Baidu CEO Robin Li quits Trip.com board as the search giant shifts focus from travel to AI

Li has resigned as a board director at Trip.com, a role he assumed after the company completed a share swap with Baidu-backed Qunar
Baidu remains Trip.com’s largest shareholder with a 10.7 per cent stake, although Li has turned his gaze from the travel sector to large AI models

E-commerce

Lilian Zhang

Published: 6:30pm, 21 Jul 2023

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Robin Li Yanhong, founder and chief executive of Baidu, has quit the board of Trip.com Group, China’s largest online travel service provider, after eight years as a director, reflecting the country’s changing technology and entrepreneurship landscape.

The Shanghai-based holiday-booking site operator on Thursday announced the resignation of Li, 54, with immediate effect, without providing a reason for his departure.

Li landed a seat on the board in 2015 when Ctrip.com International, the predecessor of Trip.com, and Baidu-backed Qunar completed a share swap to end a cash-burning price war. The deal gave Baidu a 25 per cent stake in Ctrip, while Ctrip controlled 45 per cent of Qunar.

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But Li’s interests in the travel service business began to wane as he shifted increasing attention to autonomous driving and artificial intelligence. The latter became an even bigger priority after the launch of ChatGPT by US start-up OpenAI, which spurred Baidu on to introduce its rival Ernie Bot and bet its future on foundation models.

The Beijing-based search engine giant in 2019 sold about a third of its stake in Trip.com for around US$1 billion amid a slowing economy and intensifying competition in the advertising field – one of its key businesses.

With its remaining 10.7 per cent stake, Baidu is still Trip.com’s largest shareholder, according to the travel company’s annual report last year.

Trip.com Group is currently listed on Hong Kong stock exchange, following a secondary listing in 2021. Photo: Handout

Founded in 1999 in Shanghai, Ctrip – renamed Trip.com in 2019 after it acquired the Silicon Valley-based start-up bearing that name – has been listed on the Nasdaq since 2003. It secured a secondary listing in the Hong Kong stock exchange in 2021.

As part of its global expansion plan, the company also bought Skyscanner, a Scotland-based flight-search company, in 2016.

Trip.com’s eight other directors will continue to serve the board, the company said on Thursday.

They include co-founder and executive chairman James Liang Jianzhang with a 4.4 per cent stake in the company, chief executive Jane Sun Jie with a 1.6 per cent stake, and vice-chairman Fan Min with a 1.2 per cent stake.

Co-founder Neil Shen Nanpeng – the founding managing partner of venture capital firm Sequoia China, recently rebranded as HongShan – is also on the board.

Tourism has picked up in China after the country lifted its strict pandemic measures late last year. Photo: AFP

Trip.com posted a profit of 1.4 billion yuan (US$206 million) in 2022 to end two years of losses, as China’s rigid Covid-19 pandemic restrictions devastated the country’s tourism industry. The company pulled through by cutting operating costs until the Chinese ban on international travel was lifted, refuelling demand for its services.

In the first quarter of this year, Trip.com reported a 124 per cent year-on-year increase in net revenue to 9.2 billion yuan, up 83 per cent from the previous quarter thanks to “substantial recovery of the travel market”, according to the company’s latest financial statement.

Along with Baidu and other internet giants in China, Trip.com recently jumped on the ChatGPT bandwagon with the roll-out of its travel-oriented large language model Wendao, which is designed to provide customers with tools to obtain accurate voyage data and deal recommendations.

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