China’s Trip.com chief on journey to boost working mothers
BEIJING:THE head of Chinese travel giant Trip.com, Jane Sun, is on a mission to propel women through her workforce, spearheading novel approaches such as encouraging babies on business trips and free egg freezing.
As a working mother, she understands the challenges faced by many women in China, whose participation in the labour force has been falling for decades. She runs China’s largest online tourism agency and is one of the country’s business elite: a Silicon Valley returnee who moves in friendship circles with the likes of Alibaba founder Jack Ma and has the ear of the government. But as well as moving the business to new markets globally, Sun is also looking closer to home for growth.
She wants to drive female representation across the 45,000-strong Trip.com workforce, including efforts to accommodate breastfeeding mothers by inviting them to take their babies along on work trips and introducing nursing rooms.
Staff benefits include flexible working, free taxis for pregnant employees, and offering staff the option of freezing their eggs - funded by the company.
“I think we are really taking the leadership, and that pays off,” she said, with female representation at middle management level now 40% and onethird at executive level.
“That number is even better than most of the companies in the Silicon Valley,” Sun said in an interview with AFP.
Sun became chief financial officer at Trip.com - then known as Ctrip - in 2005, and chief executive officer in 2016.
In that time the group has morphed into an international site in 19 languages with 300 million registered members.
The company’s gross revenues grew 30% year-on-year in 2018 to 725 billion RMB ($103 bn), tapping into the appetite for travel among millions of China’s newly-rich middle classes. Chinese tourists made 149 million overseas trips in 2018, with total spending of
$130 billion, according to the China Tourism Academy.
Trip.com is also working with the government on how to improve China’s appeal for tourists so they don’t just think of “pollution and piracy”.