China hits travel platform Trip.com with $765M in penalties over monopoly abuses

China said on Saturday it had imposed penalties of nearly 5.2 billion yuan ($765 million) on Trip.com Group, which operates the country’s largest online travel platform, over claims of monopolistic conduct.Trip.com, which runs Ctrip and Skyscanner among other brands, was said to be restricting market competition through means such as entering into exclusive partnerships with some hotels and offering prioritized traffic allocation to them, China’s State Administration for Market Regulation said in a statement.It prohibited some hotels from collaborating with competing platforms, the regulator added, and had also demanded some hotel operators who were operating on multiple platforms to ensure the rates for their platform were the lowest available online.The regulator said Trip.com had been a