Brazilian and Chinese visitors led a resurgence in foreign tourism spending within the U.S. in the first half of the year, giving hope to domestic hoteliers, airline companies and others that the travel-spending slump of 2008 and 2009 is over, according to a report released Wednesday.
Foreign tourists spent about 20% more here during the first six months of 2010 than they did a year earlier, Visa (V) reported. American citizens also boosted their spending abroad, increasing travel purchases on their Visa cards by 9.3% compared to the same period in …

The world’s second biggest economy is attracting a lot of interest from hotels.
China, which recently overtook Japan as No. 2 on the world’s gross domestic product list behind the United States, is No. 1 as far as hotel development in the Asia/Pacific region goes, according to STR Global data.

Damien Little
director
Horwath HTL

As China’s economy has grown, so too has domestic travel, said Damien Little, director of Horwath HTL in Singapore. Plenty of stimulus money has been pumped into the Chinese economy, and the government has loosened some property-development regulations, which have …

Global business travel spending will increase 6.2 percent from a recession-depressed 2009, to $896 billion, according to a new report from the NBTA Foundation. Researchers expect the global figure to surpass the 2008 peak of $926 billion in 2011, with growth driven by strong trade conditions in Asia, healthy business travel volumes in the Middle East and Latin America, and double-digit business travel spending growth in several manufacturing sectors–offsetting continued weakness in Europe.
“At mid-year 2010, we have already seen many of the air and hotel indicators recovering more quickly than …

eLong Inc. (Nasdaq: LONG | PowerRating), a leading online travel agency, have made profits for six consecutive quarters since the first quarter of 2009 and its second-quarter operating profits are equivalent to the gross profits of last full year, disclosed its CEO Cui Guangfu.
Particularly, in the period, the sales growth of the hotel operations under eLong overtook that of archrival Ctrip.com International Ltd. (Nasdaq: CTRP | PowerRating), which hit 34%, for the first time since 2006, thanks to the former’s coverage of low-end hotels.
eLong has reached agreement with GreenTree Inn, according to which they …

According to BCG, China’s young professionals are quite digitally connected; however, when we scan their days we see a distinct difference in the manner they regard digital tools.

Key element is using digital primarily as a communication device; while younger teens and university students focus on social sharing, communication, MP3 downloads, etc – young professionals take a more practical approach to digital. That’s not to say its any less a part of their lives; we can venture to state that digital is more of a tool than a companion.
We see some integration of email, …

Japan has always been a hotspot tourist destination – with beautiful cherry blossoms, Mount Fiji looming on the horizon, tranquil Zen gardens, natural hot springs, and delicious seafood delicacies, people flock to Japan by the millions. This is also true for Chinese tourists, but not for the same reasons – Chinese are traveling to Japan to purchase, purchase, and purchase. The new generation of young Chinese white collar workers are looking to go to Japan to buy electronics and other products and is leaving the site seeing to the grandparents. …

The Euro has depreciated nearly 20 percent against the Yuan since 2009 – which means Chinese are planning trips to Europe to buy name brands at a “discounted” price. Name brands, such as Louis Vuitton, a Chinese favorite, are now cheaper in Europe than on the mainland including Hong Kong, an otherwise very popular place to shop for the pricey goods. According to an avid shopper, Li Yaoyi, “A 1,000-euro purse now costs about 8,000 yuan, which is about 1,400 yuan cheaper according to the converted price paid for the …

With South Korea’s promotional three year tourism campaign, Chinese people are taking advantage of this opportunity to live out their own epic Korean soap operas (that have risen in popularity with Chinese teens and grandmas alike). In 2010 – 2013, Korea plans to attract worldwide tourism that once took the world by storm, and it’s working like a charm for their Chinese neighbors. Korea has reported a 30% increase in tourism thus far in 2010 in comparison to 2009, and a whopping 70% increase in the month of May alone. …

In an apparent bid to extend its control over the Internet and cash in on the rapid growth of mobile devices, Chinaplans to create its own government-controlled search engine.
The new venture would be fresh competition for Baidu.com, a private company that runs China’s dominant search engine. Baidu has seen its market share grow since Google retreated from the mainland earlier this year.
State-owned China Mobile — the world’s biggest cellphone carrier — and Xinhua, China’s official state-run news agency, signed an agreement Thursday to create a joint venture called the Search Engine New Media International …

CARSON CITY, NV — (Marketwire) — 08/13/10 — The Nevada Commission on Tourism (NCOT) is expanding its promotion in the lucrative Chinese travel market to Shanghai, while cutting office operating costs countrywide 50 percent, Lt. Gov. Brian K. Krolicki announced today.
The new office, which opens in Shanghai Aug. 18, is in the heart of the city’s business district in the U.S. Commercial Center and shares quarters with the U.S. Commerce Department and other American tourism-oriented agencies. The six-year-old Beijing office moves to a smaller facility. The total cost of office …

Strong demand for business and leisure travel again boosted the results of Ctrip CTRP in the second quarter. As the largest travel agent in China, Ctrip saw a 46% year-over-year increase in quarterly net revenue, which totaled CNY 695 million, thanks to significantly higher volume in air travel and hotel room bookings. These two segments account for close to 90% of total sales. With most of its revenue from domestic travel, Ctrip attributed its growth to a robust economy in China. Its efforts since last year to penetrate more second- and …

The report found that one in every four social media users in what they call ‘initiators’ — influential usrs that regularly start conversation, create content and publish their views online and are the fertile starting point for new ideas, services and products.
A further 29 per cent of Chinese social media users are ‘commenters’ who react and comment on other people’s views. They are also the ‘accelerators’ of new ideas.

The largest group, comprising 45 per cent of social media users, are ‘gawkers’ who quietly …

China’s central government says it will boost domestic tourism development by relaxing market access, welcoming foreign companies and slashing ticket prices for tourist spots.
The State Council has issued measures aimed at speeding up the development of China’s tourism industry. The government is looking to revitalize domestic tourism competition by introducing foreign tourism companies.
The government is about to loosen market access, break down industrial and regional market access, and streamline the administrative admission process. They are also vowing to push forward the transformation …

More and more countries have been trying to attract tourists from China. Vietnam has taken steps to lure more travelers from its northern neighbor. According to the Chinese Outbound Tourism Research Institute, in 2008, Chinese people made 46 million trips abroad, 90 percent of which were trips to Asia. China has become the biggest source of tourists in Asia, which explains why popular tourist destinations in Asia have launched numerous campaigns to attract tourists from China.
According to the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT), the number of Chinese …

Just how how hard can it be, asks Sina blogger and freelance journalist Chen Zikun in his August 6 post, for Chinese travelers to get a visa—with Chen’s answer apparently being: not too hard—in which he shares the stories behind visas for the many countries he’s been to:
Until I went to apply for a visa for my first ever trip out of the country, I was always happily under the impression that, being from a country with a rapidly-developing economy, and especially with how smug red-to-the-root media …

Shan Phillips, Vice President, Greater China, Telecom Practice, The Nielsen Company
On the streets of Guangzhou, Harbin and Shanghai, the mobile phone has become ubiquitous.  Once the domain of the elite, it now seems that just about everybody has one.  Widespread ownership of mobiles is only a fairly recent development in China, but consumers there have fully embraced the technology and in some ways are using it more robustly than their American and European counterparts.
For many people in China, the mobile Web is the only one …

PRESS RELEASE
August 5, 2010: TravelDaily (www.traveldaily.cn), China’s leading online publisher and event organizer with emphasis on the distribution, marketing and technology trends in the travel and tourism industries, today announced that it has welcomed Amadeus as a diamond sponsor for the 2010 China Travel Distribution Summit, to be held in Beijing on September 15-16.
Amadeus, a leading travel technology partner and transaction processor for the global travel and tourism industry, has proven its distribution technology can maximize revenues and increase efficiency for all sectors of the travel industry in Asia, including …

More and more stores and cash machines in Japan are featuring signs that read “Union Pay.” That is the name of a debit card used in China and informs Chinese tourists that they can shop anywhere in Japan using that piece of plastic. The number of stores accepting Union Pay cards in Japan rose from just 250 in 2005 to almost 20,000 this year. Chinese tourists are big spenders and Japanese travel agencies have hired Chinese students to help them guide the travelers to shopping districts, while department stores in …

The number of Japanese entry visas issued to Chinese tourists has jumped 6.6-fold this month year-on-year after Tokyo eased entry requirements to attract more Chinese visitors, the Asahi Shimbun said Thursday.
Japan National Tourism Organization said a daily average of 378 tourist visas were issued to Chinese July 8-23, up from 57 over the same period last year.
On July 1, Japan relaxed visa rules by cutting the salary requirement to 60,000 yuan (8,848 U.S. dollars) or more per year for a Chinese to be eligible for a tourist visa, a significant …

Chinese Internet giant Baidu Inc’ joint venture RakuBai on Friday said it expects nearly 100 million users to utilize its e-commerce site for online shopping over the next three years.
That in turn may help the company in a long term influence dominate position of Alibaba.com’s e-commerce company Taobao in China’s online shopping services market, said experts.
“We anticipate the Chinese online users to surpass the Japanese numbers within three years after our services go online,” said Koichi Nakamura, chairman and chief executive of Beijing …