From air ticket bundling to child abuse, Ctrip betrays its values

Recently, two videos circulated online, showing teachers at Ctrip's Shanghai Parent-Child Center beating children and forcibly feeding them what appeared to be mustard. Prior to this, Ctrip had just been exposed for rectifying its bundling of air tickets. For some time, in pursuit of perfect performance, Ctrip neglected the construction of cultural goals, resulting in various incidents that violated the bottom line of business ethics.

The teacher at Ctrip Parent-Child Center violently beat the children, which is shocking

The video is divided into two parts. One of the parts was on November 1, 2017. In this video, a teacher threw a little girl's schoolbag to the ground. While taking off her clothes, he pushed the little girl and caused her to fall to the ground. Her head was suspected to have hit the table next to her.

The second video shows the time as November 3, 2017. In this video, the teacher is suspected of forcing the children to feed what appears to be mustard and hitting a little girl.

In response, Ctrip told Blue Whale TMT that it firmly requested the school to deal seriously with the teachers involved. Currently, the staff involved have terminated their contracts with Ctrip. At the same time, Ctrip reported the incident to the police on November 7 and will investigate the incident to the end.

Ctrip said that the parent-child garden was managed by the "For Children Academy" under the "Modern Family" magazine commissioned by Ctrip. At present, Ctrip has started the relevant procedures to re-select the management unit of the parent-child garden.

It is understood that Ctrip opened a "Parent-Child Garden" in Shanghai in February last year to provide childcare for its employees. The service hours are from 8:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. every day, and the monthly fee is 2,580 yuan. However, it was later closed for a period of time by the Shanghai Changning District Education Bureau because it did not obtain an administrative license.

Ctrip is widely questioned for bundling air tickets

This is not an isolated case.

Ctrip has been in trouble this year. During the National Day holiday on October 1, an article titled "10 billion a year? Revealing the "Ctrip" trap" was widely circulated on the Internet. The article directly pointed out that Ctrip's bundled sales are linked one after another. When users book air tickets and train tickets on Ctrip, they are often bundled with fees such as private cars and hotel coupons. However, users often find it difficult to detect this, and it is also troublesome to modify it. The article wrote that this default bundling of value-added services sales method, based on Ctrip's financial data, can bring Ctrip nearly 1 billion yuan in commission income a year.

Although this article was later confirmed to be old news, the issue of Ctrip's bundled sales of air tickets, train tickets, etc. still aroused widespread doubts.

Actress Han Xue directly "blasted" Ctrip's bundling sales model on Weibo, saying that she was "tricked" and attached a flight order.

Han Xue said that she had complained to Ctrip more than once about hotel bookings being resold and overseas local reception staff violating laws and regulations, but received nothing but an apology. Han Xue asked Ctrip to face the problems honestly and apologize to the public.

Under pressure from the media, Ctrip rectified its air ticket products and launched a "normal booking" window where customers can cancel at any time.

“Bundling” has led to investigation by the China Consumers Association

In April this year, the China Consumers Association launched an investigation into Ctrip's "bundling" problem. The China Consumers Association said that according to consumer feedback and media reports, when consumers booked tickets online, Ctrip defaulted to check paid items such as aviation insurance and hotel coupons without the consumers' knowledge. The above problem is suspected of infringing on consumers' rights such as the right to choose independently.

In May, the China Consumers Association received a rectification report from Ctrip.com. Ctrip said there were problems and deficiencies in the pricing of different products, item selection operations, refund services, etc. Four improvement measures were introduced. Specifically, they are: opening a cancellation channel for value-added services; strengthening clear price marking and clear price; double reminders to consumers after settlement confirmation and transaction; while updating and improving technology, providing products without default options for consumers to choose, and placing them in a prominent position.

Apparently, Ctrip did not implement the improvement measures in the rectification report for its air ticket products, which triggered the "bundled sales" controversy in October.

Ctrip betrays its values

In response to the incident of beating a young child, Liang Jianzhang, founder and chairman of Ctrip, posted on his WeChat Moments, "It's like not taking good care of your own child. Jane (Ctrip CEO Jane Sun) and I feel very guilty and sad. He also promised: "We will never shirk responsibility, never condone those involved, and never avoid problems."

At the same time, Ctrip fired the employee involved, which shows that the senior management "takes it very seriously". However, even if the employee is fired, new employees still need to be recruited. The kindergarten cannot be closed down and needs to continue to operate and meet the company's KPI. How to prevent such vicious incidents from happening again is a problem that Ctrip will have to face in the future.

From last year's recruitment scandal to the airline ticket bundling scandal, to today's child beating scandal, shouldn't Ctrip first focus on the company's management and values?

As early as 2011, Ctrip was selected as the "Most Admired Chinese Company" by Fortune magazine. Currently, Ctrip's market value is 10.5 billion US dollars, second only to BAT and JD.com in China, and second only to Priceline in the world. It is equivalent to 250 9Cities, 44 Jiayuan.com, 6 51Job, and 2 Youku Tudou, and exceeds the total market value of Shanghai Internet listed companies. It can be seen that Ctrip is in good operating condition and is not a company with outdated operating conditions.

Some analysts believe that the values ​​that Ctrip has always advocated are "purity + focus". Ctrip's grand vision is to work together to achieve a wonderful life journey and to be among the Fortune 500 in the future - this is a goal and direction that all Ctrip people know. Ctrip's senior management once said that the most important thing for a company is to build a unified value system and sense of mission, and to create a team execution that integrates knowledge and action. Strictly speaking, its values ​​are impeccable, but the problem lies in the combination of its business goals and cultural goals. Ctrip paid too much attention to whether it could achieve annual performance, but ignored the completion of cultural goals, thus deviating from the values ​​it advocated at the beginning.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.