Ctrip's cooperation agreements forced 'Gold Card' and 'No Card' hotels operating across platforms to authorize direct price adjustments. If a hotel's price on another platform was lower than on Ctrip, Ctrip used technical tools like the 'Price Adjustment Assistant' and 'Listing Pass' to automatically adjust the price to the lowest across all platforms, and implemented penalties such as traffic restrictions, 'delisting', and deduction of order reserves.
Third, the 'lowest price across all platforms' clause was deeply integrated with differentiated exclusive cooperation arrangements. Ctrip used incentives like traffic allocation and rights support to induce high-trading-volume, high-quality, and user-attractive mid-to-high-end hotels to choose the 'Special Card' tier, requiring them to sell all online rooms exclusively on Ctrip's platform and not cooperate with competing platforms. For the remaining 'Gold Card' and 'No Card' hotels, it required 'lowest price across all platforms'. This strategy locked in 'Special Card' hotels to maintain the platform's high-end image and retain high-value business and official users, while offsetting potential short-term profit reductions from imposing 'lowest price across all platforms' on other hotels through the exclusive cooperation with 'Special Card' hotels.
The investigation and penalty in the Ctrip monopoly case are significant not only for clarifying the competitive harm mechanism and anti-monopoly law nature of the 'lowest price across all platforms' clause, and for guiding related industry operators with similar behaviors towards compliance, but also for regulating competitive order in the platform economy, curbing 'involution-style' competition, and ultimately promoting high-quality development of the platform economy.
First, this case clarifies that MFN clauses like 'lowest price across all platforms' can themselves constitute independent abuse of market dominance, specifically as imposing unreasonable trading conditions. MFN clauses have been involved in past anti-monopoly law practices in China but were not treated as independent monopolistic acts. For example, in the 'Eastman Abuse of Market Dominance Case' announced by the Shanghai Market Supervision Bureau in 2019, the MFN clause was deemed an incentive for the party's exclusive dealing. In the 'Tencent Illegal Concentration Case' announced in 2021, SAMR ordered Tencent to take measures to restore competition, including not requiring or implicitly requiring upstream copyright owners to give Tencent superior terms over competitors—this contained elements of MFN clauses, but prohibiting their implementation was used as a measure to restore competition, not as an independent charge.
Second, this case clarifies the competitive harm principle of MFN clauses like 'lowest price across all platforms', especially regarding consumer harm. The most direct harm of platform MFN clauses is restricting competition between platforms, such as aligning prices across platforms and weakening the ability of competing platforms to compete on price. While this is widely understood, the impact on consumer interests may be less clear. The penalty decision in this case clearly points out that the 'lowest price across all platforms' clause harms consumer interests in at least two ways: first, while ensuring a relatively low price on the current platform, it prevents merchants from selling at lower prices on other platforms, causing direct losses to consumers on those platforms (the price reduction on the current platform may also lead merchants to raise prices on other platforms to offset profit loss, potentially triggering price increases on other platforms and eventually a mismatch between price and service quality); second, the clause erodes merchant profit margins, forcing some to cut services or lower quality to compensate, potentially providing consumers with only 'low price, low quality' or even 'low price, inferior quality' services. From a long-term perspective, 'lowest price across all platforms' may weaken competitive pressure between platforms, increase the cost of price reductions for merchants, and reduce their willingness to lower prices, ultimately leading to higher overall prices. SAMR assessed the relationship between the clause and consumer interests from the perspective of the consumer group as a whole (not just some consumers) and overall consumer interests (not just price benefits), aligning with the anti-monopoly law's method of protecting consumer interests.
Third, the investigation of the Ctrip monopoly case also has an exemplary significance for applying anti-monopoly law rules in China's platform economy. The 2022 amendment to China's Anti-Monopoly Law explicitly included provisions prohibiting operators from using data, algorithms, technology, capital advantages, and platform rules to engage in monopolistic acts like abuse of market dominance. However, these legislative provisions are generally abstract and lack targeted cases, making it difficult for operators to grasp their specific meaning when conducting anti-monopoly compliance work. The Ctrip case has largely activated the data, algorithm, technology, and platform rule provisions of the Anti-Monopoly Law. Ctrip's exclusive cooperation and 'lowest price across all platforms' clauses were not only embedded in platform rules but also enforced using data, algorithms, and technology. The penalty decision in this case, by meticulously analyzing how data, algorithms, technology, and platform rules serve as tools for implementing monopolistic acts in platform economy monopoly cases and how they interact, establishes the basic understanding that while technology is neutral, its users may not be, and clarifies the baseline for platform operators using data, algorithms, technology, and platform rules.
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