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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

South Korea will drastically ease visa restrictions for Chinese visitors who are becoming the major customers of its tourism market, the justice ministry said Tuesday.
From August 1 multiple-entry visas will be issued to employees of China’s top 500 companies, schoolteachers, pensioners, holders of various professional licences and graduates of prestigious colleges, it said.
The multiple-entry visa would allow them to enter South Korea freely for up to three years, the ministry said.
Currently it is offered only to people from advanced countries, owners of platinum or gold-class credit cards and professionals like …

When 25-year-old He Fan watched Disney’s Finding Nemo she was captivated by the wondrous sights beneath the waves.
The English language teacher from Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region – the world’s most landlocked city – had only ever experienced 30 minutes of snorkeling before, albeit off the tropical paradise Indonesian island of Bali.
However, fuelled by those two experiences and a curiosity about marine life that she has nurtured since childhood, He splashed out on professional diving instruction and gained a globally recognized certificate of competence, despite knowing she …

A group of the best tourist destinations in Africa have gathered to launch the “China To Africa” Project (CTA)
Gambia, Tanzania and Cameroon are the three founding members of this initiative to increase the number of Chinese tourists coming to their countries, for both leisure and business trips.
As Africa is now a key continent for China in terms of business, trade and tourism, this initiative has been welcomed by the African and Chinese travel & tourism industry.
The CTA President, Mrs Françoise Kameni-Lele (Based in Yaounde, Cameroon), is a well know personality …

In Italy, most cities still lack a direct flight to the island of Sardinia, the second-largest and arguably most breathtaking island in the Mediterranean. It’s a convenience the residents of Shanghai, however, might have shortly.
The island, with its turquoise waters, white-sand beaches and purple-flowered fields, has been chosen by China’s financial capital as the preeminent “exotic honeymoon paradise” for couples.
A massive promotional campaign aimed at boosting Chinese tourism on the island has been jointly launched by Shanghai’s municipality and Sardinia’s authorities.
“China is a growing market,” said Giorgio Macioccu, head of …

Just a year ago, Chinese travelers could not do much online except conduct research. Buying travel was almost exclusively an offline activity. But that’s all changing quickly.
A growing number of the 404-million Internet users on the Chinese mainland are now making travel purchases online. And that growth will accelerate in the coming years, according to iResearch, which will lead to a strong surge in Internet outlets.
“And iResearch estimates that revenue from the online travel service market will more than triple between 2009 and 2013,” the company says.
The number of China’s …

Dear Tour Operator/Travel Agent,
A new EU Visa Code took effect on 5th April 2010 with the aim of harmonising and simplifying Schengen visa applications. To monitor its implementation, European Tour Operators Association is conducting a survey; they would also like to hear your experiences of visa processing for the UK and Ireland. which are not affected by this new code.
If you work with any of the origin markets affected, please complete this survey by clicking  http://www.consumerdatasurveys.com/etoa/

European Tour Operators Association would be very grateful if you could forward it to any …