Travel is no longer booked just for a destination, but for a moment. Trip.com Group, a global online travel giant, and Seat Unique Group, a platform specialising in premium event hospitality, announced a global partnership on 15 July 2026, bringing over 500,000 official VIP packages · Formula 1, Premier League, major music tours · within reach of the hundreds of millions of travellers on the Chinese group’s platforms.
For the luxury hotel industry, this convergence of travel booking and premium ticketing confirms a groundswell: stays are now built around events, and the overnight stays that go with them.
- Trip.com Group (Trip.com, Ctrip, Skyscanner, Qunar) is integrating a new category of direct premium experiences into its platforms.
- Over 500,000 official and VIP hospitality packages: Formula 1, Premier League, concerts and major events, provided by Seat Unique Group (Seat Unique, P1 Travel, Circuit Hospitality).
- A network of over 140 official rights holders: Arsenal FC, Everton FC, Real Madrid, AC Milan, Co-op Live and most Grands Prix.
- For Seat Unique Group, this is its first major expansion in Asia-Pacific, where 2 out of 3 travellers have already planned a holiday around a concert, according to a Trip.com study.
- Rollout on Trip.com in the coming months.
Experiential travel scales up
The agreement is based on a finding that Trip.com’s in-house study quantifies unambiguously: two-thirds of Asia-Pacific travellers have already organised their holidays around a concert, and 66% say they are ready to travel abroad to follow their favourite artist. Football, basketball and Formula 1 are among the most sought-after spectacles when travelling. For Robin Sherry, CEO of Seat Unique Group, “the important thing is no longer just the destination, but the experiences enjoyed on site.”
500,000 official packages, from the starting grid to the VIP boxes
In practice, customers of the group’s platforms · Trip.com, Ctrip, Skyscanner and Qunar · will access hospitality packages provided directly by official rights holders, with no grey market: VIP boxes and lounges at Arsenal, Everton, Real Madrid or AC Milan, hospitality at most Formula 1 Grands Prix, and premium seats for major tours via venues such as Manchester’s Co-op Live. For the 140 rights-holder partners, the agreement opens up a distribution channel to hundreds of millions of travellers, impossible to replicate directly.
Asia-Pacific in the spotlight
For the British group · which brings together Seat Unique, European sports travel specialist P1 Travel and Circuit Hospitality · the agreement marks its first major expansion in the Asia-Pacific region, the most dynamic growth pool for premium travel. Supported by sports and entertainment figures such as Harry Kane, Ben Stokes, Jessica Ennis-Hill or Jack Whitehall via The Players’ Fund and The Artists’ Collective, Seat Unique Group is among the fastest-growing British technology companies.
Our view: a boon for the luxury hotel industry
Behind the distribution agreement, the hotel industry has much to gain. Grand Prix weekends, finals or major concert events produce the most spectacular price peaks of the year for luxury hotels · Monaco, Monza, Madrid or Manchester know this well. By connecting stay bookings and the VIP experience in a single journey, Trip.com is industrialising high-end event-driven city breaks: palace hotels and five-star properties in host cities can expect better-anticipated waves of premium guests, particularly from Asia, for whom the hotel is an integral part of the experience.
Practical information
- Premium experiences will be offered on Trip.com in the coming months, initially around major European events.
- Trip.com Group: founded in 1999, listed on NASDAQ (2003) and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (2021).
- Seat Unique Group: Seat Unique, P1 Travel and Circuit Hospitality · over 140 official rights holders, clients in more than 150 countries.
