--- title: "Huoli Group's third attempt in Hong Kong: The obsession and dilemma of a mid-sized player under the shadow of giants" type: "Topics" locale: "zh-HK" url: "https://longbridge.com/zh-HK/topics/36841710.md" description: "As the battle for dominance in domestic travel services intensifies among super giants, a mid-sized player that has long lived in the shadow of these behemoths—focusing on the 'rail + air' scenario—is knocking on the door of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange for the third time. Huoli Group, the veteran travel app operator behind 'Flight Butler' and 'High-Speed Rail Butler,' has survived the squeeze between giants over the past decade and even achieved high GMV and stable profitability. Now, it is betting on high-frequency ticketing scenarios, which not only bring traffic but also form a moat strong enough to support its IPO narrative. However, the contradictions facing capital are equally sharp..." datetime: "2025-12-02T07:13:32.000Z" locales: - [en](https://longbridge.com/en/topics/36841710.md) - [zh-CN](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/topics/36841710.md) - [zh-HK](https://longbridge.com/zh-HK/topics/36841710.md) author: "[港股研究社](https://longbridge.com/zh-HK/profiles/3199113.md)" --- > 支持的語言: [English](https://longbridge.com/en/topics/36841710.md) | [简体中文](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/topics/36841710.md) # Huoli Group's third attempt in Hong Kong: The obsession and dilemma of a mid-sized player under the shadow of giants As the battle for dominance in domestic travel service portals intensifies among the super giants, a mid-sized player that has long lived in the shadows of these giants, leveraging the "rail + air" scenario, is knocking on the door of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange for the third time. Huoli Group, the veteran travel app operator behind "Flight Butler" and "High-Speed Rail Butler," has survived in the cracks between giants over the past decade, even achieving high GMV and stable profitability. Now, it is betting on high-frequency ticketing scenarios, which not only bring traffic but also form a moat strong enough to support its IPO narrative. However, the contradictions facing capital are equally sharp. Can a company with only a 1.4% market share, highly reliant on ticketing and value-added services for monetization, really tell a compelling growth story in a landscape where Ctrip controls 30% of the market? Is it merely a marginal filler in the giants' ecosystem, or can it still become an independent core traffic portal in the travel industry chain? **Impressive Growth but Monolithic Structure: Can Huoli Group Sustain a Long-Term Story?** As a one-stop comprehensive travel platform focused on the travel sector, Huoli Group owns two major products: "Flight Butler" and "High-Speed Rail Butler." According to Frost & Sullivan data, in 2024, Huoli Group ranked eighth in China's internet-based mobile comprehensive services market by GMV, accounting for about 1.4% of the total market. In recent years, its performance has shown overall growth trend. From 2022 to 2024, revenue increased from 280 million to 647 million yuan, with a three-year compound growth rate of 52%. Profit performance also grew in tandem, with net profits of 59.3 million yuan and 51.2 million yuan in 2023 and 2024, respectively, and a net profit of 47.1 million yuan in the first half of 2025. Gross margins have also remained high, at 47.1%, 56.8%, 53.5%, and 57.1% for 2022-2024 and the first half of 2025, respectively. Despite this, its problems are equally evident. Over 89% of its revenue comes from travel-related services (including transportation ticketing, business travel management, ride-hailing, accommodation booking, and other services), with transportation ticketing contributing the most at 73.1%. This shows that Huoli Group's core business model remains selling tickets + value-added services + memberships. This is a model highly dependent on industry conditions, supply chain structure, and policy changes. It grows fast and can be profitable, but the ceiling is clear. The no-commission model of "High-Speed Rail Butler" not only defines this ceiling but also exposes future concerns. Currently, the ticketing process for "High-Speed Rail Butler" relies heavily on the official 12306 online platform and offline agency channels. This means that no matter how large the train ticket business grows, it cannot directly improve GMV monetization efficiency; its value-added services and membership income are heavily influenced by policy guidance. Therefore, this business line is essentially more of a traffic and data portal than a profit driver. This further explains why Huoli Group must turn to an IPO to find new business space, as the existing model, while stable, has its growth ceiling written in the sky. Beyond this, Huoli Group possesses the highest-frequency user behavior data in the industry, theoretically making it a key holder of travel data assets. But from a commercial perspective, it has yet to convert this data into sufficient ToB revenue or ecosystem effects. In short, while Huoli Group has a story, its data performance is not yet enough to convince capital that it can become the main engine of the future. Especially in this travel service market dominated by giants, the pressures Huoli Group faces go beyond this. **Portal Redistribution Under Giant Dominance: What Are Huoli Group's Chances?** In China's travel service ecosystem, "flight information," "high-speed rail queries," and "air and train ticket bookings" are truly high-frequency, essential scenarios. Over the past decade, Huoli Group, leveraging its "Flight Butler" and "High-Speed Rail Butler" portals, has attracted over 217 million users cumulatively, selling 33.9 million flight tickets and 94.5 million train tickets in 2024, with total ticket sales nearing 130 million. Its GMV also reached 40.52 billion yuan in 2024, ranking second in China's comprehensive travel service market, just behind Ctrip. Now that giants are no longer relying on burning cash to compete for users and traffic is returning to structured allocation, Huoli Group has few cards left to play. For the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, a platform company that maintains an independent traffic portal and sustainable profitability under the giants does have a certain rarity. For Huoli Group itself, these high-frequency scenario assets not only form its survival foundation but could also be key bargaining chips to attract capital and expand collaborative boundaries. However, the structural pressures in the travel service industry are forcing mid-sized players to accelerate. The ticketing chain is rapidly consolidating, with high-speed rail tightly controlled by 12306 and the aviation supply chain highly concentrated. The bargaining power and inventory access of small and medium-sized platforms are being squeezed further. Once the industry fully solidifies, players with only high-frequency portals but lacking full-chain capabilities will be permanently pinned to the label of "tool-type apps," making it difficult to rise as comprehensive platforms. For Huoli Group, going public is not just about raising capital but about leveraging the capital market to strengthen credibility, build ecosystem collaboration capabilities, and break through supply chain bottlenecks. It needs a stronger capital story to enhance its bargaining power, rather than passively surviving in the "ticket sales + value-added" business model. Behind the third listing attempt is a sense of urgency—"if we don't go now, we'll miss our chance." From a capital perspective, as industry structural changes accelerate and the window of opportunity closes, Huoli Group needs to prove it is not a vassal of the giants' ecosystem but an independent participant with sufficiently stable traffic, profitability, market share, and long-term potential. The new story Huoli Group must tell is no longer about "how many users we have" or "how many tickets we've sold," but whether it can evolve from a "tool-type app" to a "comprehensive platform"—a critical inflection point for its future stability. **Conclusion** As a veteran player in China's high-frequency travel service market, Huoli Group's journey to this point has not been easy. It has maintained scale growth, user stickiness, and profitability under the giants' shadows and has successfully held its ground in an era of inventory consolidation and regulatory tightening. But whether it can go further depends not on its current impressive data but on whether it can transition from a high-frequency tool to a diversified platform, from a ticketing business to a data + service ecosystem. This will determine whether it remains a steady mid-sized player in China's future travel service landscape or has a chance to become the "third pole" outside the giants' ecosystem. ### 相關股票 - [TRIP.COM-S (09961.HK)](https://longbridge.com/zh-HK/quote/09961.HK.md) - [Trip.com (TCOM.US)](https://longbridge.com/zh-HK/quote/TCOM.US.md) - [Trip.com HK SDR 50to1 (HTGD.SG)](https://longbridge.com/zh-HK/quote/HTGD.SG.md)