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 …

Brett Butcher believes Chinese tourists escaping to the sun will revolutionize the leisure industry in Asia.  The 50-year-old Australian managing director of Langham Hotels International said ever wealthier people from the colder north of China will increasingly want to take their holidays in warmer climates.
He believes this will prove a boon to hotels on Hainan, the tropical island off China’s southern coast, and to various other destinations in Southeast Asia.
“It is the next big growth story in China which has yet to happen. People are going to start to ask themselves …

China’s outbound tourism will survive the coming economic downturn in China, because Chinese are not travelling for indiviual pleasure.

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, …

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 …

According to foreign media reports, the U.S. market research company Nielsen released a report released on Friday said the past year, the use of social media in the Asia Pacific region is experiencing an unprecedented growth, the region has become the most important trends of the network 1. According to Nielsen’s survey found that 7 of Internet brand globally, there are three big brands is social media, it was Facebook, Wikipedia and YouTube. The survey also shows that all Internet users around the world, nearly three-quarters (about 74%) of Internet …

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 …

China-USA air travel veteran on the state of outbound travel
China TravelDaily by Maggie Rauch
As a growing number of Chinese travel abroad for business and leisure, competition to lure mainland travelers is also heating up. One of the people responsible for steering mainland travelers to the United States, and one of the most experienced aviation professionals working in China today, is Delta Airlines’ Director & Chief Representative of China & Hong Kong, Sandeep Bahl. Bahl has worked in aviation for more than two decades, and has been stationed in either Japan …

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 …

China wants to learn from Malaysia’s experience in developing its islands into major international tourist destinations, while also preserving the island’s eco-system.
A Chinese delegation led by the head of China’s top tourism administration Shao Qiwei, arrived in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday. Shao Qiwei said Malaysia’s experience in this area is important for China which wants to develop its Hainan Island into a popular tourist destination.
Malaysia’s tourism department said it will consider co-operating with China, to develop cruise tourism as a new product. The Chinese delegation will also visit Pangkor and …

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 …

The Hong Kong Tourism Board has reported that the number of tourist arrivals in the SAR hit a record 16.86 million in the first half of 2010 — up 23.1% from the previous year.
The report adds that June, a total of 2.62 million tourists visited Hong Kong, up 43.5% year on year.
The tourism board also points out that the Chinese mainland has become a major source of tourists. In the first six months, 10.48 million mainland tourists visited Hong Kong — 26.9% more than in the same period of last …