Find.......

Custom Search

Sunday, November 30, 2014

China's booming tourism market finds new partnerships

Following the booming growth of China's outbound tourism in recent years, international tourism giants have flooded into the nation, with Turkish Airlines last weekend signing an agreement with a Guangzhou travel agency to jointly explore the huge potential of the mainland market, reports the People's Daily Overseas Edition.

The international tourism giants are hoping to conduct a reshuffle of the Chinese tourism market through collaboration with domestic tourism companies or mergers and acquisitions.

In 2013, China's outbound tourism grew rapidly, with 97.3 million Chinese nationals visiting foreign countries, up 18% from a year earlier. Abroad, they spent US$120 billion, up 20% year-on-year. In the first eight months of this year, the number of Chinese tourists in Turkey rose 40% year-on-year, thus triggering the cooperation between Turkish Airlines and the Guangdong travel agency, according to Turkey's consulate in Guangzhou.

International tourism giants already mapped out strategies in China for their potential market. In August, Priceline, the world's largest online travel agency (OTA), bought a stake in China's Ctrip.com to strengthen its global strategic partnership. Expedia, another US OTA giant, also has a local partner in China. In 2009, US-based TripAdvisor acquired a local OTA company.

Royal Caribbean International, one of the world's leadng international cruise lines, plans to park its top luxury cruise, Quantum of the Seas, in Shanghai in 2015, moving from New York.

The great promise of China's tourism market and huge consumption potential are exactly the reasons why international tourism giants are coming to China one after the other, said Dai Bin, president of the China Tourism Research Institute.

According to statistics from the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), the number of China's outbound tourists and their travel consumption both ranked no. 1 in the world in 2013. In the next five years, about 500 million Chinese tourists will visit abroad.

Recently, during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders summit, US president Barack Obama announced the relaxation of visa approvals to Chinese tourists, a move which will inject billions of dollars into the US economy and create demand to support hundreds of thousands of additional US jobs.

Following the booming growth of China's internet economy, Chinese tourism enterprises will also take the chance to expand their business scale. Spearheading the move are the three internet giants — Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent — which are already in OTA talks abroad, the report said.

Source: Want China Times


from China Travel & Tourism News http://www.chinatraveltourismnews.com/

IFTTT

Put the internet to work for you.

Turn off or edit this Recipe

No comments: